PC troubleshooting help needed.

Specs:
RTX 3060
i5-8400
ASRock H310M-HDV
8gb ram 2666mhz
Corsair RM700
Seagate 7200 1Tb
Grabbed a CPU cooler too.

Finally got the last part in today after ordering everything online. Just finished the build, installed Windows 11, and grabbed the drivers for the card. Figured I'd jump straight into some gaming. Downloaded Call of Duty, cranked settings to high, and FPS was sitting pretty at 130-140. But then things get weird—the game starts acting up. The frame rate looks fine, then suddenly tanks to 60 or something, causing these massive stutters right when I'm in the middle of a fight. It happens constantly.
Checked temperatures using HWInfo and everything seems fine, hovering around 50 C.
Honestly, I'm lost. Could be a Windows issue, bad drivers, or who knows... just staring at a screen here.

Even after capping it at 60fps, I'm still seeing the same thing—it just tanks down to 20-40...

Download MSI Afterburner and HWInfo and grab some readings while you're actually playing:

GPU clock
GPU load
NVIDIA use (memory used)
Max CPU temp
Min CPU frequency

My money is on the NVIDIA capacity. It’s the only thing that makes sense for an FPS drop that massive, unless you're looking at a hardware failure or some driver mess.

Call of Duty loves to gobble up NVIDIA, easily pushing past 4-5GB, and you're sitting there with only 3GB.
Just because a game asks for more than what your card can handle doesn't mean you'll hit a wall immediately, but if the gap is wide enough, you always hit that breaking point where the FPS just tanks.

Google which Call of Duty settings eat through the most NVIDIA, dial those back, and see if that fixes it.

I was testing out the card at a buddy's place to see how it holds up. He’s running a Ryzen 5 2600. It handled Call of Duty and PUBG on ultra settings without breaking a sweat—zero drops or anything like that.

Grab the new drivers and wipe the old ones clean using this tool

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details...-download.html

Install those new ones you just downloaded.
While that's running, pull the ethernet cable. You need to cut the internet connection so macOS doesn't try to be "helpful" and auto-install its own driver over yours.
We need to be 100% sure the drivers aren't the culprit here.

Once that's done, run those measurements I asked for. Otherwise, there's really nothing else to talk about.

Locked the GPU Core Lock at 1809.5MHz.
Locked the memory at 2003.4MHz.
GPU load's sitting at 95%. Just great.
NVIDIA usage sitting at 2945 MB.

CPU hitting 57°C. Not exactly breaking any records, but I'll take it.
CPU min freq - 797MHz (if that’s the clock speed you were talking about)

Just fired up Call of Duty thinking it might play like Fortnite, but it’s a totally different beast. It runs fine on high settings with maybe 70 FPS, but then the frame rates just tank out of nowhere constantly.

It’s the exact same engine. You should probably try testing it with something else, maybe Uncharted or something along those lines.

boldpilot3 said:Locked the GPU Core Lock at 1809.5MHz.
Locked the memory at 2003.4MHz.
GPU load's sitting at 95%. Just great.
NVIDIA usage sitting at 2945 MB.

CPU hitting 57°C. Not exactly breaking any records, but I'll take it.
CPU min freq - 797MHz (if that’s the clock speed you were talking about)

Your memory is tapped out. I'd mess around with the settings a bit.
Still doesn't explain everything though—an RTX 3060 usually pulls better numbers than this.

Since your GPU load is sitting at 95%, you can rule out CPU issues and stuff like that.

Did you try that driver fix yet?

Just finished installing Windows 11

There's absolutely no excuse for those kinds of frame drops. Look, just grab MSI Afterburner—head into settings and then monitoring—so you can track your CPU and GPU temps, clock speeds, NVIDIA usage, and RAM consumption while you're actually playing.

It could also be a software issue. If it’s a fresh install, macOS might be throwing a fit in the background, like running updates or something, which can definitely impact performance, though usually not to this extent.

Is it possible I've just got a trash card because of that 3GB of NVIDIA? It feels totally inadequate for these high-detail titles. Everything else looks fine to me—temps are solid, even hitting 76C on the GPU, and everything else seems chill enough.