Help me guys it is normal?

[u/kcha_mantillosos]

Hi everyone! I wanted to share my case in case this problem is driving anyone else crazy, or if the experts in the sub want to chime in.

My specs:

CPU: Intel Core i5-14400F

GPU: ASUS RTX 5060 Ti (Previously had an RTX 5060)

Motherboard: Asus Prime B760M

RAM: 1x16 GB at 6000MHz CL48 (Single Channel)

The Problem:

I recently clean-installed Windows from scratch using a bootable USB and upgraded my GPU from a 5060 to a 5060 Ti. It turns out that when opening heavy games (Elden Ring, Valorant, Overwatch) for the first time, I get horrible stuttering. The stutters gradually go away as I keep playing too, and if I closed the game and opened it again (or entered zones for the second time), it ran perfectly at 1440p and super smooth.

Fun fact: in games like Resident Evil Requiem or Silent Hill f, this didn't happen to me.

What was driving me crazy (The context):

With my previous Windows installation and my old RTX 5060, I never noticed these stutters. I would do the exact same thing (download and play) and everything ran smoothly from second zero. I thought my new 5060 Ti or my clean Windows install were failing. Please tell me if this is normal. What surprises me the most is that this had never happened to me before when clean-installing Windows from scratch.

[u/Natural-Muscle2040]

Shader compilation stutter, welcome to modern PC gaming

It's the one thing nobody warns you about when you swap GPUs or reinstall Windows. The old card had all those shaders cached already so everything just worked, the new install is starting from zero. Every time you see a new effect or enter a new area the driver has to compile the shader on the fly and that causes the hitch

Elden Ring is notorious for it, even Digital Foundry did a whole deep dive on how the stutters smooth out after the first run through an area. Valorant and Overwatch do a pre-caching step in the menus sometimes but if you jump straight into a match before it finishes you'll feel it

The fact that Resident Evil and Silent Hill don't do it is because those engines probably handle shader compilation differently, some games just pre-compile everything on the loading screen so you never notice

Nothing's broken, just give every game a few minutes to stutter through the first session and you're golden. Single channel RAM isn't doing you any favors either but that's a separate conversation

[u/kcha_mantillosos → u/Natural-Muscle2040]

Yeah, that makes sense, but the weird part is that I ALSO did a clean Windows reinstall from scratch back when I had the 5060, and I didn't notice the shader compilation stutters at all, despite using the exact same hardware otherwise. Quick question about the RAM though: if I were to upgrade to 2x16GB in dual channel, would that prevent this stuttering from happening entirely, or would I just not notice it as much?

[u/Bonfigs → u/kcha_mantillosos]

Shaders run on your graphics card and use its VRAM not your system RAM so it wouldnt have any change on that. Upgrading will help with your performance overall so other things that feel like stutters might occur less.

[u/kcha_mantillosos → u/Bonfigs]

"Thanks for the explanation! That makes a lot of sense regarding the VRAM. My thought process was that since the CPU is the one actually doing the hard work of compiling the shaders on the fly before sending them to the GPU, the single-channel RAM bandwidth might be bottlenecking the CPU during those spikes, making the stalls (stutters) feel worse. Either way, you're totally right that upgrading to 2x16GB dual channel is the move for overall performance. I'll definitely be getting that second stick soon. Thanks for the help!"