PC Graphics

[f-ben]

@AMD PLEASE READ

Hi there,

I am writing because I spent three weeks trying to fix the microstutter from my new GPU. I switched from a perfectly working 1070 to a 5700XT reference design and I am having a lot of trouble since then. Aside from the driver issues from previous driver versions most people had, I have this one single issue which is driving me crazy. I tried a lot of stuff (list below) which did not help. Even though I´d describe my windows and hardware knowledge as expert I have to say that I have not used a Radeon card since decades and I am not familiar with FreeSync and all the "AMD enhanced" stuff in the drivers. My last ATI card was a Radeon 7200 if I recall correctly.

So whats the problem exactly:
I notice a regular microstutter in a lot of games and benchmarks even when getting 400 fps. Not in all of them, but quite a lot and it´s not engine related. I can reproduce the stutter in scenes that are the same, like in benchmarks. I will attach a video at the end of the post.

Things I already did:
- Fresh, new clean install of windows with nothing but the GPU drivers installed
- I tried almost every setting in the Radeon Settings one after another and in different combinations (took me nearly two days)
- Disabled/Enabled FreeSync on my monitor
- Switched between HDMI and Displayport using different cables
- Overclocked and overvolted my card
- Underclocked and undercolted my card
- Overclocked and untervotled my card
- Underclocked and overvolted my card
- Set the minimum voltage to 900mV
- Used CRU to manually adjust my refresh and freesync range
- Tried the games with vsync ingame off but vsync enabled in the driver
- Set "ChillEnabled"=0 in registry
- I tried about eight older drivers which reach back to June (19.7.1)
- I used DDU in safe mode between every driver install
- Reset my BIOS to default settings
- Overclocked my CPU and RAM
- Underclocked my CPU and RAM
- Removed every not required component in my PC except the GPU and the SSD the games run on
- Removed my mousedriver since someone on amd community said that old logitech drivers can cause issues
- Removed the AMD PCI Driver because someone on amd community said it causes stutter
- Checked the temperatures a hundred times, they are all okay and way lower to cause throttling
- Tried to power the GPU using one power cable with two connectors (which is not that smart of course) but running it with two seperate cables right now

- User Softpowerplaytables to prevent the card downclocking max 2100 min 2000 (did not help at all)

- Tried every combination of FreeSync, VSync, 60hz, 75hz I can think of
- Created new custom refresh rates using CRU
- Disabled enhanced sync

- Disabled all antivirus and added the game-processes to the exception list of Windows Exploit-Guard

Thats just the things I can think of out of my head. There surely is more I did but please understand that I can not remember every single step I did three weeks ago. So if someone has an idea on what could help and I reply with "I already did that" - sorry for that answer but thank you anyway for your suggestion!

One thing I noticed, as you can see in the video, is that with the stutter my card clocks down the GPU speed to a level where I expect it to stutter. The lowest GPU-Z did meassure was 180MHz. I don´t know if it stutters because my GPU clocks down for an unknown reason or if it stutters because my GPU is waiting for something else to finish.

My System:
MB: Asus Prime B350-Plus
CPU: Ryzen 3600
RAM: 16 GB Corsair Vengeance
GPU: Radeon 5700XT reference design with custom air cooling
PSU: Corsair RM650x
OS: Windows 10 (tried different versions, currently running 1909 since yesterday)

Here is the video of heaven benchmark running at 1280x720 with stutter at the same position over and over again. It doesnt matter if I run the benchmark in 720p or 4k - it always stutters at the same positions. The dragon statue is just an example I picked. There a different situations where it happens. I watched this benchmark that often I can tell you 5 positions out of my head where it will stutter.

Radeon 5700XT microstutter (sadly no fix yet) - YouTube  

Recording my screen sadly does not clearly show the stutters the way I experience them sitting in front of my monitor but at 1:07 you can clearly see one big stutter. If someone has an idea what I can do, please please please let me know. I really like the card but the stutter is making it unusable for me.

@AMD PLEASE READ

If there is ANY method to prevent downclocking PLEASE let me know. I´d be happily setting registry keys or manually adjusting stuff to prevent the downclocking - I just watn to play and have fun

[olegrus]

"If there is ANY method to prevent downclocking PLEASE let me know."

I test RTX 2060 Super now, and I have no more microstutters in Unreal engine games or any different lags or stutters in other games. That's all what you need to know what the product you bought... as me before.

This place "for enthusiasts" who never say surely how to solve the problem. I tried to contact with AMD by special form but I saw crushed page when I submit my letter.

Thanks AMD for "perfect" products, for "perfect" drivers which we must ALWAYS wait for 6 month or more to have a system/gaming stability. But who cares... nobody read it besides of "enthusiasts"...

[f-ben]

@AMD someone?

[f-ben]

So I did additional tests yesterday:

- Rainbow Six Siege: Perfectly fine
- DayZ: Slight stutter in fullscreen and windowed mode
- event[0]: Perfectly fine
- For Honor: Perfectly fine
- Kingdom Come Deliverance: Strong stutter in fullscreen and windowed mode
- MGS Phantom Pain: Strong stutter in fullscreen but perfectly fine in windowed mode
- Sherlock Holmes Devils Daughter: Perfectly fine in fullscreen

I tested a lot more games but those are the ones that caught my eye. A lot of people say they have problems with unreal engine games. event[0] and Sherlock Holmes both use the unreal engine and ran perfect for me. I don´t know which engine ubisoft uses but those games ran very well. MGS running perfectly fine in windowed mode but not in fullscreen shows me that in general my card is OK and not broken. I fell that this can be broken down to bad drivers, which of course is not news but shows the effect the bad drivers can have.

So what does this mean for me: I can´t return the card because I baught it a while back. The fact that the card has been on the market for almost half a year now makes this behaviour unacceptable for the consumer. Sure, there are people out there who don´t have issues but also there are people who simply don´t notice slight stutters because they are not that sensitive and of course there are people who do not complain or ask for solutions. Since I´ve never had those problems with nvidia cards I´ll wait for the next series to be released and then switch back to "team green". I really wanted to give AMD a chance but sadly that´s what it is.

[sammyf1984]

I'm kind of pissed about my experience right now.  I actually returned a 2070 super because I wanted an all AMD setup only to be completely taken back by this problem. 
Everything was flawless with the Nvidia card(s) (I went from a 970 gtx, to a 1080 ti, to a 2070 super with literally 0 issues).  After seeing the 2070 super and the RX 5700 xt Sapphire perform roughly the same on benchmarks, i made the switch. 
Games will freeze on my screen for a good 3-4 seconds at random.  
After research and seeing that this problem goes back since July and AMD has done NOTHING about it, I'm inclined to say I'll never pick up another AMD card again.  I don't care what they promise at what price point in the future.  If they can't provide a card with solid drivers, then their cards are worthless in my opinion. 

[f-ben · Accepted solution]

I think I solved my problem. Seems that the stutter was caused because I combined and AMD card with a 75hz display. It´s a shame that AMD has so bad drivers really. The GPU´s are great and way better than nvidia´s price/performance ratio but heck, what does a GPU help me if it doesn´t work like it should. Yes team green is more expensive but in the future I simply will see it as "nvidia has to pay their developers to build good drivers so that´s where my money goes too" and will be happy to pay the premium for working software (which actually isn´t really a premium but a necessary part)

A workaround is to create a new custom resolution in Wattman (or custom resolution utility) using only 72hz.

[prodoctor1987]

Hope the hz setting solved it for you. I run a 144Hz monitor and have same issue with downclocking much to far and with no limit.

It's a well know driver or maybe vendor issue,... Report it to AMD / GPU vendor and your reseller. 

The more information they have and complaints the more likely it is that it's get's solved faster.

Not much people can do about it if your not a driver maker (or however it's called).

[sammyf1984]

I can add a little to the refresh rate "solution" if you want to call it that
-I set any of my games to a static refresh rate that matches my monitor
-I disabled any settings in the Radeon software from "override application settings" or "enhance" to "use application settings" (i figured the less conflict there is between game/driver/hardware, the better)
-I disabled Freesync because it seemed to make it significantly worse (for me) 

-The card is running all standard power curves except the fan, I keep the fans running at 50% up til 60c then ramps up to 100% (I know this doesn't make a difference but I'm not ok with a 0 rpm fan speed)
-disabled shader caching 

This certainly didn't eliminate the problem but it's less frequent.  It doesn't make me any happier with the product.

Whatever Nvidia does to have good working drivers and have patches released so quickly to fix known issues, it works.  AMD needs to adopt that methodology.  

[prodoctor1987]

AMD needs to adopt that methodology.  

KEY WORDS MAN

Hope the brains there figure that out  

[sammyf1984]

After reading a ton of what people have been observing during the stutter, I decided to test something out that seems to be successful. 
I'm not calling this a "fix" but a bandaid.  I attached a link to my google drive.  It's a graphics and wattman xml profile for those of you that want to give it a shot.  I'll list the settings and details on some of them as to why i chose them.  I've only tested this in Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019) so I don't know how it'll fair in other first person shooters or any other game for that matter.  I'll also list cons of the settings.  I can't say this will work for everyone, but it works for me and works on Call of Duty.  If any one tests it and can think of better ways to adjust it, by all means i'm all ears.  Feedback is most welcome.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lM653WFEKgkx2Gt9IiTI0jvHi3wwSS2Y 

In Global graphics:

Anti-Aliasing - Use Application settings 
Anti-Aliasing Method - Multisampling
Morphological Filtering - On
Antisotropic Filtering Mode - Use application settings
Texture Filtering - High
Surface Format Optimization - On
Wait for Vertical Sync - always off
OpenGL triple buff - off 
Shader Cache - AMD optimized 
Tessellation mode - AMD optimized
Frame Rate Target Control - 155 FPS 

Anything i set to "Use application settings" i basically want the least amount of conflict between driver/gpu/application as possible so i left it default.  
The Frame rate target - my monitor is 144hz but in CoD I noticed I can sometimes see 160-165 frames.  Setting it that high, i still noticed some stutter.  For my monitor (2560x1080) 155 or less seemed to be the sweet spot but I didn't want to produce additional input lag by capping it any less than 155.

In wattman:
Frequency/Voltage
Minimum Frequency is set to 1140 (I tested between 1000 and 1250) 
Maximum Frequency is set to 2010
Minimum Voltage is set to 948mV
Median Voltage is set to 1045mV

Maximum voltage is set to 1194mV

The reason I boosted the minimum frequency and voltage is because I read that others observed the stutter was happening whenever the card decided to clock itself down to something absurd like 3mhz during 3d rendering.  I figured the best way to mitigate that would be to stop it from going any lower by setting the lowest frequency at something more manageable while gaming.  The way it worked out in my head was "if the card won't drop it's clock speed down to those speeds, then the frames won't drop, and the stutter won't happen".  It seems to be working.  Of everything I changed, I believe this is what actually did it.  I didn't do a fresh install of my o/s or anything like that.  I did read others saying wiping their machines out entirely fixed it and it's very possible that even DDU is not cleaning out some driver remnants from previous graphics cards so we have driver conflicts with these cards.  However, there are conflicting posts saying wiping the o/s does nothing.  So it could be a roll of the dice on that "fix" 

Fan Curve
There is no curve - When i'm gaming i set the fans to run at max 100% of the time
AVG GPU temps are 60-65c
AVG Junction temps 85-96c (this is what i don't like.  I think that peak is way too high and i'm sure it's because of the above settings with the frequency/voltage)  
Power Limit - 0 (default) 
Memory - slight OC at 890mhz

I'm on the latest adrenaline version
PC specs:
Sapphire RX 5700 XT Nitro + 
Ryzen 2700x OC to 4.3 @1.4v on water
ASUS ROG Crosshair Hero VII 
32GB of Trident 2166 mem OC to 3200mhz
Win 10 1903

Whenever I finish gaming, I go back into the Radeon Settings and just reset the wattman profile so it goes back to normal.

[f-ben]

Really appreciate your help and the fact that you took time to answer

I hope this helps someone - sadly it didnt help in my case. I also tried the soft powerplay tables to raise the "minimal clock" amount but sadly it didn´t make any difference for me at all. One thing I too noticed, like you said, is huge stutter as soon as the framerate falls slightly below the refresh rate of the monitor. For example if I play RDR2 with 74hz/74fps everything is perfectly fine but as soon as the fps drop to 70 the game immediately feels choppy and it´s just not smooth anymore. Thats nothing I have ever experienced with ANY card I owned before. The sad thing is that even I have this powerful GPU I have to set my graphicssettings that low to never fall unter 74 fps at any time in the game - even with freesync enabled. This of course is a huge pain and simply bottlenecks the whole system because I have to keep my graphicssettings real low compared to what the card actually could do.

[sammyf1984]

Sorry it wasn't any help for you.  I did manage to fix the temperature issue though for those that give it a shot
I reduced the voltage (this was kind of a "duhh" moment for me....voltage = heat)  Link to new profile settings below

new settings are:
Minimum Voltage - 995mV
Median Voltage - 1044mV
Peak Voltage - 1090mV

New temperature averages are
GPU - 58-60c
Junction - 68-74c  

Still no stutter in CoD 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZLxEVCjHaCFd1tQKALXkCymSaHhafOey  

f-ben Do you use VSR (Virtual super resolution) and GPU scaling?  I keep those off and I have for every card i've owned for the simple fact that forcing the card to render resolutions that aren't native to the monitor although may produce a nice picture, can have adverse affects.  

Although I'm spending time coming up with bandaids for this, I already pulled the trigger on switching back to Nvidia.  I'm still well within the return policy.  They have a decent black friday sale on the EVGA 2070 super Xc hybrid.  I really wanted the AMD card to be good but to go through all this trouble for a premium card is not worth it to me.  All AMD has done so far is put in their latest Adrenaline update "known issues" and listed 1080p gaming stutter as a problem.  My problems with that note are:
A) From what I've read, the issue extends into 1440p.
B) this has been a known issue since July '19 and there's no fix in sight. 

C) Couple this with the dumb issue I'm having with the Sapphire RGB where the colors randomly flash to red or yellow when they're not supposed to and this turns me into an unhappy consumer.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y9392DT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The card in the link is $569 after a $20 dollar rebate whereas my card was $494 after taxes.  So to pay  around $100 more for a working card is worth it to me. 

[moorh3ad]

I've just registered for an account to share my experience to hopefully help the next poor fool who buys an rx 5700 xt. 

I was receiving stuttering but only when trying to play in 4k, or 2k resolutions. I probably had them at 1080p too but they were so small they were unnoticeable.

I have two displays, one at 1080p 144hz and the other at 4k 60hz.

The stuttering goes away completely when I have both monitors connected, 144hz via display port and 60hz via HDMI. Unfortunately with two displays connected the memory clock sticks at 1800 even when just sitting idle on desktop with unnecessary background processes closed. Created a custom fan curve to keep it cool, but thankfully I can actually play games without wanting to throw my pc out of the window. 

I stumbled upon this by complete chance, I'd spent 4 days previously trawling every forum, doing fresh Windows installs and even resorted to praying at one point. I hope this helps someone else and saves them some stress.

System specs :

Gigabyte Aorus X470 ultra gaming rev 1.0 - F50 bios

Ryzen 3900x - stock clocks, stock cooler.

Gigabyte Aorus 3200 DDR4 16GB

Rx 5700 xt Sapphire - Primary bios

500GB Samsung m.2 

2TB barracuda HDD

Kolinik 600w PSU

Edit: Also have the very latest optional adrenaline drivers installed. 

[robcard]

Hey guys,

i have an 32 monitior freesync and play at 144hz. I got a lot of microstuttering, but i seems i fixed them. 

I JUST CHANGED FROM DISPLAYPORT TO HDMI. 

i dont even believe, but it worked. 

[killnarf]

I think i might have a similar problem.

GPU: rx 5700 non XT

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600

Monitor: AOC Q3279VWFD8 (75Hz)

When i run stress test in Kombustor i get perfect framerates without stutter for Vulkan tests. But when I try an OpenGL test i get a constant frame dip each couple seconds or so. Very constant. Don't understand what is causing it though...

[Carl1337]

any fixes yet?

[de3zy5000]

After years of YouTube and support sites I tried swapping 2 of the 4 ram sticks from my PC to my son's and taking his. My issue was that I have 2 sticks of cl 15 paired with 2 sticks of cl 16. Now that I'm running 2 kits of cl 16 my issues have disappeared. Make sure if you have 4 slots filled that they all have the same case latency.