Project sudden stuttering weird CPU behaviour

Hi guys. I have a project that has begun to exhibit weird behaviour. It's my 'jam' project template - various channels with different VST amp sims for different tones. I am input monitoring my guitar. It began to stutter more and more, although the project is very plugin light and my buffer setting was HIGHER than usual. It reached a point where it became unusable whilst I was changing nothing except amp settings. If I bypass plugins one by one, the stuttering WORSENS. Performance monitor shows the more plugins I bypass, cores begin to empty, but the first one builds up. Once all plugins are bypassed, the first core is in the red and audio is a mess. What's going on! Thanks

The 'blank' template project which contains no particular amp sims is now exhibiting the same problems. All my other files are fine - ones running many many more plugins (the same plugins)

Hey EtherealEntity!
I had the same problem and I solved it by doing a system restore. I chose a date on which I knew my projects were working properly. Apparently the glitch is caused by some automatic driver updates that my computer performed. I desabled my automatic update manager (asus) because I'd rather have the most stable system, not the necessarily most updated. Everything is working fine now.