Stuttering during full screen video playback

[beatle]

Many years ago I had an issue playing back HTML5 or Flash videos where the video would pause momentarily (1 second or less) and the audio would continue. When the video came back, all would still be in sync. Basically it was dropping 10-30 frames at a time, every 2-4 seconds. That went away after I built a new machine a couple years ago.

In the past few weeks, however, I'm experiencing the same problem, but only with full screen video file playback. It doesn't matter what player I use (ZoomPlayer, MPC, VLC, WMP) the results are the same. Also doesn't matter whether the video is on my NAS local or my SSD, and it doesn't matter if the bitrate is high or low or the format (avi, mkv, mpg). I can play the file smoothly with the media player maximized in windowed mode, but not fullscreen or I always get stuttering.

Machine specs:
6600k @ 4.6
Asus Z170-AR
32GB DDR4-2400
Asus Strix R9 390
Win10

I don't see any CPU spikes that coincide with the stuttering, so I'm guessing this is video related. To that end I've tried multiple driver revisions, including cleaning out the old with CCleaner. Box is current on updates, and I've temporarily disabled Avast.

 

[deustroop]

Try one of these.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/10series/geforce-gtx-1080/

 

[beatle]

You buy, I'll try.

 

[Ketchup]

What version of 10? I have seen a few people in the forums talking about AMD drivers having stuttering issues with the Windows 10 Creators update.

You may want to play around with different drivers and see if one works better than the one you are currently using.

 

[beatle]

Enterprise. I still get the "Good news! The Windows 10 Creators Update is on its way. Want to be one of the first to get it?" prompt in windows update, so I don't think I have it installed.

I've tried a few versions of these drivers but all seem to be behaving the same. Tried updating my codecs as well.

 

[Ketchup]

If you run the Intel video rather than your AMD card, do you get the same stuttering?

 

[beatle]

I actually haven't tried onboard video. I'll try that out after work today.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I actually haven't tried onboard video. I'll try that out after work today.

If you still have the issue using the iGPU, then try a different cable to the monitor.

 

[Iron Woode]

I am going to throw my $0.02 worth in:

try testing the video card using 3dmark and/or Heaven benchmark and see if the card passes.

also make sure there is no spyware or any other odd background tasks going on.

are there any other odd things going on with the system?

 

[beatle]

I know I kinda left this one hanging. I thought I'd actually sort of fixed the issue, but then it came back and got worse. The problem didn't seem to manifest itself on my secondary monitor, an old NEC 20WMGX2 connected via DVI, so I thought the problem might be Freesync on my main monitor. I tried disabling it, reenabling it, rebooting, etc. and eventually it seemed okay. Then a few days ago I started seeing a problem on YouTube. It wasn't dropping frames every 3 seconds, but the framerate was dropping to a predictable 20fps or so. Not super choppy on talking scenes, but very noticeable in game demos and other fast moving action where the fps is clearly above 30. This only presents itself in fullscreen, not windowed modes.

Games are still just as smooth as they've always been, which is to say they're very smooth, no problems. I tried the latest drivers from AMD with a clean install with no change.

I just pulled the 390 out and am running on IGP, no issues on YouTube or videos. Not sure where to go at this point. Bad card?

 

[Ketchup]

If the card still does fine in games, it could still be a to-be-determined driver issue. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's currently any more fixable.

If I were in your shoes, I would grab a spare drive and see if the problem occurs in a fresh OS install. If it does, I would replace the card.