I´ve used NVidia cards for at least 10 years & have had stuttering occur only during the last 8 months, I´m using a Gigabyte 650Ti that might be a bit longtoothed - but it works.

Anyhow:
A: My audio-problems have been related to certain revisions of the Nvidia drivers, so I´ve uninstalled the latest when stutter occurs after an update & it seems like 359.06 (december 2015) is the latest I "need".
I haven´t even bothered looking for new drivers since May.
I.e. try older drivers.

B: I´m on Windows 10 & the latest big updates enabled a couple of services & background apps that I had disabled, which made Sonar seem sluggish - no stuttering though.
From memory the services were related to synchronization between units (tablet, computer, phone etc.), which I don´t have any need for anyway.

I´d also check for unnecessary autostarting background programs (& services), I use Sysinternals Autoruns,  & do a thorough scan with Anti-Malwarebytes & Windows Defender.

Good luck!

pgw

I´d also check for unnecessary autostarting background programs (& services), I use Sysinternals Autoruns

Good luck!

Autoruns is the best tool ever.  It is like an advanced "msconfig" where you can see what automatically runs and uncheck anything (including scheduled tasks, services, drivers, codecs, etc).  Be careful though, I have had to boot into Windows safe mode a couple of times to re-check something Windows really needed.
 
You can also set it up to verify code signing, as well as automatically submit hashes to VirusTotal to see the detection rate from 50+ malware scanners for all items in the list.
https://technet.microsoft.../sysinternals/bb963902
 
Sysinternals Process Explorer is an advanced Task Manager, which lets you see all currently running processes.  You can also configure it to verify code signatures, as well as automatically check everything against the VirusTotal database.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653
 
I use these tools all the time to de-crapify my PC and keep it running smooth for audio

I have the same graphics card.  No problems from day one.  I did download the most recent WHQL-approved drivers.
 
Windows 8.1 system here with very basic DAW tweaks.  (The rest of my specs are listed below).
 

Thanks for the responses, guys.
 
I'm pretty certain I don't have any viruses or anything. And I've tried turning off all the unnecessary background animations and so forth with no change to the issues experienced. And as mentioned earlier, I tried a driver from more than two years ago; again, no change.
 
The behavior only began after installing the graphics card (and additional RAM). Now the only thing that appears to make audio play smoothly (short of disabling the graphics card's driver) is having a Firefox window open in the background, as I described above.
 
I have a similar setup to promidi, just with a somewhat older CPU (which worked fine previously), a slightly newer NVidia, and with him running Platinum while I'm still on X3. I don't know if the upgrade to SPlat will make any difference with the issue, but it'd be nice...

I know it's a hassle to open the case, but does the problem persist if you remove the new RAM?

Have you tried running a PCI bus latency monitoring application like latencymon to see what that reports?

That Firefox thing seems odd though. I wonder if it's something to do with memory allocation by Windows somehow....

The only time I can recall a video card causing audio problems was many, many years ago when the then current Nvidia driver kept polling the cpu/CPI bus like mad. Which is why I stopped using Nvidia then and haven't used an Nvidia card/chipset since. Though AMD have caused one or two headaches over the years as well.

The build comment above may be applicable. I remember 359.06 being a stable build. Nvidia began introducing another software component this year (forget the name offhand) but the first few iterations caused issues for me, so I had 359.06 for several months. If you did not specifically delete those, Nvidia leaves the installers in the appropriate sub directory. Also do not forget that a system restore is a quick fix to upgrade issues.

Here is an out there thought....  maybe, just maybe you have been unlucky enough to have picked up a faulty GT750 video card.  That Firefox thing certainly lends a small bit of weight to this hypothesis. 

Certainly, if it's possible, would not hurt to swap it out for another card - that is if you can find (or borrow) a comparable one to test this.

Sorry for the delayed response, guys. I was trying some different ideas, including some given here, and haven't had much chance to come report back on here. Long story short, the behavior still persists, to where I've gotten into the habit of just opening up a blank Firefox window when I open a project. It's a simple workaround, but a workaround nonetheless, one I wish I didn't have to do.
 
 

tlw
I know it's a hassle to open the case, but does the problem persist if you remove the new RAM?
 

 
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried removing the new RAM, as well as swapping it all around in multiple configurations, but it made no difference in any case.
 
 

tlw
Have you tried running a PCI bus latency monitoring application like latencymon to see what that reports?

 
I haven't tried that. Do you think the results from such an application would provide any insights into what could be going on?
 
 

mettelus
The build comment above may be applicable. I remember 359.06 being a stable build. Nvidia began introducing another software component this year (forget the name offhand) but the first few iterations caused issues for me, so I had 359.06 for several months. If you did not specifically delete those, Nvidia leaves the installers in the appropriate sub directory. Also do not forget that a system restore is a quick fix to upgrade issues.
 

 
Well like I said in an older post, I tried several older drivers (as old as I could find for this card), but all to no avail for the issue.
 
 

promidi
Here is an out there thought....  maybe, just maybe you have been unlucky enough to have picked up a faulty GT750 video card.  That Firefox thing certainly lends a small bit of weight to this hypothesis. 

Certainly, if it's possible, would not hurt to swap it out for another card - that is if you can find (or borrow) a comparable one to test this.
 

 
Unfortunately, I'm well past the return/exchange date for the card, and I don't currently have access to a comparable one either. I did try removing and reseating this one, but the issue remained.
 
Would you reckon it's a hardware flaw, though? The whole thing with having Firefox open to stabilize performance seems pretty software-centric to me.
 
I don't know; it's weird. But thus is the digital world, eh? :P

dimelives1
 
Unfortunately, I'm well past the return/exchange date for the card, and I don't currently have access to a comparable one either. I did try removing and reseating this one, but the issue remained.
 

Does your PC motherboard have on board video?  If so, could you not remove the GTX750 and configure your system to use the on board video.

Now, of course, I am only suggesting this as a test and not as a permanent solution.  However, it is certainly worth a try just to rule out the card.  If I was an IT engineer looking at this issue on my machine, I would certainly give this try.

promidi
Does your PC motherboard have on board video?  If so, could you not remove the GTX750 and configure your system to use the on board video.

Now, of course, I am only suggesting this as a test and not as a permanent solution.  However, it is certainly worth a try just to rule out the card.  If I was an IT engineer looking at this issue on my machine, I would certainly give this try.
 

 
Yes, up until recently I had been using the onboard GPU for years with no issues like this. I needed to get the GT-730 to be able to use an unrelated program on my computer that required OpenGL support (of which my onboard graphics had none).
 
Also, like I mentioned in post #12, before I discovered the Firefox workaround, another way that I found to get Sonar running smoothly was to temporarily disable the NVIDIA's driver in Device Manager. Though I'd lose the Windows Aero effects and a few other minor visual qualities, it at least got my projects to run well.
 
So I'm pretty certain the problem is between the rest of my system and the video card, or, at the very least, its drivers (new or old).