I see a lot of issues dealing with stuttering but most of it seems to apply to certain areas of the game or frame rates with a lot of enemies on the screen. My problem is that my game stutters every second even when I am just sitting in the character select screen. You can hear it in the audio the sound of the wind keeps re-setting. Same thing happens waiting in town the town music just skips and restarts every second and the frame rate also skips visually. It is a recent development with Diablo 3 for me.
It also seems to be intermittent but does happen with more frequency some days while others it plays perfectly smooth with no changes made from me.
I see a lot of issues dealing with stuttering but most of it seems to apply to certain areas of the game or frame rates with a lot of enemies on the screen. My problem is that my game stutters every second even when I am just sitting in the character select screen. You can hear it in the audio the sound of the wind keeps re-setting. Same thing happens waiting in town the town music just skips and restarts every second and the frame rate also skips visually. It is a recent development with Diablo 3 for me.
It also seems to be intermittent but does happen with more frequency some days while others it plays perfectly smooth with no changes made from me.
Card: GTX970
Ram: 8GB
CPU: Intel i5
Windows 7 64bit
First question being; are your graphics drivers up to date? Windows 7 is definitely 'old' now. You might need to update to Windows 10.
Second; does this occur whether your settings are maxed out / low?
You mentioned that your sound is acting strange. What's your settings for sound channels? (Found in audio). Try lowering them.
Have you manually cleaned your computer / your GPU? When's the last time you've replaced your CPU's thermal paste? Possibly you're overheating.
What DDR is your ram, and is it being eaten up by background processes?
Is it only with D3 that this happens?
That's all I can think of for now, good luck!