Help with lag spikes in games

I recently upgraded my pc and since doing so I've had nothing but issues, Here's the specs,

GTX asus rog strix 1060 6gb
intel core i5 10600 - Coolermaster AIO dual fan cooker
Asus rog strix b460-g motherboard
RM 650 PSU
2TB HDD - storage
1TB m.2 SSD - games
500gb NVMe m.2 - windows
32gb DDR4 2666 Ram
Running a 1080p 75Hz monitor


Now both m.2 drives have a heatsink on them and this problem wasn't here a week or so ago, programs installed since then are armour crate, ez update for the asus software warframe, outriders and that's it from memory

The problem is that the PC when running games will have massive lag spikes randomly, we are talking drops from 75fps down to 10Fps for no apparent reason. Games I've experience it in are, ARK, Destiny 2 and outriders, I've not tried any other games but I'm currently downloading nvidia tech demos to see if it happens in them.

I also installed a program called Latencymod to see if that kicked anything up and it did, its error is related to bugger underruns which I'm unsure if that could affect my games and of course wondering how this can happen, I'm sure my pc isn't considered low end and should be nice to game on 1080p

hopfully one of you technically minded chaps has an idea of what could be causing it!

P.S when i upgraded i did not reinstall windows, thought i would mention this but again the issue wasn't there to start with.

Have you tried uninstalling the asus software

Also try running Borderless or Windowed mode and see if problem is still there. You can also run Task Manager and see if you're running into a bottleneck, while playing, if you run windowed...
And disable GeForce Experience overlay (or any other if you have them). I'm going to assume you have the latest graphics drivers.

ive not yet tried uninstalling the asus software, so will run through that, i actually don't have the most up to date driver so will download that now and try that first, then uninstall the asus software and see what happens, my games already run in borderless window mode :D i don't use the GeForce experience overlay.

I've kept GeForce Experience only to see when a new driver is released. When I see a ! on the icon in taskbar, I know there's an updated driver available. Saves me checking manually. Plus the FPS counter is handy.

Will give it a shot and see what happens! cheers.

I think I would do a fresh Windows install assuming you have an old SSD to do it on. It is a bit like playing guess who, choose the option which gives the biggest effect at the start. If it is fine on the new install then you can have more trust in your hardware.

Software wise I think if it were me and I wanted to know what the cause was I would create a back up image and then just start uninstalling stuff until it went away. Then reimage and see if the suspect is the one.

Right so ive done some digging! There is a few things i have noticed after pulling my rig apart and benching it,

The GPUs fans as far as im aware start and stop together but ive noticed that 1 fan might randomly stop and start again, this happens to all 3.

Inside my device manager under the GPU there is this line under the events,

Device PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1C03&SUBSYS_85AC1043&REV_A1\4&842db2a&0&0008 requires further installation.

I did install new drivers.

I have also noticed under my device manager under "other devices" There is 4 lines as follows,

PCI Data Acquisition and Signal Processing Controller
PCI Data Acquisition and Signal Processing Controller
PCI Memory Controller
SM Bus Controller

Bit of a random one and just searching for drivers gives no results.

Hopefully you guys can figure this one out :mrgreen:

My main concern is my GPU possibly giving up the ghost as now is NOT the time for it to die on me XD

You did install the motherboard drivers?

As they all look like motherboard drivers that need to be installed

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/m..._20210126R.zip

If that doesn't work for you then try this :

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/...-software.html

For software issues, fresh windows install and minimally adding things back in is probably the way to go.

For hardware, I'd probably run some kind of sensor logging, GPU-Z or hwinfo for eg., and see what correlates with your lag spikes - if GPU load suddenly shoots to 1 then it's GPU/graphics driver related, if GPU load drops during the lag spikes then it's upstream of the GPU or a problem getting data to the GPU.

Small update, would seem that drivers were missing from Asus website so I've resolved that issue!

Next is the GPU, so here is a quick low down of what i have tried so far,

Reinstalled the drivers - no change
Made sure all motherboard drivers are installed - no change
I've ran cpu-z and hwmonitor something that seems to spike is the GPU when the lag happens, I'm using a FPS counter now and you can see the FPS just drop down to 20 odd randomly.
Watching it in Task manager i see the usage drop and shoot back up to 100%

Something else I've noticed when booting the pc now (not something i do its usually always on) is the artifacts, i will get random bars of artifacts roughly in the middle/top section of my monitor after the initial boot from cold.

So i will power the system up, ASUS logo shows for a few seconds, screen goes black and the bars appear for a split second, if you blink you would miss it, then the window loading logo appears (in my case ASUS logo but all the same either way)

Not sure if this is my system trying to tell me something or if this is normal behaviour?

Not really sure what else to try, reinstalling windows is a last resort but if i have to i do have a spare m.2 drive i could try it on i guess.

Have you tried using an older NVIDIA GPU driver version like 456.71 or a previous driver that worked well before the lag spike?