Fix: GTA:V & Other Games Stuttering Every Few Seconds

After a long day, you finally sit down with your iced tea that you have been looking forward to all day, take a sip and go “ahhhh” right after you gulp it down. Oh, yes, it is GTAV time, isn’t it? So, then you fire up your Grand Theft Auto V… It reciprocates by firing up LOL your CPU till you’re going down to ~20 FPS every few seconds because of some unknown piece of shit phenomenon. This never happened before, your system was clearly capable of running GTA:V smooth as buttery heck a few days back. Why not now?

You’re clueless and frustrated. Maybe a little worried too. “Is my hardware dying?”, “Is it the game?”, and “Damn, ain’t this a bitch?!” are all in your head, but nothing is clear. So, you head on to the multi-colored all knowing God of the internets that is Google.

You did everything, from increasing the priority of the GTAV process, to cleaning your computer, to worshiping Satan. Nothing works.

Then, you stumble upon this post. Ding ding ding! Here’e the answer! You are thermal throttling!

TL;DR: Your issue is ‘Thermal Throttling!

What Is Thermal Throttling?

When your CPU/GPU takes on a heavy workload—such as gaming—it generates a lot of heat. When your cooling solution (heat sinks/fans) can no longer dissipate heat fast enough to keep the temperatures within a safe range, your CPU/GPU starts to dump performance to shed heat as fast as it can. The core and memory frequencies begin to drop—along with your FPS—until temperatures drop to a safe operating range. All modern CPUs/GPUs have this feature in place to protect the electronic components from damage. Unmanaged, thermal throttling can have a big impact on performance. While thermal throttling itself doesn’t cause any direct damage, the underlying cause of throttling—heat—can cause damage and shorten the lifespan of your CPU/GPU.

Thermal Throttling in GTA:V:

GTA:V is a CPU intensive game. This means that it uses the CPU’s resources heavily to run the game. When this happens, the CPU’s temperature increases, and if your integrated heat spreader or processor die is not in proper contact with the copper pipes or heat sink via a thermal paste layer or thermal pads, the temperature keeps on increasing due to the poor thermal conductivity and therefore, causes the CPU to get to dangerously high temperatures (usually above 98°C) which can cause damage to the the CPU itself. So, thermal throttling is what takes place to stop the CPU from going into that suicide temperature level. That’s when the core and memory frequencies drop rapidly (to decrease the heat from the CPU) and that’s when you experience those annoying stutters and lag spikes.

Many people will tell you to do things like lowering the settings, scanning for malware, etc., but I say fuck that. Fuck lowering the settings. Right? Say. No. To. Lowering. Settings.

Solutions:

I can almost guarantee you that if you have recently developed the stuttering issue in GTA:V or other games, the below solutions are bound to fix it back to how it used to be before, just you and your 60 FPS cruisin’. These might seem like common suggestions, but your problem is heat related and only these can fix it. So, just get to it.

[1] Close all unwanted processes that are in the background that are consuming high resources from the CPU (I know, I hate reading this basic shit too, but some people don’t consider this until highlighted or just forget, so here)

[2] Re-apply the thermal paste on your CPU and GPU

[2.1] Use another application method to evenly spread a better conducting layer of the thermal paste

[2.2] Apply a better thermal paste with a higher thermal conductivity [Check out my review on the best and safest thermal paste in the market here]

[3] Clean the fans/vents of your laptop/rig properly by completely powering it down and disassembling it

[4] Make sure there are no obstacles near any fans in your system that might be restricting proper airflow (Improve wire management in your rig, make sure all air inlets and outlets in your laptop/rig are not obstructed, don’t keep your laptop on soft surfaces like beds or pillows, etc.)

Check for positive results after doing each task from the solutions above to ensure the exact cause of your issue.