Video lag, audio issues on a PC I built

theridon · 27 Feb 2018

pc parts:System Builder - Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core, GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB GAMING, Zondda-B ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker

Hi.

For 6 months now I have my pc which is about a year old driving me mad. A few problems, not sure if they are related:

1. Sometimes the computer microfreezes, accompanied by a buzzing sound. This is replicable 95% ofthe time by loading a new netflix or amazon prime video (but nottwitch or youtube), as the video loads. (Videos included)
-NOTE: This issue does not occur insafe mode. I tried disabling different startup items to noavail.

Recorded internal audio with OBS:Lag test internal speakers - YouTube

Recorded with phone:lag test external - YouTube

2. Lagging and frame skipping in onlinevideos, on any online video platform (twitch netflix youtube etc.) Iget micro frame freezes and lag, sometimes videos will play at like20 fps for 1 or 2 seconds at intervals (not buffering/loadingrelated, my internet is pretty stellar).

3. I get audio static/crackling veryrandomly, seemingly mostly from online videos. This happens both fromaudio speakers plugged in the rear and earphones plugged in front.

Not sure you can tell from the videos,but as I load a new spongebob episode from amazon prime, the audiocuts out for a sec. It ALSO creates a buzzing sound, which theinternal audio didn't record for some reason, but it's the exact typeof sound like form this: PC buzzing/ Lag while playing Audio/video - YouTube

I have tried: Reinstalling audio drivernumerous times, from motherboard manufacturers website, from Realtek, different version, etc. Tried different GPU drivers. None helped.

I replaced my GPU too, I alsoreinstalled windows.

I'm getting to the point where I think I'm gonna RMA my motherboard soon. I wanted to ask youguys since you are a smart knowledgable group, if there are any other tests or anything to try before trying to replace my motherboard.

Thanks!

dalchina · 27 Feb 2018

This issue does not occur insafe mode.

- indicates a driver issue.

You might want to try using older drivers, not newer. As to which in particular might prove harder to determine. It sounds like you've tried GPU drivers.

I recall a thread somewhat similar- buzzing, short freezes, something like that- some months ago. I have no reference to it but worth searching the forum for e.g. buzzing.
buzz video freeze
gives quite a few results.

Meanwhile try Resplendence's LatencyMon (free) which will quickly confirm a potential problem. Identifying the problem is harder.
My collection of examples from a while back is attached.

Plankton · 27 Feb 2018

My concern with the build and setup of hardware:
CPU - with the cpu, it has a built in GPU the Intel HD 530....you need to disable that in the BIOS.
GPU - You need to make sure that the PCIe port is set to enbabled in the BIOS so that the mobo recognizes the GPU.
RAM - Have you set up your RAM to use the XMP profile or manually adjust RAM to use the 2400mhz speed. If not your RAM will default to 1333mhz.

Making sure all these are setup correctly should elevate your lag issue.

dalchina · 27 Feb 2018

Umm... alleviate?

theridon · 03 Mar 2018

dalchina said:

- indicates a driver issue.

You might want to try using older drivers, not newer. As to which in particular might prove harder to determine. It sounds like you've tried GPU drivers.

I recall a thread somewhat similar- buzzing, short freezes, something like that- some months ago. I have no reference to it but worth searching the forum for e.g. buzzing.
buzz video freeze
gives quite a few results.

Meanwhile try Resplendence's LatencyMon (free) which will quickly confirm a potential problem. Identifying the problem is harder.
My collection of examples from a while back is attached.

I ran latencymon, it seems to have found a problem?

It says
Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. At least one detected problem appears to be network related. In case you are using a WLAN adapter, try disabling it to get better results. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates. LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 0:03:05 (h:mm:ss) on all processors.

(This forum really needs spoiler tags)

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Lots of other text from latencymon Stats, I can post it if needed. It seems dxgkernl.sys and ndis.sys are giving problems

Highest ISR routine execution time (µs): 223.396714 Driver with highest ISR routine execution time: dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation

Highest reported total ISR routine time (%): 0.235274 Driver with highest ISR total time: dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation

Do you think it is a latency problem? I tested latencymon on my laptop and got similar results but I have none of these problems on my laptop.

Plankton said:

My concern with the build and setup of hardware:
CPU - with the cpu, it has a built in GPU the Intel HD 530....you need to disable that in the BIOS.
GPU - You need to make sure that the PCIe port is set to enbabled in the BIOS so that the mobo recognizes the GPU.
RAM - Have you set up your RAM to use the XMP profile or manually adjust RAM to use the 2400mhz speed. If not your RAM will default to 1333mhz.

Making sure all these are setup correctly should elevate your lag issue.

How can I check what my RAM is set to? I have no idea how that works sorry.

dalchina · 04 Mar 2018

Hi, To decide what to do with the LatencyMon report you basically have these ways forward.
1. See the Help link from the program: here it is for you.
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon_using
2. Have a look at the other tabs in the program for clues
3. Read through the examples I cited above for ideas
4. Feel free to search the forum for other threads on stuttering, but there have been very few since those that I'm aware of, probably none very significant.
5. A starting point is to try to identify a particular driver - disable anything you don't need (e.g. drivers in Device Manager), prioritising ones reported by Latency Mon and by a process of elimination, reach a point where your symptoms disappear. Hopefully that's one driver. Then attempt to resolve the issue- different driver version perhaps. You may need to use an older driver, then hide updates to that driver to stop Windows replacing it.

Here's mine for comparison:

Video lag, audio issues on a PC I built-1.jpg

To post a screenshot please use the icon above your post to the left of the Video icon

theridon · 05 Mar 2018

OK I'll look into that. This being said I ran latencymon a lot longer today, and I got normal results like you. Even though dxgkernel and ndis.sys are still at the top, my results were much more normal and similar to yours. "Your system appears to be suitable for handling real-time audio and other tasks without dropouts. "

BTW is there any program that would be able to detect the freezes that happen when I load the amazon prime vid? It seems it doesn't generate anything in event viewer.

dalchina · 05 Mar 2018

Freezes don't generate logs, unfortunately. Only failures of various kinds that result in a report.

Freezes could be driver related, software bugs, hardware, incompatibility... sorry, I'm no expert on that. You could try researching threads on freezing here to see if there are any useful ideas. Bear in mind many use PCs with Win 10 that are not formally specified to do so. Add to that the variety of software...

You can log all activities with Sysinternals ProcMon, but making sense of that is a different matter entirely.

theridon · 09 Mar 2018

An update after consulting with some others:

1. The one problem, the freezing caused by loading a new amazon prime/netflix video only occurs with nvidia drivers installed. But I tried all different drivers with DDU and still got the problem, so it might be something else.

So someone brought up that the motherboard I use uses 2133MHz, the ram I have right now is at 2400. Could this be the problem?
I have speccy and hwinfo64 logs if it is of help.

CountMike · 10 Mar 2018

Too small difference in RAM speed to affect things like latency. If you access BIOS you could turn XMP profile on. Also use CPU-Z CPU-Z | Softwares | CPUID to determine memory abilities and what it's running as now. SPD and Memory tabs respectively.