Why does my Gainward RTX 5080 stutter during explosions in Helldivers 2?
During air strike missions, I noticed these irregular frame time jumps—basically a 0.1s freeze every time a big explosion went off. The Gainward RTX 5080 Storm OC runs its VRAM at 22 Gbps out of the box, but under extreme load, it was throwing a few checksum errors, forcing the driver to reset. I tried dropping the resolution to 2K to ease the load, but the hitches stayed, proving it wasn't a raw compute issue. I ended up downclocking the VRAM by 100 MHz and bumped my case fans to 1600 RPM to keep the memory cool. In RivaTuner, the frame times tightened from 11 - 35 ms down to 10 - 13 ms, and the stuttering vanished. I did experience some slight texture pop-in after the downclock, but adding 15 mV to the core voltage completely resolved it. VRAM is now 72 - 78℃, core is 64 - 69℃. After three high-intensity missions, it's finally rock solid.
