What we know about the Half Life 2 stuttering issue thus far

This site sums it up pretty well. Nvidia users need not worry that it's only their cards. It's interesting that Vampire Bloodline is having the same problem and it's a half-life 2 engine; thus, further proving that it's a game problem.

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/

I've collected the following points based on my own experience and the information collected from hundreds of forum posts on this problem.

• It occurs on both Intel and AMD CPUs of all speeds.

• It occurs on systems with 2+ GB of RAM although it appears to be worse for users with 512MB of RAM or less.

• It occurs on both ATI and NVIDIA video cards, including video cards with 256MB RAM.

• It occurs with multiple sound cards and chipsets, including the Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy, Audigy 2, NVIDIA SoundStorm, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Realtek, etc.

• It occurs regardless of in-game screen resolution.

• It occurs for both CD/DVD installations and installations downloaded via Steam.

• It occurs on all supported versions of Windows including Windows XP Service Pack 2.

• It occurs on all supported versions of ATI CATALYST and NVIDIA ForceWare drivers, including the CATALYST 4.12 and ForceWare 67.02 beta drivers that contain optimizations for Source engine games.

• There are reports that lowering in-game texture detail and/or sound quality helps. I had to set texture detail to low before I noticed an improvement. This is unacceptable considering my system specs.

• This issue is not the result of the in-game auto-save feature as many people suggest. While the auto-saving may cause stuttering, the stuttering also occurs many times between auto-save points.

• The stuttering occurs in the same spot every time but only once per the loading of that level. I have recorded a 10 second demo that illustrates this. When executing the demo multiple times, the stuttering occurs every time in exactly the same spot. However, if while the level is loaded, you go back to the location of a previous stutter, it no longer occurs.

• According to some, this problem has existed as far back as the Half-Life 2 demos that were shown at E3. Indeed, if you go back and watch some of the footage, you can hear the audio stuttering as new scenes are loaded.

• The stuttering occurs in Half-Life: Source which has significantly less resources to manage than Half-Life 2.

• Vampire: The Masquerade, which is based on Half-Life 2's Source engine is also reported to have the same stuttering issues.

So what's new. HL is 6 years old and it's still buggy as fuck. Can't honestly say the current state of affairs has me surprised. This is Valve. This is who they are. Maybe/Hopefully Nvidia can clean up their mess and get us some non-stuttering drivers.

I think we all already know that it's a Source engine issue.

the stuttering happens whenever the game has to load a new sound, the engine for some reason do not pre cache the sounds when it loads a new area.

It's happening in HL:S apparently, which is rediculous.

They need a fix for this or there will be hell raised. If this fix works for you though, all the better, GL Bat... guy

This happens in normal HL, non source, if sound precache is not enabled. I would think this would be the same problem.

Anyway to forece sound precache?

FUCKING Steam cache validation just corrupted my HL2 installaion. Mother Fuckers! I gotta uninstall and go through being steam's bitch all over agian.

Steam MUST DIE!

Pleast note that I am mildly unhappy.

These kinds of things is what patch updates are for. I mean the game just came out im not sure what version is the latest i think its 1.0 still. In due time updates will improve performance, not to mention also the videocard updates.

Originally Posted by Mikey20

These kinds of things is what patch updates are for. I mean the game just came out im not sure what version is the latest i think its 1.0 still. In due time updates will improve performance, not to mention also the videocard updates.

If it's showing up not only in HL2 but also in Vampire : Masquerade, it may be an engine problem, I don't know how they'd fix that. Or how they never noticed it before released

I'm starting to think it happens when scripted events are loaded, that's when I notice it the most.

Originally Posted by joecuddles

If it's showing up not only in HL2 but also in Vampire : Masquerade, it may be an engine problem, I don't know how they'd fix that. Or how they never noticed it before released

I noticed skipping stuttering even during the e3 demos, one of the gamespot cam recorded vids you can hear the audio stuttering before it loads a level, not entirely sure what video this is in though. On another gamespot vid showing the g-man giving his speech at the start of the game it skips when he says "again". This also happens in the released version but not all the time. At the same time i dont think any of the e3 vids really showed scenes where the stuttering would show up, like opening a door to a new part of a level which was graphically complex. Its possible its something they knew about (dont see how the hell they couldn;t have spotted it) but were unable to fix.

I noticed those hiccups as well, but just ignored them. It doesn't look like it's been fixed though. If it's some sort of deep engine problem I'm not sure how they can fix it, but lets hope they can (even though I'm not getting the issue).

Originally Posted by peacetilence

I'm starting to think it happens when scripted events are loaded, that's when I notice it the most.

Thats what i was thinking as well

Ok guys. Finally got a chance to test out this 'fix'. It fixed all the stuttering. I do get some sometimes when I quick save though, but never randomly.

Well I'm glad I read this forum everyday. I finally got around to playing HL2 a bit today and it was stuttering bad. I mean as soon as I got off the train it was stuttering. All I was able to play so far is getting to the outside of the check station so far. As soon as I took a step outside it locked up and had a sound loop. I had to manually reboot my computer and haven't messed with it since. I just figured it was a sound issue and was going to try to update my sound drivers.

Am i missing something? Ati users have had this problem?

Originally Posted by pigpen

Am i missing something? Ati users have had this problem?

Yes. Just as much as Nvidia users. It has nothing to do with the IHVs. Seems like it's Source related.

Reading the thread is fun!

From the first post :
"It occurs on both ATI and NVIDIA video cards, including video cards with 256MB RAM"

I am not sure if I am having this issue.. The only time it stutters is for about 2 seconds after the loading has gone away. It doesnt stutter at all otherwise. I have had 2 game crashes though, I can't minimize to read the error though. (Once on an elevator, another time in the water). It just froze, popped up with an error, and the sound repeated, had to ctrl+alt+del and then load at last save.

You're not having it. The stuttering after the loading screen is from the autosaves. You can disable autosaves to fix that like I did.