Unstable Pc performance and lack of visual smoothness.

[Inputdelay]

I had terrible performance on my previous PC before I changed my SSD in it. It gradually went bad.

last night i opened a couple spreadsheets on a hard drive, left them open.
closed them this morning.

in the 8 seconds of time it took the hard drive to spin up, so the lock file could be erased, windows was completely frozen. i attempted to click on another application to bring it to the front and it did not, until that hard drive spun up and erased the lock file and closed the spreadsheet.

windows is dead.

I haven't been using HDD since 2014. I have never experienced anything like that. I did run multiple different stress tests on all of the systems, and the result states the same. All of my M.2 SSDs are working completely stable, and newer ones don't fix anything at all.

[crow-auspex]

Your situation sounds unbelievable, I might recommend making a video of what is happening!

[Inputdelay]

Seriously - do you understand logic? You've changed everything except the OS, so it can only be the OS or you. There is literally nothing else.

Without knowing from user account (local or microsoft account), which various anti virus software is installed (enabled or not), bitlocker/onedrive/ search indexer/ and-god-knows-what-else-is-loading-at-startup (AGKWEILAS  for short)  to observations/listing / screenshots of what task manager and resource manager is doing in good times and bad, this can go on forever.....
Sometimes whatever version video driver or disk drive controller driver is being used, it's the wrong one and you need to go a version up and sometimes a version down.

And...sometimes you can have similar symptoms with different causes on different machines...
It's all the things!

First things first, I have tried all of the possible ways of installing Windows. And the result was the same.

It didn't matter whether I logged into my Microsoft account or didn't-nothing changed at all. I don't use any software except Steam, Riot Games, OBS, 7-Zip, Notepad++, System Informer, and Spotify. And as a browser, I tried all of them, and right now my choice is Thorium.

As for Autoruns, I'm using Autoruns64.exe to see everything that starts with Windows. And I removed most of the useless things that are imaginable. It didn't change a thing, since I don't have anything starting up with my system. I have everything turned off that wasn't used.

I have removed OneDrive completely since I'm not using that at all. And the same goes for Windows Defender and most of the useless Microsoft stuff. (It didn't change anything, but at least I don't have any Microsoft pop-ups or useless Defender, including the pointless Windows auto-update system.)

Talking about drivers, I have tried every single Nvidia driver that is available for my video card (and I'm not exaggerating). The same goes for the USB controller. And the same goes for the Internet drivers, which I did modify to see any difference, and it didn't influence them either. And it has nothing to do with the core of the problem.

[Inputdelay]

I already said it's not a Windows issue, because the problem disappears when I move the same PC and monitor to another location. But since we have a war going on, I don't have any possibilities to move (the problem was here before the war started).

Oh, I'm sorry! I could have sworn you said the location made no difference. Please accept my apologies.

No problem, don't worry. I'm just trying to find the reason causing the problem and fix it.

[Inputdelay]

Your situation sounds unbelievable, I might recommend making a video of what is happening!

I have already started making one, but I had to quit that idea since the e-sport scene and big companies and professional organizations don't like anything related to this kind of "problem." They would never sign a player who is talking about bad netcode, or electricity problems, or RFI problems, since they all think it's weird and inappropriate, since a player has to be just a player, not an engineer.

So since that might affect my career, I might wait to retire from the competitive scene first. Or I might just give up on trying to get back to tier 1 in the first place in order to make a video, which sounds not that great for now.

[DimitriP]

the problem disappears when I move the same PC and monitor to another location.

If that's exactly true, that's great news.
If there is some kind of cosmic storm and the waves converge to "your location", figure out if it effect the PC, the monitor  or both.
s for the other location..only you know the particulars of your good and bad location ...so other than radar stations , 100MW radio stations, rogue cell towers going intermittently crazy, it's all guess and speculation.

[Inputdelay]

the problem disappears when I move the same PC and monitor to another location.

If that's exactly true, that's great news.
If there is some kind of cosmic storm and the waves converge to "your location", figure out if it effect the PC, the monitor  or both.
s for the other location..only you know the particulars of your good and bad location ...so other than radar stations , 100MW radio stations, rogue cell towers going intermittently crazy, it's all guess and speculation.

I would like to understand where it comes from in order to fix it; that's why I'm here looking for answers. It might require some devices; that's why I'm asking which devices might help to find the root of the problem.

And I had an radio-monitoring inspection at my place. And that's the response they sent me: "Based on the results of the measures carried out by employees of the Central Branch of the UCRF in your presence on the premises and in the rooms of the building, in the public radio frequency bands, including the frequency bands for cellular radio communications, terrestrial television broadcasting, terrestrial analog audio broadcasting, and broadband wireless radio access, there were no violations of the radio emission parameters of the specified radio technologies and unacceptable radio interference in the public radio frequency bands.

It was recorded that the PC system unit itself emits broadband radiation in the approximate range of 308–730 MHz with levels up to ~-60 dBm.

In addition, we would like to inform you that the Central Branch of the Ukrainian State Centre for Radio Frequencies has not received any requests from operators providing telecommunications services in the village of Yours or from other residents of the specified area to identify and eliminate sources of radio interference that may cause reception problems in public radio frequency bands."

I am attaching a file of the device used to take measurements at my place via the Central Branch of the UCRF.
I also invited a metrologist who brought a C1-67 universal oscilloscope, and we checked the sinusoid, and everything was fine with it.

[tszaboo]

I had terrible performance on my previous PC before I changed my SSD in it. It gradually went bad.

last night i opened a couple spreadsheets on a hard drive, left them open.
closed them this morning.

in the 8 seconds of time it took the hard drive to spin up, so the lock file could be erased, windows was completely frozen. i attempted to click on another application to bring it to the front and it did not, until that hard drive spun up and erased the lock file and closed the spreadsheet.

windows is dead.

I haven't been using HDD since 2014. I have never experienced anything like that. I did run multiple different stress tests on all of the systems, and the result states the same. All of my M.2 SSDs are working completely stable, and newer ones don't fix anything at all.

Normally me neither. But that SSD just had this issue, and it was just failing completely silently, making these hickups and performance issues. I made a carbon copy of the installed stuff on it with a tool to another SSD and the computer was fine afterwards.

[Manul]

This is all beyond believable. Perhaps you exaggerate a little. If yes, then it is ok to say so, no shame at all. We all exaggerate sometimes, that is human behaviour. The issue of exaggeration is that it confuses others who try to help. Two reasons. First, it becomes hardly believable. Second, it is overwhelming amount of information, objective, subjective, everything in between which does not align, does not make sense and possibly obscures the real key elements of the problem.

[Inputdelay]

I had terrible performance on my previous PC before I changed my SSD in it. It gradually went bad.

last night i opened a couple spreadsheets on a hard drive, left them open.
closed them this morning.

in the 8 seconds of time it took the hard drive to spin up, so the lock file could be erased, windows was completely frozen. i attempted to click on another application to bring it to the front and it did not, until that hard drive spun up and erased the lock file and closed the spreadsheet.

windows is dead.

I haven't been using HDD since 2014. I have never experienced anything like that. I did run multiple different stress tests on all of the systems, and the result states the same. All of my M.2 SSDs are working completely stable, and newer ones don't fix anything at all.

Normally me neither. But that SSD just had this issue, and it was just failing completely silently, making these hickups and performance issues. I made a carbon copy of the installed stuff on it with a tool to another SSD and the computer was fine afterwards.

Unfortunately, I have already tried another SSD, and it made no difference.

[Inputdelay]

This is all beyond believable. Perhaps you exaggerate a little. If yes, then it is ok to say so, no shame at all. We all exaggerate sometimes, that is human behaviour. The issue of exaggeration is that it confuses others who try to help. Two reasons. First, it becomes hardly believable. Second, it is overwhelming amount of information, objective, subjective, everything in between which does not align, does not make sense and possibly obscures the real key elements of the problem.

The problem is real, and I have already posted a video, as you can see: https://youtu.be/GAnYFj4I_q0.

And you are right, it's an overwhelming amount of information. But that's almost 2 years of constant search without any knowledge of the problem.

I wouldn't believe it either, but unfortunately, it's not an exaggeration at any point.

For me, it's a big deal since it's related to my job, and I wouldn't just waste my time on pointless research and nonexistent issues.

[Manul]

You wrote that the problem is also with laptops, TVs, lightbulbs. That's what I'm saying, perhaps you are mixing different issues into one pot (knowingly or unknowingly).

Anyway, pro tip, don't focus on making the issue better, try to focus on making it worse. It often provides more useful information.

[Buriedcode]

I've skimmed over the thread and it seems every time something is brought up you dismiss it immediately.  "I can't be that" - but how can you be sure?  Modern PC's, even with a fresh install run thousands of concurrent tasks and if stuttering/lack seems to happen independant of what software you're running in the foreground - then it is either a background task (including windows defender which will runs continuously and search indexing) or a hardware problem that isn't severe enough to cause an outright crash, or be picked up by the system.   

Those could be a dodgy sata cable (unlikely since few use sata for system drives anymore), thrmal CPU throttling cause by incorrect application of theral paste/heatsink/fan/cooler, failing drive sectors - that most definately will cause freezing of the cursor that the system doesn't detect, and rarely, PSU issues.

You mentioned this happens across multiple computers, using different operating systems, and different builds.  But I haven't see the specs of any of these.  You also mentioned "100+ other builds" - just how many computers do you have?!


Also, the problem of lag/stuttering is so generic and vague it can affect anything from a microwaves UI, playstation portable, TIVO box.. essentially anythign that justs firmware, so you are going to see this problem everywhere and it may or may not relate to your specfic problems in your specific location.  It's like googling for why you feel tired, and finding out that billions of people also feel the same.
So you need to find a way to isolate, recreate and narrow down the problem - the fact you mentioned it occurs across "100+" builds tells me it is nothing to do with the OS, hardware, power supply etc..  It doesn't even mean that there is one single cause that is common to all systems - it could be several seperate things that just so happen to have the same effect.

The fact you posted on an electronics forum kind of implies that you think this is an issue with the hardware or even the electricity supply. 

Honestly, it sounds like the only common demonenator is you.

Edit: OK this is why I sohuld read the entire thread before posting, since others have said all the above before, my apologies for not adding anything.

[Manul]

I don't know what to make from that video. I see a picture scrolling, not very smoothly. Seems like frame rate "beat" to me. Like when you film something refreshing at 50Hz with 60fps camera (just an example). Otherwise I don't know what is this scrolling picture. This situation needs a good cleanup and reboot, cause so many things don't make sense.

[Inputdelay]

You wrote that the problem is also with laptops, TVs, lightbulbs. That's what I'm saying, perhaps you are mixing different issues into one pot (knowingly or unknowingly).

Anyway, pro tip, don't focus on making the issue better, try to focus on making it worse. It often provides more useful information.

Thanks for the advice. I would love to find either way at this point, since I haven't found the way to make it worse or better, except for minor things, like grounding and cable management.

[Inputdelay]

I don't know what to make from that video. I see a picture scrolling, not very smoothly. Seems like frame rate "beat" to me. Like when you film something refreshing at 50Hz with 60fps camera (just an example). Otherwise I don't know what is this scrolling picture. This situation needs a good cleanup and reboot, cause so many things don't make sense.

It's a 360 Hz monitor at 720 fps, and filming at 60 Hz. If anything is required to make it clear, then you are free to ask questions.

[Manul]

And because this is electronics forum, I just made a small test.

Soldered a phoresistor in parallel with tactile button of my mouse, funny enough it activates the button if exposed to bright light (edge fall time around 5ms, not great, not terrible). Next I wrote a small application which periodically flashes white rectangle on black screen, polls the mouse and uses QueryPerformanceCounter to measure latency. So it effectively measures round trip time from code to display to mouse click and back to the code. Latency 40-45ms. But my mouse is bluetooth mouse, which probably sucks on latency plus 5ms photoresistor circuit latency. But anyway, it's not so hard to get numbers and does not necesarily require the use of fancy equipment.

So that's about latency. But I'm not sure anymore what we are talking about. Latency, bluring or what.

[Inputdelay]

And because this is electronics forum, I just made a small test.

Soldered a phoresistor in parallel with tactile button of my mouse, funny enough it activates the button if exposed to bright light (edge fall time around 5ms, not great, not terrible). Next I wrote a small application which periodically flashes white rectangle on black screen, polls the mouse and uses QueryPerformanceCounter to measure latency. So it effectively measures round trip time from code to display to mouse click and back to the code. Latency 40-45ms. But my mouse is bluetooth mouse, which probably sucks on latency plus 5ms photoresistor circuit latency. But anyway, it's not so hard to get numbers and does not necesarily require the use of fancy equipment.

So that's about latency. But I'm not sure anymore what we are talking about. Latency, bluring or what.

Thanks for doing this test-this is actually very useful and exactly the kind of direction I was hoping for.
To clarify what I’m trying to describe, the core issue is not just absolute latency but time variance of the system behavior.

I fully agree that end-to-end latency can be measured relatively simply, as you demonstrated. Your setup measures a fixed round-trip delay (software ->  display -> input -> software), which is great for establishing baseline numbers.

However, in my case the main anomaly is that the system appears to switch between different temporal states:
sometimes the interaction feels consistent and predictable,
sometimes the exact same setup feels significantly worse,
without any changes in load, software, or configuration.

In other words, I’m not observing a constant extra 20–30 ms of latency, but rather:
increased jitter,
inconsistent frame pacing, response timing,
loss of temporal coherence,

which subjectively manifests as “blur,” “breathing,” or loss of smoothness.

This is why I’m struggling to describe it precisely.
I’m interested in extending something similar:
For example, logging the same measurement continuously over time and correlating it with moments when the system feels “good” vs. “bad.”
If you have ideas on how to adapt such a setup to capture temporal instability or jitter (not just average latency), I’d really appreciate your input.

[Manul]

Windows does have some amount of jitter here and there, especially windows 11. Scheduled tasks, background maintenence, update engine and whatnot can cause unpredictable, time varying latencies. Unfortunately this is "normal". Blame microsoft for that. Yes, I suppose you could log latencies for 24 hours and observe. Perhaps if jitter is so system wide (even mouse on desktop) it does not really matter what you measure. Measure what is easiest. Perhaps ping your router and graph the ping times, I believe there is software for that.

But are you really saying that it is 100% because of location? Same setup in another location, 100% no issue guaranteed never ever?

[Inputdelay]

Windows does have some amount of jitter here and there, especially windows 11. Scheduled tasks, background maintenence, update engine and whatnot can cause unpredictable, time varying latencies. Unfortunately this is "normal". Blame microsoft for that. Yes, I suppose you could log latencies for 24 hours and observe. Perhaps if jitter is so system wide (even mouse on desktop) it does not really matter what you measure. Measure what is easiest. Perhaps ping your router and graph the ping times, I believe there is software for that.

But are you really saying that it is 100% because of location? Same setup in another location, 100% no issue guaranteed never ever?

The same setup in another location is 100% working differently. I asked a couple of my friends to bring their PCs and notebooks, and they literally had the same problem in my place. I have offline problems (this issue occurs even on desktop while dragging the file explorer or moving the mouse). That's why I think it's not Windows related; it's not a software problem, since when I physically moved the entire setup to another place, I had different outcomes using the exact same software. So logically, I exclude the software part, since all different devices are working horribly at my place.

I have severe ghosting on 360 Hz. And I had the same problem with other monitors, which are 144 Hz and 240 Hz. On fast TN and IPS panels.

Here is a frame I captured in the game using high-speed shooting with a smartphone (500 fps). What you see is typical for low-frequency monitors, but not for a 360 Hz monitor and 500 fps in the game. I took this with a slow shutter speed. What you see in the screenshot is not a mistake; I saw it with my own eyes.

[johansen]

Here is a frame I captured in the game using high-speed shooting with a smartphone (500 fps). What you see is typical for low-frequency monitors, but not for a 360 Hz monitor and 500 fps in the game. I took this with a slow shutter speed. What you see in the screenshot is not a mistake; I saw it with my own eyes.

what phone do you have?

[Inputdelay]

Here is a frame I captured in the game using high-speed shooting with a smartphone (500 fps). What you see is typical for low-frequency monitors, but not for a 360 Hz monitor and 500 fps in the game. I took this with a slow shutter speed. What you see in the screenshot is not a mistake; I saw it with my own eyes.

what phone do you have?

That particular freeze frame was made on a Xiaomi Mi 8 with custom software and custom camera software with manual settings, but now I have an iPhone XS.

[Analog Kid]

A couple of months ago my electricity company changed the distribution transformer to a newer one that was made in 2005 for my street, and my monitor's brightness became dimmer again, so I had to go back to 100% brightness since everything became dimmer again like it used to. After more than 20 letters and numerous calls to the center of the electricity company, I didn't receive any logical explanation of what happened and what they did.

Have you ... measured your house's voltage at the outlet?
I assume you live in 240-volt land.

Just stick an ordinary DMM (or VOM) in the outlet. And let us know what you find.

[Uunoctium]

Silly question: is there a ham-radio operator nearby? Two options possible:
He himself disturbs with high power DX transmission.
He can assist you by scanning most of all bands from 100kcy to above 2GHz

[Inputdelay]

A couple of months ago my electricity company changed the distribution transformer to a newer one that was made in 2005 for my street, and my monitor's brightness became dimmer again, so I had to go back to 100% brightness since everything became dimmer again like it used to. After more than 20 letters and numerous calls to the center of the electricity company, I didn't receive any logical explanation of what happened and what they did.

Have you ... measured your house's voltage at the outlet?
I assume you live in 240-volt land.

Just stick an ordinary DMM (or VOM) in the outlet. And let us know what you find.

It should be 230-240 V 50 Hz, but unfortunately I have constantly fluctuating voltage from 198 to 234 V during the day. But as far as I know, all my devices have an APFC module (monitors, PC, and PSU).

Just a common teapot that consumes 1 kW drops the entire voltage in the house by 5-15 volts.

Also, I have 2 portable power stations, which are Flashfish P15 and EcoFlow Delta 2, with pure sine waves, but nothing changes when I use them; it's literally the same as if I'm using the outlet.