Helping finding cause for short FPS drops?

[NonMagical]

TL/DR: Emulator hangs every now and then for a brief moment (usually during load screens or pre-rendered scenes), want to know if that is unavoidable, or is there something causing it to skip?

I've recently bought a new computer and loaded up some emulators / roms on it and to my sorrow PCSX2 seems to be randomly hanging for about a quarter second (or less) every now and then. It probably occurs about every 20 or so seconds and honestly wouldn't even be noticeable except the audio skips to resync back up. Other than these tiny skips the emulator runs at 60 FPS constantly. When the skips happens the emulator drops from 100% to about 85%, then back up to 100%.


Is this normal and unavoidable? It's been forever since I've run an emulator and on my last computer PCSX2 had trouble running at a decent speed, period. So I don't really know what I should be expecting.



Computer build: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=25274791 (not included is a 650 watt PS)



I've also noticed lately in GTA V, which previously I hadn't had any issues with, also has started doing skipping things. Basically when I load up single player, it hangs for about a quarter second every 3-5 seconds for about a minute and a half, after which it runs great. Although I don't know if this is related or not.



Only thing I've really changed on my computer lately that I can remember is updating video drivers to the latest version (Radeon Crimson 15.301.1201-xxxxxxx) and plugging in an HDMI cable that is often not plugged into anything on the other end unless I want to watch something on my TV. I have since tried unplugging the HDMI cord, as well as uninstalling / reinstalling video drivers (now it is Radeon Crimson 15.30.1025.1001-xxxxxxx) but it hasn't seemed to affect anything.


I've also kept an eye on various resource monitoring tools (Open Hardware Monitor, Task Manager, Resource Monitor) and nothing jumps out as taking up any resources strangely.

Any ideas? I realize it seems like a tiny issue, but god is it annoying to have regular, albeit it somewhat infrequent, audio skips and fps hanging. The audio is the worse part. Nothing brings you out of the zone more than hearing music / voices skip.

[refraction]

please don't choose to colour your text black in future, the default theme of black makes it impossible to read your text.

[NonMagical]

Weird, I didn't choose to color text black? I did copy/paste this from a thread I posted on reddit though, perhaps it made it black by default. My apologies.

[jesalvein]

I wouldn't say it's"unavoidable", or at least, not forever.
for now, it may be related to this : http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Software-...Skylake-i7

[Nobbs66]

I wouldn't say it's"unavoidable", or at least, not forever.
for now, it may be related to this : http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Software-...Skylake-i7

I don't think it's related to that. I saw the second Harry potter game hang up for a sec when I was testing it earlier today on my 4210U

[NonMagical]

Is it likely that these tiny hangs are CPU related though? It's really hard to diagnose these things. And sometimes I run around for several minutes in game (FFXII in this case) without experiencing any hiccups.

Is there a workaround for this, such as making it auto skip frames to keep up so I don't get the audio drop? Do other people experience similar things? Like I said, I have a pretty good computer with very little on it, and it is running at 100% (60 FPS) most the time. It is just these like, less than a quarter of a second hangs.

[[]HP[]Hawkeye]

You say you bought a new computer. It might just be preloaded with a bunch of useless garbage you don't need. I don't think there's anything wrong with your computer at all. You might just have to go through it very carefully and uninstall a lot of the preloaded software that you know is garbage. I'm not sure how tech savvy you are but I'd also recommend removing any registry values that maybe left behind as well. If you don't know how to do that or what they are specifically then just leave it alone. Simply uninstalling will be more than enough.

Most likely what I think is happening is things are just randomly checking for updates at different times which is why your noticing these lag spikes. It's very common with preloaded software.

If you have the know how I always recommend people build they're own PC's.

[NonMagical]

I linked my computer build, Hawkeye. I definitely built it myself (and it isn't my first build, either). So I don't think it is bloatware affecting it. Also, it likely isn't random update checks as it isn't totally random when these hang ups happen. They typically happen when loading a new zone or during video cutscenes, but other times they seem to be a bit random.

[[]HP[]Hawkeye]

It does say newegg up there doesn't it lol. I'm so sorry I don't know what the heck I was looking at.

Anyway with it being a custom build the only thing I can think of that would maybe do that would be an anti-virus program either updating or performing background tasks. The only other thing is even though it is a custom build extra software still could have been unintentionally installed. It might not hurt to double check.

Other than that I really don't know.

[JonyeGway]

Windows 10 will automatically download new driver updates and not tell you. I know on my system the last Nvidia update caused my GPU to appear as removable hardware in the system tray and even though I was rolling back the drivers Windows 10 kept redownloading the newest driver right after. If that isn't the issue maybe a clean Windows install will help since you said this started recently.