Games on my PC start stuttering pretty badly when they aren't the active window for a while. Have to close the game and restart to resolve the stuttering issue. What exactly is causing this?

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Corno@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

This happens with every game that I play on this computer. It is a gaming rig that I’m proud of, but something I notice about it is this stuttering issue. The issue can be recreated very consistently

I’ll start playing a game, play for five minutes, or an hour, doesn’t matter, there’s no stuttering. If I keep the game running but I’m not actually playing it for more than ten? Fifteen minutes? For example browsing Lemmy, when I come back to the game there will be stuttering, and while the stuttering happens I can hear a kind of rumbling sound coming from the tower. This computer is old but I do remember this happening when it was new and I’m wondering if this is normal/what the issue is? I tried Googling this, but the results I got were about a computer stuttering in general, the issue I’m experiencing is limited to games.

Just in case, here’s my specs!

16 GB RAM
Intel Core i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11 GB)
Windows 10 64-bit

Thanks!

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cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If I had to guess, drivers.

Also any idea on ram consumption during this period? If you’re low on ram, and somehow something as simple as browsing Lemmy fills your memory, your computer will possibly page the game (move the running memory of the game from RAM to your HDD) which is significantly slower than RAM.

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Jimmycakes@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If money is a problem even a 128/256gb nvme will make a world of difference as a boot/windows drive. You can still run games from the hdd.

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Lexam@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
lemmy.world/c/linux_gaming

We have the answers you seek, my friend.

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Iheartcheese@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Your computer is clogged with sin

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Guidy@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The next time this happens look at task manager and see what % memory you have available.

Also as others have said consider replacing your HDD with an SSD, that’s the single biggest upgrade you can make to see a massive difference in quality of life with your PC.

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Mothra@mander.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Look I’m not tech savvy at all, but I have been using windows for a very long time. Take the following with a grain of salt. Here’s my two pennies:

1: Windows has a tendency to run background processes as soon as it detects you are idle, and once those processes start they don’t stop cleanly if you resume activity. I find they will stop for good only if I do something that forces clearing RAM to start a RAM intensive process, such as restarting a game in your case.

2: The best deterrent to windows doing this shit in the background is to purge as much bloat as you can, and turn your wifi off if you are not using it. Turn auto updates off (or delay as much as possible). My laptop behaves pretty well on idle if it’s offline.

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Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Sounds like your computer has a bit lower RAM than it needs, in which case it “swaps”.

This means taking some memory that’s not been used for a while and writing it to disk, and using the now free RAM for what you are currently doing.

When starting a game, it likely swaps out browser memory to make room for the game. It loads all it needs into RAM to make the game run smooth.

When tabbing out of the game, it swaps game memory to disk and swaps in browser memory.

When going back to the game, it will swap game memory back in in bits and pieces. Turn around, the game needs to draw that door texture. That needs to be swapped back into RAM from disk. Slight stutter, then normal. Walk a bit further, it needs to play footstep sounds. Those needs to be fetched back in from disk. And so on.

Writing/reading from a HDD makes noise and vibration, since it’s internally a core of spinning disks with several small motors moving back and forth.

An SSD has no moving parts and will not make noise. Stutters will be shorter, but still happen.

Adding more RAM will reduce or remove the need to swap to disk in the first place, and is the most useful upgrade to alleviate the issue.

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- Corno@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Had a hunch that my old HDD’s were at least partially related to the issue. Thanks for the explanation! 😃 Looks like SSD’s and more RAM are the way to go!
  
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  - NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This is the correct answer and the function is called Virtual Memory in Windows but is commonly known as the pagefile or swap. Adding more RAM won’t save you from this, as Windows will automatically move memory files into virtual memory if they’re idle for awhile, regardless of how much RAM is currently in use. In fact adding more RAM will probably increase the size of the virtual memory which may make the problem worse for you.
    
    Here is a more complete explanation: Swap file in Windows 10 & Windows 11: How to use it to optimize PC performance (increase, adjust, deactivate swap)?
    
    The pagefile is configurable. You can change which hard drive it gets stored on, how big it can be, and even turn it off completely. Turning it off has risks though, and may lead to system crashes (see the warnings in the article).
    
    You could add an SSD specifically to serve as a pagefile location and nothing else, in which case you could just get a small cheap one (a 32GB SSD would be more than enough for 16GB of RAM) - assuming that you have a place to plug it in to your motherboard, and then turn off the pagefile storage on all other drives in your system. That would be an easy change as you wouldn’t have to reinstall Windows onto a new hard drive.
    
    Ultimately though, the easiest and cheapest fix is to just change your behavior - close the game if you’re not using it for awhile and relaunch it when you want to play again.
    
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theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Try borderless windowed instead of fullscreen

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- Corno@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Will try this out and see if it helps. Thank you!
  
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solrize@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you have a hard drive, replace it with an SSD? And, can you add more memory?

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