Intermittent DPC spikes after CPU upgrade

Amerikanovich

Amerikanovich

Member
Joined
May 1, 2022
Posts
12
Hi guys, I've been having a problem with my PC for the past couple months, and I've done everything I can to try and solve the problem myself, but nothing I've done has helped at all, so I'm coming to the experts for your wisdom to help me find out exactly what's going on here.
Early February, I decided to get my PC Windows 11 ready by upgrading from a 1st gen Ryzen 1600X to a 3800X, because the Zen2 CPUs were allegedly compatible with my old B350 chipset (with newest BIOS), I figured it would be a pretty painless switch.
So I picked up a used 3800X off ebay for a reasonable price and swapped them out, everything seemed fine, until a couple days later as I was playing a game with some friends, suddenly the system started acting as if it was about to crash to a blue screen, with intense stuttering and hanging, everything slowed down, audio and visual - and then suddenly it was gone, only lasted about 2 seconds. I thought it was strange but everything seemed fine, windows event viewer was showing no critical malfunctions of any kind around the time it happened, so I thought nothing of it.
Well the problem persisted, every time the computer is stressed, either watching videos or playing games, sometimes (about once every 30 minutes to an hour) it gets these stutter attacks. It took a while before I first heard the term "DPC Latency" online and identified that as my problem, and when I ran Latencymon in the background, it kept pointing to the graphics drivers (nvlddmkm.sys & dxgkrnl.sys) as the cause for the 47,000us latency spikes.
My first reaction was oh crap, my trusty old GTX 1060 is dying, good thing GPU prices are coming down, looks like it's finally time for an update, so I kept my eyes open and finally got a decent deal on an RTX 3070....but the problem didn't go away.
The GPU drivers are what's lagging, but apparently not the cause.
I've been through the whole laundry list of DPC latency solutions, from turning off all power saving features like Cool&Quiet, C-States, high performance mode in both windows and nvidia control panel, HPET on/off, various RAM clocks & voltages, increasing SOC voltage from 1.1V to 1.2V, doing a fresh repair install of windows, AMD Chipset drivers updated, blah blah blah....nothing has made any difference.
I ran Memtest for a whole afternoon off a USB stick, not a single error detected, also did RAM stress tests with OCCT for about an hour, other than getting the sticks hot nothing happened.
Also did Prime95 and OCCT CPU stress tests, same thing, nothing happened, everything is rock solid.
I even went as far as to get a new Motherboard because for some people the problem was instability with the old 300 Chipset combined with a newer CPU, so as of 2 days I also have an ASUS X470 mainboard in the system, everything working fine....but it still has these latency spikes, and it's driving me nuts.
I'll run through the checklist in the post guidelines:


  • Write a brief description of your problem.
    • See above.
  • OS ? (Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista)
    • Windows 10 Pro
  • x86 (32bit) or x64 (64bit)?
    • 64
  • (Only for xp, vista, 7) Service pack?
    • NA
  • What was original installed OS on system?
    • Windows 7 (free upgrade to Win10 when it came out)
  • Is the OS an OEM version (came pre-installed on system) or full retail version (YOU purchased it from retailer)?
    • The original Win 7 install was a full retail version.
  • Age of system? (hardware)
    • Hardware was rebuilt in 2016 when Ryzen first came out, as of now almost everything has been updated except for the original 2 RAM sticks.
  • Age of OS installation?
    • Windows repair install was done 1 or 2 weeks ago
  • Have you re-installed the OS?
    • see above
  • System Manufacturer?
    • The original mainboard was an MSI B350 Gaming Plus, now it's an ASUS Prime X470-Pro
  • Laptop or Desktop?
    • Desktop!
  • Exact model number (if laptop, check label on bottom)
    • Of which part? I built it myself.
  • MotherBoard - (if NOT a laptop)
    • see above
  • CPU
    • Original AMD Ryzen 5 1600X (problem free for 5 years), now a Ryzen 7 3800X (has epilepsy)
  • RAM (brand, EXACT model, what slots are you using?)
    • 2x8GB kit of G.Skill Trident Z F4-3200C16-8GTZB (Hynix M-Die), upgraded to 32GB by adding 2 sticks of 8GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB F4-3200C16-8GTZR (Hynix A-Die)
  • Video Card
    • ASUS TUF RTX 3070 OC (Problem originally started on an MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X)
  • Power Supply - brand & wattage (if laptop, skip this one)
    • Corsair 650W Gold
  • Is driver verifierenabled or disabled?
    • I would know if it was enabled, right?
  • What security software are you using? (Firewall, antivirus, antimalware, antispyware, and so forth)
    • COMODO Firewall & Avast Antivirus (for the past 15 years)
  • Are you using proxy, vpn, ipfilters or similar software?
    • Nope
  • Are you using Disk Image tools? (like daemon tools, alcohol 52% or 120%, virtual CloneDrive, roxio software)
    • Nope
  • Are you currently under/overclocking? Are there overclocking software installed on your system?
    • The RAM is "overclocked" to it's advertised speed of 3200MHz, first boot at 1.35V crashed so I upped it to 1.4V and has been stable since, otherwise everything is stock, always has been.



The BSOD Collection application kept hanging up at "waiting for system info" every time I tried it, but here's the rest, I was able to capture a trace of a DPC spike about 10 minutes after I started it, the spike is in the last 5 seconds, pretty obvious (even I recognized it):

Speccy: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/ZpKAoUL6bFnNElX0OzcVPg0

Trace: trace.zip

If anyone can help me get to the bottom of this I would be so grateful, I can't stand problems I can't solve after months of trying 😫
 
Hi!

Did the following disappear?
the system started acting as if it was about to crash to a blue screen, with intense stuttering and hanging, everything slowed down, audio and visual - and then suddenly it was gone, only lasted about 2 seconds."
Click to expand...

Because if dpc spikes are your problem, but the previous one disappeared, I would consider the problem solved.
 
xilolee said:
Hi!

Did the following disappear?


Because if dpc spikes are your problem, but the previous one disappeared, I would consider the problem solved.
Click to expand...
No, sadly that is exactly the problem, I'm not sure what exactly the cause is or if that's called dpc spikes, but the computer keeps having these stutter attacks and nothing has helped so far.
You can clearly see it near the end of the trace of you look in DPC/ISR, it's like something happens that makes everything just stop for a split second, over and over again, and then at some point the gpu driver nvlddmkm.sys spikes and everything goes back to normal.
 
Last edited:
Could you try to exclude discord and steam (at windows startup)?
Read More:
 
I could only find "Steam Client Service" on that list, discord doesn't have an entry there.
Discord was in autostart in the task manager however, but already deactivated.

Those two are almost always present when this happens, because 90% of the time it's triggered while playing a game, only rarely when watching videos, and in that case, steam is running in the background, and I am often on discord to talk to friends.
I've been using both for years without any issue, so I'm not so certain they could be the cause, unless something changed recently.
 
I wasn't clear enough.
Could you try to not use them at all and experiment if you get the problem?
You said it could happen in a hour.
You could try that, id est without steam and without discord, for two hours.
 
xilolee said:
I wasn't clear enough.
Could you try to not use them at all and experiment if you get the problem?
You said it could happen in a hour.
You could try that, id est without steam and without discord, for two hours.
Click to expand...
Ok, I'll try, I have to see if I can find something that will stress the computer without using any kind of internet dependent platforms like steam/Uplay/origin/discord.

I have noticed that it seems to happen much less when I play a Singleplayer game on steam, without active network communication or being on discord, but it has happened a couple of times.
 
I've played a game for about 1.5 hours without any platforms like steam or ubisoft running, and without discord open, nothing has happened so far, but it's hard to tell.
In another singleplayer game that ran over steam, it happened twice very briefly in 15 hours.
It seems to happen much more often when network resources are being used.
 
Is there no one who can help me figure this out?
Could it be a hardware issue with the CPU itself or most likely a driver conflict?
It continues to be an issue, and I just don't have the skills to be able to look through a trace and tell what is causing what...
 
I'll try it, however a few days ago a steam game I was playing alone caused the problem multiple times per session, without discord being on or having any other connections to other people (also no chat windows open)
The problem also occasionally occurs while watching youtube videos (browser is firefox).
I'll see if I can catch more traces of it happening in different circumstances, maybe a common theme will become recognizable.
 
There's a newer BIOS available for your motherboard that incorporates AGESA 1.2.0.7 which supposedly fixes intermittent stutters that occur when fTPM is enabled on some systems. Do you have fTPM enabled in your BIOS? I think fTPM has been enabled by default since BIOS version 5854 for your motherboard.
 
cwsink said:
There's a newer BIOS available for your motherboard that incorporates AGESA 1.2.0.7 which supposedly fixes intermittent stutters that occur when fTPM is enabled on some systems. Do you have fTPM enabled in your BIOS? I think fTPM has been enabled by default since BIOS version 5854 for your motherboard.
Click to expand...
That actually sounds very plausible, the reason I upgraded from a 1600x to a 3800x was because of the tpm module to make my PC windows 11 ready, and since then it's been having this problem.
I updated the BIOS when I installed the new motherboard last month, but I'll flash the newest version and see what happens.

I got another trace of a stutter attack yesterday after changing the steam setting, that does not seem to have been the cause.
 
This video is an example of the stutter caused by enabling the fTPM with older BIOS versions. Is that what you're experiencing?
 
cwsink said:
This video is an example of the stutter caused by enabling the fTPM with older BIOS versions. Is that what you're experiencing?
Click to expand...
Yes that's pretty much it, but for me the stuttering is much faster, like maybe 10-20 times in one second, almost feels like everything is in slow motion and then suddenly it's back to normal.
 
Are you still having the problem after updating to BIOS version 6042?
 
cwsink said:
Are you still having the problem after updating to BIOS version 6042?
Click to expand...
I haven't had the chance to do it yet as I'm away this weekend.
I also noticed the BIOS is still a beta version, I don't know how long they usually take with testing and official release, it's been out for two weeks already, I figured it might be less work to wait for the official version.
 
If you haven't already updated, I think the non-beta version has been made available. I'm hopeful it will work for you as updating to a BIOS based on AGESA 1.2.0.7 seemed to work for OP in this post.
 
I saw that while I was on vacation last week, I just flashed it after coming home, had a lot of BSOD crashes on boot at the beginning but I think it may have had to do with bad RAM timings, I set some back to Auto where I wasn't sure and it's been running for 5 minutes so far at least, we'll see how it goes.
I'll report back in a few days as long as no further problems arise.
 
Please do let us know the result either way. Good luck!
 

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