CPU/GPU Delay

I recently spent a good deal of money upgrading my computer with a new graphics card to run games better. It's worked out well for pretty much every game, except for this one. Running on high settings, the game runs at a good 30 fps, which is a pretty decent number for my hardware. The problem is that there are lag spikes being caused by CPU and GPU delay happening at regular intervals. I've "fixed" this problem multiple times, and it just won't stop coming back.

It started before I ever bought the new card, my average framerate in games had been decreasing and the freezing had started in BeamNG. I thought the problem was just lag, caused by my woefully inadequate PC at the time. Once I had the new card, I noticed that the freezing persisted, even at the good 60 fps I can make on gridmap. My standard hard drive was almost full at that point, so I emptied it out and uninstalled a bunch of games. This worked for about ten minutes before the problem started again. I then went into the BeamNG folders and found a huge amount of cache files, which I deleted. This worked for an entire day before the problem cam back. The PC-Matic optimizer did nothing, I have to disable the security software to even start the game now. I then got an external 4 terabyte SSD to clear up space, and moved the game to it, which worked for a day. the problem seems to be solved for around ten minutes every time I restart my PC, before coming back. It only happens with this game, so I was thinking it may be some sort of problem related to it.

 

If you open task manager, go to details, then right click CPU and choose select columns, from there select CPU Time, after adding that, make sure list is sorted by CPU time by clicking it so that arrow points down next to CPU Time.

Now you have a list that shows which is taking most of CPU time at top.

If you then play BeamNG in windowed mode (not borderless) 720p, you can have that list visible while you play, observe if there is something else than Beam or System idle process at top positions, that would reveal if there is some software that is stealing your CPU time.

You can also order by cpu and see if some software is hitting very high usage when lag spike happens. Make sure you have set task manager refresh rate to fast for that.

CPUID hardware monitor might also show if there is some odd happening with hardware, like frequencies or voltages jumping around.

 

I found that the CPU time seems right, the biggest I saw was around 7:20:00 from System Idle Processes. However, I also noticed that the lag spikes occur whenever the CPU number for System Idle Processes goes above 80. The number is normally in the mid 60s, sometimes spiking to the high 70s and 80s; when it is above 80, the game freezes until it stabilizes.

 

So you get low CPU load in those situations, what is disk activity during those moments?

Also if there is some kind of throttling happening, that could also make something like that, but it sounds to me like if from some reason there would be high demand of disk bandwidth or something limiting disk transfer speed, however it is kinda odd that you get those during car not moving at grid map.

CPU ID hardware monitor is something I would run on that next to see if there are odd things happening:


Also HWInfo64 is bit more comprehensive as it can show throttling etc. but it is not so easy to use.

 

Okay, I ran it again today. Generally the hard drive light is completely off during a freeze, sometimes it flickers once or twice, and there was once when it was solid the whole time. Overall, it seems pretty all over the place, I'm not sure that it's the source of my problem.

I ran the CPU monitor, and it showed more interesting results. Starting from the top, the GPU's max temperature was 74 degrees Celsius, so no problems there. The fans are all good, the GPU power topped out at 93.30% During the freezes, GPU usage jumped from the mid-thirties to 100% every time. The processor maxed utilization at 99% and all eight cores (4 physical cores but 8 "logical cores") all peaked at 100% usage.

 

Odd, it does not show voltages for you.

Anyway, behavior is such that if GPU and CPU clocks drop lower, that could cause it, reason for that could be for example PSU having issue, or motherboard, but it can also be some kind of nasty software thing too, but as you did not have issues with other games, I would think it being more on hardware side, really challenging to pinpoint this kind of issues.

BeamNG is very demanding game, so it stresses computer far more than most other games, that is why issues might happen only in BeamNG.

Anyway has to start from something, what is make and model (including wattage rating) of your PSU?

 

I did actually upgrade my power supply, I just forgot to mention it in my original post. I've got Thermaltake "SMART SERIES" rated at 650W. Since making that post, I've started trying out more of the games in my library and most of them are actually affected by this problem, at least a little. That, combined with the fact that the problem is fixed for around ten minutes after a fresh bootup, makes me think that it probably isn't a hardware issue, but I'm not sure and you seem to have way more experience than me when it comes to this sort of thing. If it is a motherboard problem, can I fix it or is the motherboard trashed? It used to work without this problem, so I don't understand why it's different now. One thing I remember from putting in the power supply is that the motherboard didn't have as many connectors as expected (according to Wikihow), there are a bunch of loose wires and connectors left over.

 

Probably new PSU just have extra power connectors for some motherboard models, not all uses additional power I believe.

Malware, windows doing some stupid maintenance, antivirus doing scans / updates, something like that if it starts 10 minutes after the boot. It could be CPU temp too, but I guess not as you have that checked.

Scan with Malwarebytes might be needed and if using Windows Defender, replace with something else as that has gone bad and causes performance issues, I had to swap that to other one because of it slowing system down.

 

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply, I've had a lot of other stuff going on lately.

I'm using Nvidia as my security software, but Malwarebytes found a 'potential threat.' I cleaned that out as well as some other stuff but it didn't make a difference.

 

Nvidia makes graphics cards and drivers for those, not security software?

Have you tested this:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows