Doom 3 stutter on 6800GT

[Zuwadza]

Today when I started up Doom 3 I noticed a stutter that wasn't there when I was playing it the night before. It's just a periodic stutter that happens every couple of seconds regardless of what I'm doing. I could be standing still and it will still freeze a little every couple of seconds. Last night I was playing it at 1024x768 medium quality, with vsync on and it was running smoothly and now today I can run it at 800x600 medium quality without vsync and I get the stutter.

System specs are:

Athlon XP 2600+
Leadtek 6800GT
512MB Samsung DDR400
DFI Ultra Infinity II Rev A
WD Caviar 80GB

Anyone have any idea what's going on?

 

[darkego]

I have no idea. You didnt overclock anything between them did you?

 

[Stealth5325]

Why would you post just to tell someone you don't know an answer?

 

[K10wN]

Oh never mind that's strange.

 

[Firebot]

Today when I started up Doom 3 I noticed a stutter that wasn't there when I was playing it the night before. It's just a periodic stutter that happens every couple of seconds regardless of what I'm doing. I could be standing still and it will still freeze a little every couple of seconds. Last night I was playing it at 1024x768 medium quality, with vsync on and it was running smoothly and now today I can run it at 800x600 medium quality without vsync and I get the stutter.

I had the same problem, and also using a Leadect 6800GT. Disabling Fast write on your hard drive is supposed to help eliminate the problem, but I still do get the stuttering problem once in a while that I didn't have when I was running on a 4200 (did get better without fast write).

 

[PsycoGeek]

I had the same problem, and also using a Leadect 6800GT. Disabling Fast write on your hard drive is supposed to help eliminate the problem, but I still do get the stuttering problem once in a while that I didn't have when I was running on a 4200 (did get better without fast write).

That would be disabeling fast writes for AGP, not the hard drive.

 

[oozish]

ok, stutter is almost always a memory problem of somesort, or a result of your harddrive being otherwise occupied.

Here's some suggestions:

1. Optimize your memory subsystem (plenty of tweak guides on this).

2. Put your paging file on a separate harddrive.

3. Optimize the doomconfig.cfg (look into doom3 tweaks on google)

4. Turn off background services...a services tweak guide is available at http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/OSguides.htm

Obviously this includes background programs like virus scanners but also optimzing your services that AREN'T needed is important to a lean system.


Optimizing the settings in doom is very important to smooth gameplay as it is really highly configurable and really isnt' optimized as is as they might lead you to believe.

Here's my autoexec config with a 6800GT based on reading lots about doom3 optimizations:

seta r_useDepthBoundsTest "1"

set com_allowConsole "1" //tilde key only for console//
seta s_numberofspeakers "6"

seta image_lodbias "-1"

seta image_rounddown "0"

seta r_displayrefresh "85"

seta r_gamma "1.3"

seta com_VideoRam "256"

seta image_downSizeLimit "1024"
seta image_ignoreHighQuality "0"
seta image_downSizeBumpLimit "1024"
seta image_downSizeSpecularLimit "128"
seta image_downSizeBump "1"
seta image_downSizeSpecular "1"


//Testing ansisotropy//
seta image_anisotropy "8"

seta image_cacheMinK "32768"
seta image_useCache "1"
seta image cacheMegs "256"




seta r_preload "1"

seta com_showFPS "0"

// Record Demo - start & stop with F10 //
set startrec "recordDemo; set demorec vstr stoprec"
set stoprec "stopRecording; set demorec vstr startrec"
set demorec "vstr startrec"
bind F10 vstr demorec


// Clean Screenshot - no Gun or HUD in picture //
bind F11 "set ui_showGun 0; set g_showHud 0; screenshot; set g_showHud 1; set ui_showGun 1"

Keep in mind I gun for best image quality so I have visual tweaks that will actually increase the load on your system...these are visual tweaks: lodbias, "downsize" commands, and rounddown, so delete those if you want pure performance enhancements. Configs vary considering vid card and system, this works well with mine.

 

[colin]

It could also be a result of your GT not getting enough power.

Do you have a decent power supply?

The GT should be the only thing drawing power on one whole string of molex connectors.