Why is my Gainward RTX 5070 Ti stuttering in Shadow of the Erdtree?
Whenever the screen gets filled with heavy lighting effects, I noticed these rhythmic micro-stutters that make the game feel clunky, especially with the 5070 Ti running on default boost clocks. I fired up HWiNFO and saw the core clock swinging wildly between 2.1 GHz and 2.6 GHz, which sent my frame times skyrocketing from 8ms to a miserable 22ms. My first instinct was to slap on 'Prefer Maximum Performance' in the NVIDIA Control Panel, but that was a mistake—temps hit 84°C almost instantly, triggering a thermal throttle that made things even worse. I eventually decided to manually lock the core clock at 2.4 GHz and applied a negative voltage offset of -0.030V. Checking RTSS, the frame times finally settled into a smooth 7-12ms range, and the stuttering vanished. It wasn't a smooth ride, though; my first attempt at locking the clock caused a total black screen during the map load, and I had to nudge the voltage back to +0.010V to get it stable. Now, the card sits comfortably between 68-75°C with fans at 1600 RPM. After a three-hour marathon session, the frequency curve is flat and frame times are rock steady at 7.1-11.4ms.
