Lag/Stuttering on old PC

[jeff123]

I have an 8 year old PC and a 9 year old son that wants to play Fortnite. My specs are i5-3570k (no longer OC'd), 16GB DDR3, 1070ti.

I've played Fortnite on this PC in the past without issue. Since then I've upgraded from Win7 to Win10.

The problem I'm having is that Fortnite is stuttering and lagging on all settings. It doesn't matter if it's on low or epic, it will still stutter about every 2-3 minutes, sometimes freezing for up to 10 seconds.

I've updated the GPU drivers. I've changed the maximum pre-rendered frames to 1. Confirmed vsync is off in game and forced on via NVidia Inspector.

Is this PC just too old/slow to run even Fortnite?

 

[jeff123]

FWIW, the CPU utilization never goes above 60%, the RAM never goes above 45%, the GPU usage never above 60%. It doesn't seem like it's maxing anything out but it still won't run smoothly.

 

[Oussebon]

It's not too old or slow, it should be able to run the game.

Have you also monitored HDD usage? Is the game and is Windows installed on an SSD or an HDD? If something makes heavy use of the HDD (or even SSD) while you're running a game off it, you'll feel that stutter.

If you did an in-place upgrade of Windows, the first thing I'd suggest is a clean reinstallation of Windows. Where you:

Make an installation media here (assuming Windows 10)
Download Windows 10
Boot from the USB. During the installation process, choose a custom install, and delete all partitions on your OS drive so that all that is left is "unallocated space". The install the OS onto that empty drive. There's a guide here:

How to Perform a Clean Install of Windows 10

A while ago we showed you how to get a Windows 10 ISO for a clean install. Today we'll show how to clean install Windows 10 from beginning to end.

www.groovypost.com

That will of course make you lose your files and downloaded games, so you will want to back up anything you need to keep first.

 

[Inspireless Llama]

I'd suggest a reinstall of windows too since you stated it ran fine on W7 with the same specs. Is there anything you're using (or not using anymore) on W10 that you did on W7?

 

[jeff123]

It's not too old or slow, it should be able to run the game.

Have you also monitored HDD usage? Is the game and is Windows installed on an SSD or an HDD? If something makes heavy use of the HDD (or even SSD) while you're running a game off it, you'll feel that stutter.

If you did an in-place upgrade of Windows, the first thing I'd suggest is a clean reinstallation of Windows. Where you:

I did do a clean install of win10 about 2 weeks ago.

I monitored the HDD and the in game load is only around 20%.

However, I just installed MSI afterburner to check the utilization from another source. I noticed that the cpu is running really hot, like sitting at 95c and hitting 105c under load, so the issue must be that it's throttling down to not kill itself. I'm going to try a new cooler and see if that solves the problem.

Its interesting that at 1700 MHz, task manager shows it at 50% util but since it's being throttled, it's actually at 100%. Afterburner identifies it at 100% correctly.

 

[Oussebon]

That's toasty alright!

Is the CPU cooler you currently have broken? It could be that it just needs remounting and repasting.

 

[jeff123]

That's toasty alright!

Is the CPU cooler you currently have broken? It could be that it just needs remounting and repasting.

I'll try remounting before getting a new one. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Oussebon]

You may know this already - and apols if so - but when remounting a cooler you always need to clean it and the CPU and repaste too.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

@jeff123 do it. Demount the current cooler, scrap the old paste and apply new one, remount cooler. If you don't know how, there's plenty of materials online. Be sure to clean old paste really well before applying fresh one. After this, temps should be muuuuuch better!

 

[jeff123]

Just wanted to give a final update: The high temps I had mentioned were using the stock Intel cooler which was reinstalled when I went back to stock clock speeds and used the aftermarket cooler elsewhere. I reinstalled a Hyper 212 EVO and now have temps in the 30s for no load and maxing out in mid-70s during CPU stress testing.

And as I'm sure everyone wanted to know, my 9 year old can now play Fortnite without lag so he's very happy.

Thanks for your help everyone.

 

[Frindis]

Happy to hear that @jeff123 Some awesome computer savvy guys in these forums

 

[Oussebon]

It is indeed great to hear!

 

[IndecentLouie]

don't follow that Link from BoxGamer, It'll be removed by the mods at some point