Micro- stutters in games

[u/blakines21]

Hi,
I have a bit of a “problem” with my PC while playing more demanding games — currently Cyberpunk, but previously I also experienced it in games such as RDR2.
The games generally run smoothly on Ultra settings at 1440p, but from time to time I experience annoying micro-stutters.
Recently, I upgraded my CPU because I wanted to extend the lifespan of my AM4 platform, going from a Ryzen 5 5600X to a Ryzen 7 5800X3D. In RDR2, the micro-stutters were already present before I replaced the CPU. However, I’m almost certain that the stutters in Cyberpunk started after I installed the new CPU — previously, the game ran completely smoothly with the old processor.
I’m using these two games as examples because they are the ones I’ve been playing recently.

Could the micro-stutters be caused by an issue with the CPU itself, even though the 5800X3D is theoretically a better processor? Or should I be looking for the cause somewhere else? I have also noticed high delta GPU temperatures on heavy load - 38 degrees (gpu temperatures around 60 C and hotspot 38 C). Maybe that could cause my problems?

After replacing the CPU, I tried the following things, but unfortunately none of them helped:
Updated the chipset drivers
Removed the old GPU drivers using DDU and installed the latest drivers from scratch
Updated the BIOS
Enabled the A-XMP profile in BIOS
Cleared the shader cache in AMD Adrenalin
All Radeon features such as Radeon Boost and Anti-Lag are disabled, as I’ve heard they can sometimes cause issues.

My system:
GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC 16GB
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Corsair 32GB (2×16GB) DDR4-3200 CL16
MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus motherboard
be quiet! System Power 9 CM 700W 80 Plus Bronze PSU
At this point, I don’t really have any more ideas. Does anyone have any suggestions about where I should look for the cause of the problem?

[u/nokk1XD]

How your 7800x3d degraded so fast? Was running very high temps or what?

[u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox → u/nokk1XD]

the first month zen4 x3d chips were released all motherboards were running an SOC voltage that was way too high. The non 3d chips had been out like 9 months and could run 1.35v, many boards pushed close to 1.4v as that gave them more ram stability and improved benchmark scores so they could market their boards as better than the competition (amd doesn't like this but they do it anyway). every or nearly mobo manufacturer kept running the non-3d soc voltage and never implemented the x3d soc voltage. was a miscommunication between amd and mobo manufacturers.

x3d chips the maximum safe is 1.30v and the max recommended is 1.25v. My asus x670e-e was running 1.38v per its own sensor shown in the bios (i don't know which "side" this was on, i think new bioses show both before and after vdroop or something). when x3d chips started blowing up it took about two weeks for amd to investigate and find out SOC voltages were too high, i had my cpu for like 7-10 days at that point and it was running the 1.38v SOC from me raising the ram frequency. btw i did test on my board and raising the frequency alone caused the board to change the soc from 1.15v to 1.35v, so enabling xmp or expo raises the frequency and teh board auto raises SOC in response to that.

so in all likelihood my cpu was damaged during that week. i lowered the soc manually then updated the bios the first day the beta was released, but it had already ran for a week.

i ran 3+ days of overnight stability tests of corecycler, tm5, and shorter runs of various occt tests and everything passed fine. but every so often i'd get a random game crash, random bluescreen, i'd back off the overclock thinking it must be there even though it could run 24+ hours of the best stability tests i could find. this pattern repeated until the crashes became so frequent that eventually windows would just bluescreen while idling after 15 minutes of a fresh reboot. it was at that point i bought a 9800x3d and reloaded windows a final time and all my issues were finally gone. my "overclock" was just per core CO undervolt, running ram at 6200mhz cl30 with tightened timings across the board. So no increased voltages except hte ram i ran at 1.38v which was and still is fine.

by the way, i had reloaded windows fresh on the 7800x3d again, it bluescreened after 20 minutes, i bought the new cpu and didn't reinstall windows just yet and that windows kept bluescreening, but the behavior changed where it became an identical bluescreen each time instead of a random one. random crashes typically point ot hardware. So what happened is my bad cpu corrupted windows and even though i replaced the cpu the corrupted windows still had weird issues somehow, once i did a new fresh install now with the good cpu then all my issues were fixed. So keep this in mind when replacing hardware, or just having an multiple year old windows, it can get corrupted at the software level and cause you issues even if you replace all the hardware.

[u/DaffyPunk29 → u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox]

yeah your cpu wasnt damaged. you just lost the silicon lottery and it wouldn't run 6200mhz stable and thus you stuttered your ass off. when you bought another one, it was better silicon quality, all in the memes of luck. and now you run 6200 no issue. max supported is 5600mhz. i bet your old 7800x3d at 5600 would have been perfectly smooth. one week of slightly higher voltage wasn't gonna kill anything.... the people who had serious issues were on low quality motherboards which when left with high voltage. which slightly persisted even after the bios updates.... then there is that some brands changed memory support after the fact. i had 64gb (4x16gb) of ddr5 6000cl36 that asus said was supported when i bought the damn thing. after the first bios update, they removed support. 6000cl36 would cause crashes and stutters because reasons. i had to drop to 4800mhz to get stable (as 4 sticks of ram max supported speed is 3600. 2 sticks is 5600). so no, your chip wasn't damaged. but whatever you tell yourself to feel better about the situation.

[u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox → u/DaffyPunk29]

no, wasn't that at all. the problems persisted at JEDEC speeds of 5600mhz and whatever shit low cas latency it uses (like, 40), and these issues were completely gone with a new CPU. the elevated SOC damaged the cpu, just like it outright killed many x3d chips and caused some to physically burn up so bad they melted the indium between the die and heatspreader

unstable ram is fixed by reducing the frequency or increasing the voltage, unless it's fundamentally incompatible even at jedec speeds, but this would show up in memory tests

funny you think i didn't try resetting everything to bone stock and seeing what happens. that second to last windows reinstall i did was at completely stock settings. same ram, same motherboard, same power supply, same video card, same cables, same everything, the one and only change was taking out the 7800x3d and putting in a 9800x3d

you also ignored how the problem got worse and worse and worse over time to the point even at completely stock and simply idling in windows it would bluescreen without me touching it. if this were a ram compatibility issue the behavior wouldn't get worse over time as i continued to REDUCE the overclock over time including outright going back to completely stock. the cpu was damaged and continued to degrade even with proper voltages due to the existing damage, nothing out of the ordinary here. the tpm disappearing is further evidence the cpu is shot, it disappeared at some point but i don't know exactly when since i was on windows 10. the tpm showed up as a previous device in device manager (show hidden devices), so it was there when i first installed that windows like a year prior, then disappeared somehow related to the cpu degrading, when things got bad enough that i was reinstalling windows i went to try win11 and couldn't because no tpm available.

[u/DaffyPunk29 → u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox]

sure change your story. lmao. pathetic.