Windows 11 26H2: Random Audio Crackling and Frame Drops – High DPC Latency from NVIDIA and DirectX Drivers

Hey, I been experiencing problems my Windows 11 pc. I’m having audio pops and crackles and when playing games my frames drop randomly. I tried a lot of things to debug it. So first here are my computer specs

Operating system: Windows 11 26H2

OS build: 26300.8711

GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition

NVIDIA driver: 621.01

GPU settings: Stock settings, no overclock or undervolt

GPU temperature: Approximately 77°C while gaming

Resolution: 1440p (2K) and I have another 2k monitor

I have done LatencyMon testing and

these are the results

nvlddmkm.sys (NVIDIA graphics driver)

Highest execution: 1.334710 ms

Total execution: 2097.982240 ms

DPC count: 122,759

rspLLL64.sys

Highest execution: 0.738580 ms

Total execution: 225.767040 ms

DPC count: 78,999

dxgkrnl.sys (DirectX graphics kernel)

Highest execution: 0.490330 ms

Total execution: 1746.867870 ms

DPC count: 59,552

ndis.sys (Windows networking driver)

Highest execution: 0.464110 ms

Total execution: 56.593760 ms

Wdf01000.sys (Windows Driver Framework)

Highest execution: 0.315110 ms

Total execution: 998.157540 ms

I have also tried full clean reinstall the NVIDIA graphics drivers.

that didn’t fix anything also tried rolling it back and still nothing was fixed

I also did some Windows Reliability Monitor testing

I checked Reliability Monitor and found recurring graphics-related errors.

It was LiveKernelEvent 141 i opened the dump in WinDbg and ran !analyze -v.

The results included:

VIDEO_ENGINE_TIMEOUT_DETECTED (141)

IMAGE_NAME: nvlddmkm.sys

MODULE_NAME: nvlddmkm

Failure.Bucket: LKD_0x141_IMAGE_nvlddmkm.sys

PROCESS_NAME: Cyberpunk2077.exe

The stack included:

dxgmms2!VidSchiResetHwEngine

dxgmms2!VidSchiResetEngines

dxgmms2!VidSchiCheckHwProgressI also found

LiveKernelEvent 193 (Multiple times)

one dump was WATCHDOG-20261028-1403.dmp

I found NVIDIA Event ID 153 in event viewer too

Source: nvlddmkm

Device: \Device\Video3

GPUID: 900

That’s all I did so far I don’t know what to do next to fix it?