Hello everyone,
I recently upgraded from an RTX 2080 Ti to an ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi OC, which arrived yesterday. I uninstalled the NVIDIA drivers, installed the new GPU, and set up the AMD drivers. However, I’ve been experiencing frequent microstutters in every game I’ve tested. Sometimes, it feels as if the game freezes momentarily (for a quarter of a second), while other times it’s a smoother, but still noticeable, stutter, especially in competitive games.
It doesn’t appear to be a performance issue since all games run above 160 FPS, and when the stutters occur, there’s no significant FPS drop beyond the usual 1–3 FPS variation.
Games tested:
- PUBG
- Division 2
- Rainbow Six Siege
- Hunt Showdown 1896
Steps I've taken:
- Uninstalled drivers with DDU (Clean and Restart option) and reinstalled AMD drivers.
- Updated the BIOS.
- Monitored temperatures.
- Reinstalled drivers again using DDU.
- Tried with Smart Access Memory (SAM) both enabled and disabled.
- Tested both Fullscreen and Windowed Borderless modes.
- Switched between DirectX 11 and 12.
- Turned off all AMD-specific optimizations in the AMD Control Panel, including the AMD overlay.
- Reset the shader cache.
- Updated chipset drivers (made stutters worse in Borderless mode; reverted to Fullscreen with slightly less frequent stutters).
- Installed AMD Pro drivers (noted that stutters feel like slow frame rendering rather than freezing with these drivers).
- Tested with both uncapped and limited FPS.
- Used MSI Afterburner to disable ULPS and monitor frametimes, noticing that stutters align with spikes in frametime, though they are slightly less severe.
I’m confident that background applications aren’t causing the issue, as my RTX 2080 Ti handled the same setup along with an additional monitor, which is now unplugged. The GPU has not throttled, with peak temperatures at 82°C (hot spot), 74°C (memory), and 57°C (global). I adjusted the fan curve to further lower temperatures, and I’m using a PCIe Gen4 riser cable. GPU-Z confirms it’s consistently transferring data at 16x 4.0.
Given the situation, I’m trying to decide if there’s anything else I can do to fix this issue. I like the card and appreciate its performance. Also, the 4070 Ti in my country is overpriced, matching the cost of the 7900 XTX, and the 4080 is about $200 more. If I can’t resolve the stuttering, I may need to consider a refund and invest in a 4080 instead.
System specs:
- MSI X570S Carbon EK X
- Ryzen 7 5800X3D
- ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi OC
- Trident Z 32GB DDR4
- Corsair RM1000X 80 Plus Gold
- 2x M.2 SSDs (OS and games)
- 3x HDDs (storage)
- Windows 10
