Random stutter, been trying to solve for nearly a year

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jrob44

Honorable
Apr 12, 2013
26
0
10,580
So, I've had this random stuttering on my PC ever since I built it. I've even swapped out quite a few of the components since first recognizing I had this problem, and it persists.

Whenever I'm doing anything on my PC, be it watching a movie, typing up a document, or playing games, my computer will randomly sort of hiccup and stutter for just a second. It does this every like 30 minutes or so. Everything sort of halts for a second, if I'm typing text, that pauses. On videos and in games both the video and audio sort of hiccup and pause for a second. Besides that, everything works perfectly fine.

I've had this problem for a really long time now. I've tried everything I can think of: reinstalling Windows numerous times (both 7, 8 and 8.1). I've pretty much swapped out every hardware component for a new one and tested it. I've tried setting the BIOS settings all to default, factory settings, and tried overclocking it, doesn't make a difference. Temps are all fine. GPU doesn't go above 80 (doesn't even get up to 80 very often), CPU I think tops out at like 70 during stress testing on OC, I think it was in the 50's-60's without OC. The problem never seems to go away. It's hard to try to see what's going on in hardware monitor type applications when it happens because the stutter is so random and doesn't occur very frequently.

I mainly got my PC for playing games, but since I've had this problem I've pretty much given up and just started playing on PS4. It's extremely frustrating that I have this much money into my computer and I can't even play videos without stuttering

I don't know what else to try. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this, or have any tips for possible solutions? The only things I can't think of is I believe this problem started after I switched to having dual hard drives. Right now I have a 120 gig SSD and a 2 TB HDD. I used to always run one hard drive, and I don't recall ever having this problem then. Problem occurs when running video files or games off of either hard drive. Oh, and my RAM isn't listed on the qualified vendors list, I did try other RAM though, although I didn't test it that much.

I really don't think this is a hardware problem though. I really think it may be some background application, but am at a loss to try to figure out which one it is.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Specs:
CPU: i7 3770k
Mobo: Sabertooth z77
RAM: 2133 Mhz 2 x 4gb
GPU: GTX 780 (had same problem with a 580)
Hard drives: Seagate 120 gb SSD, Western Digital 2 TB HDD
PSU: Cooler Master Pro Gold (or something like that) 800 watt
Sound card: Creative X-Fi Titanium
 

jrob44

Honorable
Apr 12, 2013
26
0
10,580
Ok, I'll try that. But with these 780's I think they dynamically set the voltage level, and watching a video isn't really stressing the card at all, so I don't see how voltage would be an issue but I'll give it a shot.
 

riverslq

Estimable
Mar 16, 2014
2
0
4,510


I have the exact same problem with my machine. I've also reinstalled windows, etc, etc, etc...
I have never tried just the onboard audio though.

Creative X-Fi card
OCZ vertex3 ssd (boot)
XFX 6990 (sometimes paired with a 6970) - stuttering happens in either configuration
Intel 2600k
Antec 1200 watt PS
P8P67EVO motherboard
4x4GB corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9

I've always thought it might be the X-FI card. We definitely have that in common between our 2 machines.
 

Bad_Kitty13

Estimable
Feb 26, 2014
118
0
4,660
both of you take out your sound cards and see if stuttering persists. im betting it wont. there is someone else who thought their problem was there psu and it was their asus sound card conflicting with their onboards driver. if you uninstall the onboard driver and and your sound card driver in safe mode then power down and power up into windows and install the sound card it should fix the issue. literally just seen this 2 hours ago
 

jrob44

Honorable
Apr 12, 2013
26
0
10,580
EDIT: Didn't notice at first you were replying to riverslq. But it's my GPU. Borrowed a GPU from a friend and that worked fine. Going to go ahead and RMA it. Going to take a few weeks to get it back, but I'll post on here once I get it back whether or not it helped.

oh and @riverslq: I tried taking out the X-Fi card and it still stuttered. What OS are you running?
 

jrob44

Honorable
Apr 12, 2013
26
0
10,580
So... got my replacement card back a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was working fine, although I didn't have much time to use it because I've been pretty busy. Ended up downloading the new drivers that Nvidia released today that were supposed to give huge performance gains. Performance for me actually dropped, even in benchmarks, and now the stuttering is back and drastically worse. It's not so bad in videos now, but in games every minute or so it completely halts for a second or two then resumes. On Nvidia's forum for their driver feedback post I saw a few people mention this problem, although they seemed to suggest it was related to vsync/frame limiter, which I don't have enabled in Battlefield 4 (which the problem seems to be the worst in). One of the Nvidia people responded to those people saying they were working on a fix (apparently it has been a problem for quite a while). I posted on there seeing if my problem was related to that, and of course received no reply. I'm just going to sell this card and either just get a console or get an AMD card. I'm pretty sure this is a driver problem and I'm just to the point where I'm pretty frustrated with Nvidia. I paid $600 for a graphics card and it can't even play movies properly. I've tried posting in their forums and pretty much got nowhere. I'm sorry, but PC gaming is a joke, although I wonder if I would have better luck with AMD. The card of my friend's that I tested was an AMD card and didn't have any stuttering issues.