AMD 8350 Stuttering in games, maybe?

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I'm sorry if this is under the wrong topic, but it was the most relevant one I could find (i did look)

My Rig consists of:

AMD 8350

Asus Sabertooth 990fx r2.0

G.Skill Ripjaws X - 2133mhz 8gbx2

EVGA GTX 670 FTW x2 (i have tried with just one GPU and it is the same problem)

OCZ vertex 4 120gb SDD

and a Corsair 1000W PSU 80+ bronze

Anyway, first off. A couple months ago I had an itch to build a new PC and Logan's AMD 8350 vs Intel 3570k video had me sold on the AMD 8350, so.. I bought it, along with the Asus Sabertooth 990fx r2.0 that was reccomended. Ever since I have been having troubles with all my games having annoyingly common stutter/freeze problems. The most obvoius ones were Starcraft 2 and Skyrim.

 

Things I have tried to remedy this problem. I have applied the hotfixes that were reccomended in the video, which did not help. I have stress tested my components to see if any of them would fail, the amd 8350 would actually fail on stock, so i have tried upping the voltage while on stock clocks to bring it to be stable, as well as OC'd it to 4.6ghz stress tested for stability also. Still to no avail. I have tried 3 different graphics cards, the SOC GTX 680 by Gigabyte, and 2 different EVGA GTX 670 FTW all which have had K-boost enabled and disabled trying in different scenarios. 

 

If i was to explain when this issue happens, it seems to be when the game is loading new textures/animations, as skyrim runs smooth as butter, but then when it seems to load something new, it'll freeze for a second, and then chop for about another half a second while it regains its pace. In starcraft 2 the unit preloaded seems to completely eliminate my stutter / freezes that happen when new building animations are complete, warping in units etc. 

 

In tandem with trying to fix the issue with the hotfix, I have also tried windows 8 (which I am currently on) *Cringe* ... however I had read in a multitude of places that the windows 8 seemed to increase the minimum fps of games with this CPU (I was clutching at straws, idk how true that is)

 

It is probably also important that I add I have done a 8hour memtest which produced not a single error.

 

Thanks!! (and very sorry for the long post, was trying to cover all my grounds so you guys don't have to guess)

 

Daniel

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Wow, so you've had to overvolt you CPU to have it stable at stock speeds? That sounds very wrong to me, because AMD CPU's usually can overclock pretty high at stock core voltage (like 20 % overclock before you even have to touch the core voltage is pretty normal).

That may mean that something is broken, it could be a damaged FX8350 (although I doubt that because the QC of Intel and AMD CPU's is quite good, better than most components in any domain), it could also be a problem with the power delivery of the motherboard. Maybe try first with a different CPU, if that doesn't help, the motherboard may be defective.

What you didn't post is your temp readings. If you have to overvolt at stock speeds, and you get stuttering, I would definitely suspect throttling of the CPU because of overheating. You can't overvolt or overclock on the stock CPU cooler with the FX8350, and even if the TIM was soiled in any way, at stock speeds you'll have throttling when there is limited airflow inside the case or when the air temperature is hot. The stock CPU cooler is a heatpipe cooler that's decent as such, but it's minimal for the FX8350 and only cools the CPU decently with enough airflow, a perfect application, normal room air temperatures, and at stock speeds. The Cool 'n Quiet function will start throttling the CPU way before the CPU will do it itself because of the hardware safety features, especially if the Cool 'n Quiet profile is set low. Are you using the Asus software that came with the motherboard to control the cooling profiles, or the AMD Software, or just the BIOS? Do you have the latest BIOS update installed?

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Yes, it would fail OCCT stresstest otherwise =/ ... As for the temps, I keep a close eye on them at all times, under full load stress test it gets to a maximum of 62. While gaming it gets to about 50, and on stock clocks it wasn't even hot enough to worry about i think about i think it was around 40 under full load, maybe less.

Thank you for your reply :) I do have all the power saving features turned off, as well as the BIOS being updated to the latest version) and all the OC has been done through the BIOS as for cooling, because I have a fan controller on my case its all externally controlled (I have extremely good air flow, 7 fans, 3 being 200mm) However I will try to get my hands another AM3+ chip to see if i get any changes, so thank you for that piece of advice :)