G751 Severe Frame Stuttering Intermittently on Some Games

[BaiHu]

Update 01-07
At first glance, it looks like this may be either an nVidia driver issue or related to a glitch in some ASUS-installed software. At least one other non-nVidia user from another forum attributed this to the ASUS GameFirst suite, which I have uninstalled. Further, nVidia forums show many complains of potentially similar issues with recent driver versions.

I have rolled back my driver and uninstalled the GameFirst suite. I am still experiencing the below-linked stuttering issue with a particular benchmark test - BurnInTest 8.0 - but am continuing to try to replicate the issue in other games. I will keep this post updated.
-End Update-

This is a resurrection of my old thread...it seems unfortunately that I'm not the only user experiencing this issue....

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Mass-Effect-3/FPS-stutter-on-new-gaming-laptop/td-p/4090585/highlight/false (Edit: Updated to correct URL)
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/802548/geforce-mobile-gpus/gtx-970m-mass-effect-3-issues/
https://mega.co.nz/#!jMY2BQ5a!p2BLN3k-aDAuKOtXnkUqJaJkUs6GraX3oiCmcz5xKKY - ShadowPlay video of the issue. (Edit: Added URL of ShadowPlay video taken from my system when experiencing the issue in a benchmark tool.)

Looks like other G751 users of varying model tiers are seeing periodic frame drops in some games at intermittent periods. The video posted on the nVidia forum shows this issue pretty clearly.

I've monitored my GPU and CPU temps and well as my overall system health, upgraded my BIOS(v205)and video drivers(v347.09) per ASUS support recommendation, and even performed a complete factory restore. None of these steps have resolved the issue. I am currently in a back-and-forth with ASUS Support to try and track this issue down. I am hesitant to RMA the laptop as the issue is intermittent and may not be discovered during the RMA testing process. Further, I bought this laptop before Thanksgiving as a gift for the family and am unable to return it to the retailer.


Outside of this intermittent graphics issue, the laptop performs amazingly and has generally outstanding build quality. That being said, I am at a loss with how to proceed with this issue that other owners of the ROG series seem to be experiencing.

Is anyone else in the same boat as me?

[fabrimacator21]

Well, I have noticed a pretty noticeable pause when playing x plane 10.... I'm going from running at a steady 80 fps to a hardcore stutter. The fps counter is so fast that I can't really tell what it dropped to. Its only for a second and usually by the time I look at the fps counter, its back up to 80 fps. Hmscott told me it may be a hard drive/loading issue but after running queitHD to keep the hardrive from shutting off it still seems to be an issue. Its definetly got plenty of Vram left and GPU utilization has never gone over 80% so no issues there. Hmscott also advised me to try turning off the hyperthreading cores and check to see how taxed the only active core is but I haven't had the time yet.

People on the x plane forum have faster processors, ssd's, and big dog gpu's report the same issue with that game though so I am at a loss.

[BaiHu]

For my system, I'm running off of the SSD so its certainly not a spin-down situation for the drive spindles. GPU-Z and CPU-Z report appropriate temperatures, voltages, and utilization numbers based on the tasks at hand. Maybe two-thirds of the time my system plays games *wonderfully*, showing the same temperatures and utilization metrics as when I'm experiencing the error.

Other users in other forums have suggested perhaps ASUS software as the root-cause. I've attempted uninstalling ASUS software to determine if the issue re-occurs. Based on Windows' ResMon utilization metrics, GPU-Z, CPU-Z, HWiNFO, and other such system diagnostic tools it does not seem like this is a readily-detectable hardware issue. Perhaps there is a problem with the bus between storage and graphics chipset? Or perhaps there is ASUS-specific software interfering with the nVidia driver?

I am at a loss for how to consistently reproduce this issue or for how to troubleshoot or resolve this problem.

[sk3tch]

From your NVIDIA forum thread above - you see it in Furmark...any other benchmark or "free" test programs that we can run to see if we are affected? I have a G751JY-DH71 and I have not experienced it. I have only had it since last week - and I play mostly Battlefield 4 and PlanetSide 2...

[hmscott]

Guys, if you are getting pauses in games and you ruled out everything else, there is likely only one source for the problem, the Nvidia driver. I heard some people early on with 347.09 complaining of performance glitches, so that might be it. I would drop down to the previous WHQL and test again - you may loose top end performance but if it is stable performance it may be more usable.

I haven't used the Asus Gaming Center or ROG Game First III, so I can't comment on what it does/doesn't do to affect performance - but just like the Geforce Experience it lets you make performance tuning settings, and updating the utility can change/reset settings - so always double check after an update and reapply / set your performance tunings.

Same goes for Custom=> Clean installs of Nvidia drivers, your 3D performance settings get reset to default - and they default to power saving modes:

Check to make sure your 3D global settings are being used:



Check to make sure your 3D Global performance settings are set:



And, make sure any game/app specific settings are set:



If you are still getting glitches, it might be game specific and need a specific tuning fix for that game. A number of new games have come out with performance issues that are bad even on high end desktop systems, it might take a few months of patching to solve them.

Whenever you find a good tuning fix, please post a top level Thread with a good Title and plenty of good searchable tags so we can find them 🙂

[BaiHu]

hmscott wrote:
Guys, if you are getting pauses in games and you ruled out everything else, there is likely only one source for the problem, the Nvidia driver. I heard some people early on with 347.09 complaining of performance glitches, so that might be it.

I will gladly give this a try. I'll report back after I perform a clean driver uninstall and revert to the system to a previous driver version.

Regarding your recommended performance settings, these have no effect on the very serious stuttering shown in-game. This is not a side-effect of low-framerates but is instead a fundamental issue with the 3D rendering pipeline itself - whether it be hardware or driver-related.

hmscott wrote:
A number of new games have come out with performance issues that are bad even on high end desktop systems, it might take a few months of patching to solve them.

While this is of course true, these issues transcend game title, developer, and age. Further, there are reports of this issue from other G751 owners on other forums as well as potentially one more report in this thread. While I am absolutely thrilled with this system in every way, I would definitely like to bring attention to this issue until it is resolved. Whether its a driver issue or hardware issue, when one spends $3000 on a laptop, one expects this sort of thing to most certainly not occur with such severity.

[hmscott]

BaiHu wrote:
I will gladly give this a try. I'll report back after I perform a clean driver uninstall and revert to the system to a previous driver version.

Regarding your recommended performance settings, these have no effect on the very serious stuttering shown in-game. This is not a side-effect of low-framerates but is instead a fundamental issue with the 3D rendering pipeline itself - whether it be hardware or driver-related.

While this is of course true, these issues transcend game title, developer, and age. Further, there are reports of this issue from other G751 owners on other forums as well as potentially one more report in this thread. While I am absolutely thrilled with this system in every way, I would definitely like to bring attention to this issue until it is resolved. Whether its a driver issue or hardware issue, when one spends $3000 on a laptop, one expects this sort of thing to most certainly not occur with such severity.

BaiHu, if you google the problem, leaving out the G751 token, and still see lots of similar reports on other systems, then it isn't specific to the G751, it is endemic across the problem - driver, game, settings, etc.

You can't spend your way out of these kind of problems with complex hardware / software, these problems will always be with us. You can reduce the % of problems becoming knowledgeable and skilled at debugging, and researching solutions, but even so it is a task you can't avoid with more cash.

Patience and understanding are the only currencies of exchange.

There have been lots of videos posted of solid gameplay in many games for G751's already, and more every day. I am sure there is a good reason for the problem, you can find it and resolve it.

Go back to a solid known good state and upgrade again from there to isolate the problem.

You may have to wait for driver improvements from Nvidia.

Look to the Official Nvidia Driver Release / Feedback threads for info on how the new driver is performing before installing it, if you don't like dealing with driver problems.

[Northforge]

hmscott wrote:
Guys, if you are getting pauses in games and you ruled out everything else, there is likely only one source for the problem, the Nvidia driver. I heard some people early on with 347.09 complaining of performance glitches, so that might be it. I would drop down to the previous WHQL and test again - you may loose top end performance but if it is stable performance it may be more usable.

I haven't used the Asus Gaming Center or ROG Game First III, so I can't comment on what it does/doesn't do to affect performance - but just like the Geforce Experience it lets you make performance tuning settings, and updating the utility can change/reset settings - so always double check after an update and reapply / set your performance tunings.

Same goes for Custom=> Clean installs of Nvidia drivers, your 3D performance settings get reset to default - and they default to power saving modes:

Check to make sure your 3D global settings are being used:



Check to make sure your 3D Global performance settings are set:



And, make sure any game/app specific settings are set:



If you are still getting glitches, it might be game specific and need a specific tuning fix for that game. A number of new games have come out with performance issues that are bad even on high end desktop systems, it might take a few months of patching to solve them.

Whenever you find a good tuning fix, please post a top level Thread with a good Title and plenty of good searchable tags so we can find them 🙂

Power management mode I can understand keeping power management on high performance. Multi-display on single display is debateable if you have a heavy multi-display set up. Texture filtering on default SHOULD NOT have any problems with games that ran flawlessly on my G74SX-DH72 560M on same settings. Overclocking as well. I haven't overclocked mine, and it should not be necessary to achieve stability with unmodded Skyrim.

[BaiHu]

I just managed to reproduce the issue in BurnInTest 8.0 Pro's 3D test. I am currently using a Trial version. The trial gives a 30-day window to test.

https://mega.co.nz/#!jMY2BQ5a!p2BLN3k-aDAuKOtXnkUqJaJkUs6GraX3oiCmcz5xKKY - ShadowPlay videoof the issue.
https://mega.co.nz/#!qMYDCLCJ!U5bPlMxqSx2JfoP3KFXdzIbUGUU9NbkxkSpq665DYZU - Weird graphical corruption just after taking the ShadowPlay

I am currently using the DIsplayPort out to an ASUS 144hz monitor. I have, however, seen the same stuttering on the laptop itself with no second display hooked up as well as when using HDMI out. This was taken following the uninstall of the ASUS software suggested from other forums' posts. I will continue to try to replicate the issue with other free and non-free benchmarks to provide further ShadowPlay videos of the problem.

[hmscott]

BaiHu wrote:
I just managed to reproduce the issue in BurnInTest 8.0 Pro's 3D test. I am currently using a Trial version. The trial gives a 30-day window to test.

https://mega.co.nz/#!jMY2BQ5a!p2BLN3k-aDAuKOtXnkUqJaJkUs6GraX3oiCmcz5xKKY - ShadowPlay video of the issue.
https://mega.co.nz/#!qMYDCLCJ!U5bPlMxqSx2JfoP3KFXdzIbUGUU9NbkxkSpq665DYZU - Weird graphical corruption just after taking the ShadowPlay

I am currently using the DIsplayPort out to an ASUS 144hz monitor. I have, however, seen the same stuttering on the laptop itself with no second display hooked up as well as when using HDMI out. This was taken following the uninstall of the ASUS software suggested from other forums' posts. I will continue to try to replicate the issue with other free and non-free benchmarks to provide further ShadowPlay videos of the problem.

BaiHu, it would be helpful if you reported this to Nvidia, at least post about it as a reproducible example of the stuttering problem in the driver Feedback forum:

Official NVIDIA 347.09 Beta Driver Feedback Thread
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/796460/official-nvidia-347-09-beta-driver-feedback-thread/

If you don't see that problem in previous drivers, that would be good to mention as well.