Subtle freezing but still playing?

Hi all,

So I’ve been having this annoying consistent problem. After about a couple of minutes (regardless on if auto save is on or not), the entire session will lock up and then recover. During that lock up, I can’t play any MIDI notes, or interact with the GUI at all, however the music is still playing. Even my desk with its time code indicator stops and then recovers when things come back.

I’ve been checking everywhere. I checked Event Viewer, Performance Monitor, killed all services that may be affecting the session, removed possible problematic USB devices, and I still have this problem.

To understand my problem a bit better, might be best to detail my system:
CPU: Intel i7 6800k
MOBO: x99 based Gigabyte Gaming Motherboard (I’ll give the exact version if necessary, but more on this in a second)
RAM: 64GB DDR4 2600
GPU: GTX 1080
Soundcard: RME Fireface UFX II
Monitors: Dual LG 1440p monitors running at 144Hz

Now I’ve been subtlety seeing two things about my setup:

  1. x99, RME, and NVIDIA don’t play nicely together. This is evident by the mouse hack I had to use just to get the audio to play right (aka enable mouse trails…crazy I know).

2)NVIDIA drivers in general can be problematic for audio production…I’m not sure how true this is, but I have been reading that people have had better luck with AMD cards.

So far though, it seems the problem could be the video card since I see the same stutter happen when I unlplug and replug one of the monitors (to also test, I did set the refresh down to 60Hz on both just to be sure), but before I make the decision to possibly invest in a new GPU, is there anything else I could try before making that plunge?

I think a lot of my problems could be solved be changing from x99 in general, but since redoing my entire setup would be a little too expensive right now, what comparable GPU would you recommend? So far, I’ve been seeing the AMD RX 570, Radeon Pro W5500 and Radeon Pro WX7100 come up in conversations with good results.