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What causes game stuttering and how can you stop it?
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Got choppy gameplay? From causes to quick fixes, here’s everything you need to know to stop game stuttering and keep things running silky smooth
By Virgin Media Edit
- Published
- 6 June 2025
What is game stuttering?
Game stuttering is where your game suddenly pauses or drops in frame rate when you’re gaming. Instead of showing continuous, fluid gameplay, the game’s graphics or animation freeze or skip for a moment, then suddenly catch up. This can feel like the game “jumps” or “lags,” disrupting the player’s experience and making it harder to control or enjoy the game.
This stuttering happens when the game’s system – whether it’s a PC, console, or even a phone – struggles to keep up with the game’s demands in real time. Every game needs to process a lot of information: drawing the graphics, running the physics, calculating AI behavior, handling inputs, and sometimes managing online connections. If the system can’t do all these things fast enough, the game’s smooth flow is interrupted, which leads to stuttering.
What causes game stuttering?
There are several common reasons why games stutter, and most of them come down to how your device handles the game or how the game itself is designed:
Your gaming device – whether it’s a PC, console, or laptop – has parts that work together to run games smoothly. If any of these parts are too old, slow, or not powerful enough for the game you’re playing, the device can’t keep up. For example, the CPU might struggle to handle all the game’s calculations, or the GPU might have trouble rendering detailed graphics fast enough. When this happens, the game can freeze for a moment or skip frames, causing stuttering.
Also, if your device gets too hot, it may slow down automatically (thermal throttling) to protect itself, causing your game to stutter or making stuttering worse.
A game’s smoothness depends on how many frames it shows per second – this is called the frame rate. Ideally, the frame rate should stay steady, like 60 frames per second (FPS). But sometimes, the frame rate goes up and down a lot because the system can’t process frames evenly. For instance, complex scenes with lots of action or detailed graphics can take longer to render, causing the frame rate to drop temporarily. This fluctuation makes the gameplay look choppy or jerky, which is the stuttering you notice. Some games or devices try to limit frame rates to keep things smooth, but if the system struggles, stuttering still happens.
Your device usually runs many programs at the same time, like antivirus software, web browsers, or messaging apps. These background programs use some of the CPU, memory, or hard drive speed, leaving fewer resources available for your game. If these programs suddenly demand more resources like running updates or scans – the game might slow down for a moment. This causes stuttering, especially if your device doesn’t have a lot of extra power to begin with. Closing unnecessary programs before playing can help reduce this problem.
Many games don’t load everything all at once. Instead, they load parts of the game world, textures, sounds, or levels as you play. This is called streaming data. If the game can’t read this data quickly enough from your storage device (like a hard drive or SSD), it may pause briefly while waiting for the information. Slow or old storage devices make this worse, causing noticeable stuttering during gameplay. Upgrading to a faster SSD or making sure your game is installed on the fastest drive available can help reduce these loading pauses.
Online games need a steady connection between your device and the game’s server to send and receive data like player movements, game events, and chat messages. If your internet is slow, unstable, or has high ping (delay), data can get delayed or lost during transmission. When the game waits for this information, it can pause or jump suddenly, causing stuttering or lag. Packet loss – when some data packets don’t reach their destination – can also cause the game to freeze briefly as it tries to recover. Using a wired connection or improving your Wi-Fi can reduce these issues.
Can a slow internet speed cause game stuttering?
Yes it can – but only when you’re playing online. When you play a game that connects to other players or game servers over the internet, your device needs to send and receive a lot of information quickly. If your internet connection is slow, this data can take longer to travel back and forth, so the game might freeze or jump suddenly because it’s waiting for important information to arrive.
Besides slow speed, unstable internet connections that frequently lose signal or have interruptions can also cause stuttering. These breaks in communication force the game to pause or skip frames while it tries to catch up, leading to sudden stutters or game freezes when you're playing online. .
Not sure if your internet speed is fast enough for gaming online? Use our helpful broadband speed test to see if you’re broadband is up to speed.
How can you reduce game stuttering?
The good news is that there are many ways to reduce or even stop stuttering, depending on what’s causing it. Here are some simple and effective tips to help make your games run more smoothly:
1. Lower the graphics settings
Features like high-resolution textures, shadow quality, lighting effects, and anti-aliasing can make the game look amazing – but they also use a lot of power from your graphics card and processor. If your system is struggling to keep up, lowering these settings reduces the pressure on your hardware, which can make the game run more smoothly. If you're playing on PC, start by choosing a "medium" or "low" preset and see if the stuttering improves. You can always adjust each setting one by one later to find the best balance between looks and performance.
2. Close background programs
Your device often runs several programs at the same time, even if you’re not using them, from browsers to music or video players, file sync apps like Dropbox, and even automatic updaters. Each one uses part of your computer’s memory and CPU, which could take away power from the game. Before launching a game, close apps you don’t need to free up more resources. You can check what's running by opening the Task Manager on Windows or Activity Monitor on Mac.
3. Update graphics drivers
Graphics drivers are special software that tells your computer how to use the graphics card properly. Game developers often release updates that work best with the latest drivers, so if your drivers are outdated, your games might run poorly or stutter. To fix this, go to the official website for your graphics card (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel) and make sure you've got the most latest drivers. Installing the update can improve performance, fix bugs, and sometimes even boost frame rates.
4. Free Up Storage Space
When your hard drive or SSD is too full, your system can slow down because there’s less room for temporary files and smooth file loading. Games often load parts of the world or textures as you play, and if the drive is full or fragmented, that can cause stuttering. Try deleting old files, uninstalling unused apps, or moving large files to an external drive. Also, make sure the game is installed on your fastest drive if you have more than one.
5. Turn on V-Sync or limit frame rate
V-Sync (Vertical Sync) is a setting that helps match your game’s frame rate with your monitor’s refresh rate. This prevents screen tearing – when parts of two different frames are shown at once – and can help keep the game running more steadily. If V-Sync causes input lag, you can try limiting the frame rate instead. Limiting the maximum frame rate (for example, to 60 fps) can also reduce stress on your hardware and help avoid sudden drops that cause stuttering.
6. Install the game on an SSD
Solid-state drives (SSDs) are much faster than traditional hard drives (HDDs). When a game is installed on an SSD, it can load levels, textures, and other data more quickly. This helps prevent stuttering caused by slow data loading, especially in open-world games that constantly stream new content. If your system has both an SSD and an HDD, installing the game on the SSD can make a big difference in performance and reduce loading pauses.
Does getting faster broadband reduce game stuttering?
That depends! Getting faster broadband can help you reduce game stuttering when you’re gaming, but only if you’re only experiencing stuttering when you're gaming online. That's because If your internet is slow during an online game, it may pause or skip while your device waits for data, leading to stuttering. A faster broadband connection can reduce this problem by making sure the information travels more quickly and smoothly, which could solve the issue.
Still, faster internet won’t fix stuttering that’s not related to your broadband speed strength. games you play without an internet connection. That kind of stuttering is usually caused by your computer or console struggling to keep up with the game’s graphics or performance needs.
Also, keep in mind that a stable connection is just as important as a fast one. If your internet keeps dropping or has high latency or ping, you can still get stuttering in online games – even with high-speed broadband. If you're using WiFi and your signal keeps dropping, it may be worth looking into WiFi boosters or a setting up a wired connection rather than looking at internet speed.
Is it time to upgrade your broadband?
If you love playing online games, you’ll want your broadband to be fast and reliable enough to make everything run and play as it should. So If you’re game stuttering is related to issues with your internet, it may be time for an upgrade.
At Virgin Media, we’ve got a range of ultrafast broadband deals destined to give you more than enough speed when you’re gaming. Check out all of our broadband deals and enter your postcode a broadband package that’s fast enough for all your gaming needs.
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