I've narrowed it down to a cpu issue, I was giving 6 cores (I only have 6) to the VM and from looking at htop it seems to start lagging from major cpu spikes. For a moment Skype spikes to 250% cpu usage when it launches which would explain why it triggered the issue. Is there a steadfast rule for cpu allocation to gaming VM's? So far 6 has been unstable, 3 has always been choppy on boot, and 4 seems fairly stable but has still occasionally gotten choppy. I'm currently testing 5 but I expect it will be worse than 4. I'm also only currently running at 3.3GHz and could easily overclock to ~3.9 if that would make a big difference. I find it difficult to believe that it's not just an optimization issue though since I've never had any issues with this cpu before. <div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 27, 2016 12:36 AM, "Ben J" <<a href="mailto:btpprograms@gmail.com">btpprograms@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">I've recently been having issues with my VM's framerate dropping at random. It generally boots up completely fine, but at seemingly random points it starts to stutter and doesn't stop until the VM is fully turned off and back on again. It started out being fairly rare, but now happens on almost every launch of the VM after a few minutes. My specs:Host OS: Arch LinuxGuest OS: Windows 7Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme CPU: I7-3960X Graphics: 2X EVGA GTX 580'sMy Launch Script:killall synergyssynergys QEMU_PA_SAMPLES=4096 QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=pa qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 4096 -mem-path /dev/hugepages -cpu host,kvm=off \-smp 6,sockets=1,cores=6,threads=1 \-bios /usr/share/qemu/bios.bin -vga none \-device vfio-pci,host=02:00.0,multifunction=on,x-vga=on \-device vfio-pci,host=02:00.1 \-net nic,model=virtio,vlan=0,macaddr=DE:AD:BE:EF:D4:41 \-net tap,vlan=0,id=network0,ifname=tap0,script=no,downscript=no,vhost=on \-usb -usbdevice host:046d:c534 -usbdevice host:045e:028e \-soundhw hda \-boot menu=on \-drive file=/dev/sda1,format=raw,if=virtio,cache=none \-drive file=/mnt/LinuxStorage/ISOs/Windows/Drivers/virtio.iso,id=virtiocd,if=none,format=raw -device ide-cd,bus=ide.1,drive=virtiocd The issue seems to get triggered immediately whenever I launch a Skype or Discord call. It also seems to be more likely when I'm running a game within the VM (Tested with Rocket League and Rivals of Aether). It has also happened without either of those being open though. I'm really at a loss. I've tried disabling huge pages since I suspected that I might not have enough, but that showed no difference. Restarting the computer fixes it temporarily but it usually happens again shortly after I restart. The same thing happens when I suspend and wake up the computer. Has anyone experienced this issue before? </div> </blockquote></div>