What is causing stutter in games in my system?

O

OSSO

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Jul 9, 2007
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A month or two ago I bought a Sapphire ATi X1950pro 512MB AGP to replace my Gigabyte nVidia 7600GS.

I play alot of driving games.
NFSC play pretty nicely with max settings. 1024 X
NFSMW plays like a dog on any settings & doesn't matter what resoloution.
Any vehicles appearing will cause a stutter.

V8 Supercars 3.
Replays stutter when more cars come into view with 60fps cap.
Without framelock it would stutter but also when the cars have gone out of view the replay will speed up.

This never happened with my 7600GS.

The frames are better than my 7600GS but when cars appear it halts for half a second.
It's really annoying since this card is supposed to be better.

I have the latest drivers for all of my system and I'm pretty sure the rest of my system should handle this card.

Can anyone isolate the problem please?

I'm thinking it's the card but I have not heard of this issue anywhere else.
 
can you list the specs of the rest of your computer? Did you use driver cleaner to remove the nvidia drivers before installing the ATI card
 
I did a fresh install of windows on both my HDD's to see if that was the problem which it wasn't unfortunatley.

I also upgraded from a P4 3.0E HT setup to what I have now and the peformance is pretty much still the same.

I'm using 7.6 Cat drivers with tray tools.

I have never overclocked the card either.
I actually underclocked it thinking that might help which it didn't
 
Check your event log to see if windows is reporting any problems.
 
Where do I find the event log?

Update:-
Only fond a Warning called UserEnv
 
i'd say its a driver issue... it could b ur hdd aswell.... i had lag issues bacause of my hd once - a full format and reinstall of windows solved the problem.... try running a hd-tach test and see how responsive ur disc is
 
m104 said:
i'd say its a driver issue... it could b ur hdd aswell.... i had lag issues bacause of my hd once - a full format and reinstall of windows solved the problem.... try running a hd-tach test and see how responsive ur disc is
Click to expand...


he said he already reinstalled windows.


One thing id try is run memtest on your memory, i know when one of my memory sticks was bad i had a lot of lag/bsods among other things
 
It could be that your GPU is over heating and causing the stuttering. What do you use to cool your system?
 
Check my HDD speeds.
The burst rates are what I expected.
160GB SATA is at 133mbps since I didn't install the SATA controller so it's running in mode 6.
80GB IDE is at 98mbps

My GPU gets up to mid 70's.
low 70's with the fan on at 90%.

I have a warranty on the card for a year.

It has done this stutter thing of both pairs of ram if have.
I was using standard ADATA 2x1GB ram before was doing his stutter thing as well.


I have pretty much bought a whole new setup because of this card thinking it was my rig hardware being too old.

Here's a question:-
I was playing sims 2 on my 7600GS with settings all maxed out at 1024 x res with little stutter.

I switched over to this card and it has a very hard time with textures and shadows.

I had to turn down the textures and shadows down a notch so I wouldn't stutter so badly.

It was to the point where the game was umplayable.

My X1950pro has a harder time with textures and shadows than my 7600GS?

That really doesn't make sense.
 
Are you certain your AGP miniport drivers (if applicable...) are up to date? Those being old, or improperly installed -- they were kinda tricky on a Gigabyte board I had once, you had to install them before installing /any/ video drivers or they never worked until you reinstalled Windows -- can screw everything up.
 
You probably have some background program running which you don't know about.
 
miniport drivers?
Never heard of them.
I'm guessing they're not applicable to my system.

Although I installed the VIA chipset drivers which I did not do before and seem to have made performance better.

Anyway I decided to try out my 7600GS again on the AMD this time which is better than my P4 rig.

It sucks. . . .hard.
on all the games I mentioned so now that card is just something to look at.:p
Don't know why I didn't notice it before.:confused:

The only game that plays better is sims2 oddly enough.
Seemed to be less stuttery with characters appearing and dissappearing but thats all, the frames were pretty bad otherwise.

Little Story:-:rolleyes:
I guess it was like when I started gaming on the PC and stopped playing on the old PS2.
Few months down the track I played the PS2 at a mates house and noticed how crap it was.
Carbon on PC with my setup looks smooth and I can tell where I'm going.
Carbon on PS2 the frames were so bad at times I could have played it just as well with my eyes shut.

Anyway:-
Did some tweaking in V8 Supercars 3 and now I can play it and watch the replays alot smoother now.

I also went over to my mates to see how the game played on this rig.
Pentuim D 3.4Ghz / 2GB 667 / 7600GT

The replays lag/stutter near the same as mine but his is more blurry at times.
So I'm putting the problem down to software optimization.

Thanks for trying to figure out what the issue could be.
This would be one of only two sites I go to which offer decent replys.
 
i thought carbon ran fine on my computer, but then again i was using a 7900gto at the time. i maxed it out and played it at 1600x1200
 
Was there not a post saying the latest CATs had problems ? I would try an older ATI driver couple of revs back at least.

And dont install the catalist control center use ATI tray tools.
 
The patch did nothing.
I think it may have made it worse.
I already have the dual-core optimizer patch too.
System restored and NFSMW is playing better.

I think I may have found where the source of the stutter is coming from.

I Think I can cross out the GPU.

The only time it stutters is when I am driving to places which I haven't been to when first starting up the game.
So areas which haven't been loaded up.

so now it's down to 3 things.

CPU, RAM speed or HDD.

I don't think it's my CPU though, I think it's still pretty capable of today's games.

RAM is DDR400 dual chanel with 2.0-3-2-5 timings.

My SATA HDD is running at 133mb's max since I didn't install the VIA SATA controller which I think your'e supposed during the install of Windows XP.

Could that be the issue?

Transffer speeds?
 
Okay I don't have the slightest idea what's causing this.

Looks like I'll just have to live with it until I get a whole new better system.

Maybe I'm expecting too much of the system I have now.:(

Thanks for trying to help anyway.
 
If the problem is loading textures for new areas of the map, then the problem is down to the transfer speed of those textures.
By far the most limiting factor is the AGP bus.

Make sure that AGP 8x is enabled and working.
If you havent installed or properly installed the motherboard Chipset drivers, this can be the result so make sure you have a good version for your board and that all the parts of the driver install correctly.
 
What soundcard/onboard chipset are you using? I once had onboard sound that would crash my system. Switched to a Sounblaster and been running smooth ever since.
 
I ran NFSMW maxed out @1280x1024 with my ex-X800XT paired with cats 7.6, not a single problem, but i had to invest some time on forum reading to get good performance:

Basically, rage3d forums recommend this steps:

* Load BIOS defaults or optimized defaults (always try to troubleshoot without overclocking)
* Install windows clean (sp2 already slipstreamed) and let windows apply all hotfixes automatically.
* After all updates are done, install latest chipset driver and reboot
* Install latest directx full, not the webdownload crap
* Install videocard drivers and reboot again
* Last step is to install sound card drivers, make sure you get latest version of them

Dont forget to apply latest patch for games, 1.3 for NFSMW iirc

Hope it helps, it helped me a lot and :D

oldmx
 
I am using an Audigy 2 ZS with the latest drivers.
I am using 7.6Cat.

I don't know what DirectX I have though.
All I know is it's 9.c and some of the files are from this year.

I may do a fresh install of windows soon to see if anything changes.
 
OSSO said:
I am using an Audigy 2 ZS with the latest drivers.
I am using 7.6Cat.

I don't know what DirectX I have though.
All I know is it's 9.c and some of the files are from this year.

I may do a fresh install of windows soon to see if anything changes.
Click to expand...

Visit microsoft to get the latest DirectX9c distributable.
It was released a few days ago.
 
Did a few mintues ago and doesn't seen to be a difference.
June 2007 redist 54MB

If I could upload a picture of the most troubled area it would make things alot easier.

Doesn't make any sense.
Get a new GPU, the frames are smoother but the drop in frames in busy areas are worse than my old card.

Frustrating I tell you.:mad:

It was like this when I had the card in my P43.0 HT OC'ed to 3.4Ghz with 2GB ram

I wonder if there is someting a little faulty with my card.

I'm tempted to get a replacement.

There's just now way in hell a PC game from 2004 can bring down a X1950pro 512MB.
 
This might give a clue.

I used ATT OSD system monitoring and I noticed whenever the game would halt a bit, the video ram would used up about 4mb.

So it's the times when a certain amount of video ram is being use.

Hmmm. . . .

Ideas anyone?
 
Nenu said:
If the problem is loading textures for new areas of the map, then the problem is down to the transfer speed of those textures.
By far the most limiting factor is the AGP bus.
Click to expand...

yeah right, the AGP bus is slower then an ATA bus :rolleyes:

you've tried running Need for speed, then killing everything under your username in task manager? Free up the system resources, probibly wont do much but its worth a shot.

have you tried putting the game on the other drive? It might still be a drive problem.

Look for patches to the game? Maybe its just bad software? gamespot will carry any softare updates.

How long is the studder and does your card still appear to be rendering (move the mouse around on screen). Does the sound skip?

download 3dmark 06. Does that, at any point, display similar skipps? If yes, does the frame counter number keep getting larger?
 
For what it's worth, NFS:MW runs perfectly fine maxed out, 1024x768, on an X850XT with a Pentium D 3.0GHz, an IDE hard drive, and 1GB of RAM.

To the guy with the 7900GTO, Need for Speed Carbon actually runs better on an X1950 Pro than on the 7900 cards - even the 7900GTX! I think this is due to the pixel shader effects. I'm limited to 1280x960 with no motion blur.
 
Ineed NFSC does play better than NFSMW on my X1950pro.
It was the other way around with the 7600GS but both were pretty crap.
Yes I did stop what I could in task manager and no it didn't do anything.
So far I know there is a slow link somewhere and it stutters when more than 4mb of video ram is being gulped at one time.

When the video ram is freeing up or only being used a bit gameplay is smooth.

I wish I knew what the destinations are before the video ram.

Okay did a bench test on SANDRA and my HDD SATA 160GB 8mb cache has the read performance of a maxtor 80GB ata100 with 2mb cache.

Starts off at 50mbps and starts dropping from there.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
yeah right, the AGP bus is slower then an ATA bus :rolleyes:
Click to expand...


Looking at his system specs, he has enough ram to support pre-caching of textures into ram.
Unless the pre-caching is using a lot of cpu it shouldnt affect performance as it is a background operation and/or performs the loading before a level starts.
This means the hard drive is unlikely to be part of this issue.

I reckon the glitches he is experiencing are down to the speed data is copied from main memory, through the AGP bus onto the graphics cards memory.
If the AGP bus is running at full speed (8x) it will have 2.1GB/s bandwidth. This is approximately the same as PCI-E 8x in one direction.
Sadly, the AGP bus can only transfer in one direction at a time so wont be as smooth as PCI-E 8x and therefore some hitching might be par for the course with modern game texture sizes.

It is crucial to make sure that the AGP bus speed is running at 8x or there will likely be some performance issues.
 
Sounds like the problem is he hasn't followedthe golden rule for a windows install.

1. Slipstreamed install disk with all latest updates. Reboot
2. Windows update to get all the new crap. Reboot
3. Latest Chipset Drivers. Reboot
4. Latest graphics drivers. Reboot
5. Whatever you feel like
 
I sure as hell didn't do it that way.
I have an OEM copy of windowsXP home sp2.
Installed that.

Installed the GPU drivers.

Installed the sound drivers for audigy ZS.

updated windows using windows updater.

I don't even know what a slipstreamed install disk with the latest updates is and where to find it.:(

The golden rule was never told to me damn it!

I hope your'e right.

Why would you have to install everything in this specific way?
 
lol, its not a golden rule, he made that up :)
His technique is a good rule of thumb but other techniques will work fine too.

A slipstreamed CD is one that has had the latest service packs and patches added and a new CD image made. this speeds up the installation process dramatically if there are lots of patches to install - especially if you are downloading them via Windows update!

There are a lot of guides telling you how to make a slipstreamed image.
Whatever you do, dont download an image via bittorrent etc as they could include a surprise you dont know about.
 
Maybe thats why Carbon runs a bit smoother on my 80GB IDE HDD.

I did do the installation sequence slightly differently.
But still the last thing I did was install the updates for windows.

I also wonder if it's to do with the AGP bus as someone said it transfers only one way at a time unlike PCI-E. . .

It wouldn't be too expensive for me to change to PCI-E as all I'll have to do is get a new motherboard and GPU.
DFI Lanparty Ultra SLi nf4 chipset motherboard and a ATi X1950XTX or something along those lines.

I know it's set to AGP 8X so that wouldn't contribute.

Benchtested my HDD's with HDTach and they both have an average transfer speed of mid to high 50's and decreases from there.

Burst rates read correctly too so it isn't the HDD's.
 
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