What is wrong with my PC?

[Brian]

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this elsewhere but don't remember the specific thread.

I'm experiencing an issue with YouTube.
For years my morning routine is to fire up the PC and play some Civ on one monitor while watching YouTube videos on my 2nd monitor.

Lately, without any changes to my setup being made, YouTube performance started tanking. If I had a game running on my primary monitor, YT videos would stutter, freeze, and downgrade from 1080p down to 720 and even 480.

That, coupled with frequent CTD's while playing Starfield and other games, led me to think I was having a memory issue so I ordered a 32g memory kit and replaced my 4x8 with a 2x16.
The immediate change has been that, so far, I have not been experiencing any CTD's while gaming so at least there was some benefit.
At first it seemed like maybe the YT issue was also resolved but after initial tests looked good, it's now back to dragging videos and downgrading quality.
To rule out network speed/connection issues, I fired up the wife's computer and can concurrently run the same two YT videos on both of our machine and hers will run fine but mine craps out.
To rule out thermal issues I also thoroughly cleaned all the dust buildup in the radiator, fans, and cooling fins.

To further muddy the waters, starting yesterday, when playing Civ while watching YT videos, whenever a Civ Leader or World/Wonder Event happens, the YT video just halts until I close out that event.

My setup is about three years old now but with the exception of the memory swap, no hardware has changed that might account for this behavior.
I replaced the video card in October of '21 but this problem only started in June/July.

We will be relocating our computer desks next month and I will probably just configure a thin client pc I've got sitting around and use that for YouTube and other streaming while I use my gaming computer for, well, gaming.

So, can any of smart folks help me out?

[Daehawk]

Good luck with it. YT has been slow to load in pages for a year for me. I get a mostly white screen and a blank video box for up to 10 seconds then it will load in...or not. Sometimes it loads in the video but it stays off centered to the right and the rest of my screen is white. Ive given up on making YT behave correctly. Also my FireFox browser crashes frequently on YT stuff.

[Smoove_B]

So, can any of smart folks help me out?

Is this some type of processor threading issue? Where your Windows client (BIOS?) is set up somehow to give processor priority to things on a "main" monitor and when you try to view things on a secondary monitor, it is taxing resources?

I can't say I've had the same issues, but I seem to remember many years ago having to adjust settings in Windows for a newer-ish processor and the cores (processor affinty?), specifically how it was running a game. Before I did it, the game was stuttering and had problems running. After the changes, it was perfectly fine.

[Brian]

Is this some type of processor threading issue? Where your Windows client (BIOS?) is set up somehow to give processor priority to things on a "main" monitor and when you try to view things on a secondary monitor, it is taxing resources?

I did run through all of the BIOS settings in the process of chasing this and nothing stuck out but I will double check everything.

Specs that I should have included:

Ryzen9 3900 12 Core/24 Thread
Gigabyte X570 MB
Corsair 3200 DDR4
NVidia GeForce 3060 12g
4th Gen M.2 SSD

[Anonymous Bosch]

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this elsewhere but don't remember the specific thread.

I'm experiencing an issue with YouTube.
For years my morning routine is to fire up the PC and play some Civ on one monitor while watching YouTube videos on my 2nd monitor.

Lately, without any changes to my setup being made, YouTube performance started tanking. If I had a game running on my primary monitor, YT videos would stutter, freeze, and downgrade from 1080p down to 720 and even 480.

That, coupled with frequent CTD's while playing Starfield and other games, led me to think I was having a memory issue so I ordered a 32g memory kit and replaced my 4x8 with a 2x16.
The immediate change has been that, so far, I have not been experiencing any CTD's while gaming so at least there was some benefit.
At first it seemed like maybe the YT issue was also resolved but after initial tests looked good, it's now back to dragging videos and downgrading quality.
To rule out network speed/connection issues, I fired up the wife's computer and can concurrently run the same two YT videos on both of our machine and hers will run fine but mine craps out.
To rule out thermal issues I also thoroughly cleaned all the dust buildup in the radiator, fans, and cooling fins.

To further muddy the waters, starting yesterday, when playing Civ while watching YT videos, whenever a Civ Leader or World/Wonder Event happens, the YT video just halts until I close out that event.

My setup is about three years old now but with the exception of the memory swap, no hardware has changed that might account for this behavior.
I replaced the video card in October of '21 but this problem only started in June/July.

We will be relocating our computer desks next month and I will probably just configure a thin client pc I've got sitting around and use that for YouTube and other streaming while I use my gaming computer for, well, gaming.

So, can any of smart folks help me out?

Try using a privacy-friendly YouTube frontend instead, and see if that helps, e.g.

• FreeTube
• Invidious
• Piped
• Piped-Material
• CloudTube
• PokeTube

[Blackhawk]

What about a drive going bad? A faulty cache/errors in the swap file might result in odd behavior. Maybe try moving the swap file?

[gilraen]

Try these steps one by one and test after each one (it may take either one of them or all combined):

Turn off Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (should be somewhere in Windows graphics settings for multiple displays).

In Nvidia GeForce Experience, turn off Shadowplay/Instant Replay.

Also in GeForce Experience, turn off in-game overlay.

[Blackhawk]

Turn off Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (should be somewhere in Windows graphics settings for multiple displays).

Right-click desktop, Display.

Choose a monitor, scroll to the bottom, Graphics Settings.

Go back, choose the other monitor, repeat.

I keep that sucker disabled.

[hitbyambulance]

What about a drive going bad? A faulty cache/errors in the swap file might result in odd behavior. Maybe try moving the swap file?

definitely worth trying, even though the system is not old.

[Blackhawk]

It probably wouldn't hurt to run SeaTools (or something similar) and check.

SeaTools works with any manufacturer.

[Brian]

Turn off Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (should be somewhere in Windows graphics settings for multiple displays).

This has, tentatively, done the trick.
I don't remember ever changing this setting but maybe during a driver update or something did it.
Though, at this age, I don't think I can entirely rule out the idea of my poking around in settings and thinking, "sure, that sounds like a good idea" and changing it.

Anyway, with fingers firmly crossed, thanks gang! Another mystery solved.