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Graphic lag or network lag?

O

olmek

n00b
Joined
Jul 25, 2012
Messages
8
I am experiencing a very unique kind of lag that I've never gotten before. Whenever I am in game, regardless of game (WoW, SWOTR, DOTA2, ect.) I experience these "micro-stutters". The game will just stop for a milisecond and then quickly catch back up with itself about once every 5 seconds or so.

It is NOT FPS dropping. It is NOT input latency. It's just as I described it, and I cannot find out what is causing it.

I have more than powerful enough hardware for the games and even have tried them on all low settings without any success. CPU and GPU temps seem to both be below 70 degrees. But at the same time, I have a decent network connection, so I have no idea what it is.

Any suggestions or ways to troubleshoot the problem?


It is extremely annoying and almost makes the games unplayable.

Thank you!

-CPU: AMD Phenom x4 980
-GPU: ATI HD 6950 2GB
-RAM: 4GB
-MOBO: AsRock 990FX Extreme3
-HDD: old WDD 320GB 7200rpm (<could this be problem maybe?)
-700w PSU
-ect.


Let me know what you think guys, thanks!
 
hmmm, it could be a hard disk problem. Have you tried running a chkdsk on it? Or maybe getting a free version of hard disk regenerator and running it to see if there are any bad blocks on your drive.
 
Could be antivirus or some other program running in the background.

Could be a bad/missing driver.

Is this only online games?
 
You only mention online games so the issue could also be your network adapter OR your connection having some packet loss.

Tried running a ping -t www.google.com for a while (minutes or hours)?
 
I'd guess it's an I/O problem, maybe not a physical issue with the HDD but something running in the background eating up I/O time on your storage. Try a single player game and see if the problem still happens?
 
I have seen people here complain that this happened with certain USB devices, so if you just got a new mouse or keyboard that could be the culprit.
 
reaper12 said:
hmmm, it could be a hard disk problem. Have you tried running a chkdsk on it? Or maybe getting a free version of hard disk regenerator and running it to see if there are any bad blocks on your drive.
Click to expand...

Alright I'm not sure how long this takes, but I'm going to try it on next restart and let you know. Am I looking for anything specific?

Mozex said:
Could be antivirus or some other program running in the background.

Could be a bad/missing driver.

Is this only online games?
Click to expand...

NOT only online games. Happens in Crysis2 offline as well. So I guess it really is not a network problem. I have tried updating my mobo and video card driverrs. Anything else im missing for drivers?

I do not run any antivirus and windows firewall is turned off.

hotcrandel said:
Exclude folders that your games live in on your antivirus real time scanning, and test.
Click to expand...

I do not use any anti virus software.

kalston said:
You only mention online games so the issue could also be your network adapter OR your connection having some packet loss.

Tried running a ping -t www.google.com for a while (minutes or hours)?
Click to expand...

Just tested Crysis2 singleplayer and its pretty bad, almost worse. So I guess its not only online games.

grambo said:
I'd guess it's an I/O problem, maybe not a physical issue with the HDD but something running in the background eating up I/O time on your storage. Try a single player game and see if the problem still happens?
Click to expand...

Like stated, single player games have trouble as well. My task manager looks very empty with minimal load on my CPU cores. What else could be eating resources? And I'm not sure what you mean by input/output?

Mozex said:
I have seen people here complain that this happened with certain USB devices, so if you just got a new mouse or keyboard that could be the culprit.
Click to expand...

Just tried it with different peripheals but with no success.

---------------------------------------------------

So now that weve weeded out network lag as an option, what in the WORLD could it be? Perhaps some type of setting in my Catalyst? Maybe improper hardware seating? The way my RAM is put in?

Any suggestions welcomed, thanks!
 
Just so you know micro-stutter describes a different problem that I do not think you are having (decreased percieved FPS with constant logged FPS)

Your issue does sound like it could be the hard drive loading up textures, maps, sounds etc.

If some of your games don't require too much ram and not much hard drive space (im looking at DOTA2, but if you have any others they will work too) then you can install them on a ramdisk to see if your hard drive is the bottleneck.

You have 4GB of memory so you can make a 2 - 2.5 GB ramdisk and install DOTA2 on it and test it again (note that any computer restart will wipe the drive clean again) .

edit: ImDisk virtual drive is one that i use.
edit2: btw, what windows you running?
 
Make sure when updating your graphics drivers that you are doing a clean update and all of the traces of the previous drivers are gone, a lot of issues people have with their graphics involves drivers that just didn't take fully. I know I've fixed many many computers that were resolved with just doing clean installs.
 
serpretetsky said:
Just so you know micro-stutter describes a different problem that I do not think you are having (decreased percieved FPS with constant logged FPS)

Your issue does sound like it could be the hard drive loading up textures, maps, sounds etc.

If some of your games don't require too much ram and not much hard drive space (im looking at DOTA2, but if you have any others they will work too) then you can install them on a ramdisk to see if your hard drive is the bottleneck.

You have 4GB of memory so you can make a 2 - 2.5 GB ramdisk and install DOTA2 on it and test it again (note that any computer restart will wipe the drive clean again) .

edit: ImDisk virtual drive is one that i use.
edit2: btw, what windows you running?
Click to expand...

Alright. Is there an easier way besides that? Like a checkdsk or something? I guess ill give it a shot. Was looking to buy an SSD soon anyway though, so I might just wait for that.

Cube Rhino said:
Make sure when updating your graphics drivers that you are doing a clean update and all of the traces of the previous drivers are gone, a lot of issues people have with their graphics involves drivers that just didn't take fully. I know I've fixed many many computers that were resolved with just doing clean installs.
Click to expand...

This sounds like it could help, but ive never done this before. Do the steps on this link look OK? http://social.bioware.com/2003484/blog/13857/
 
Check your DPC latency on your sound card drivers.
 
I see tools that can check DPC latency, but none that can check it "on my sound card drivers" (my sound is onboard my mobo to begin with)... could you please explain a bit more?

Sorry my hardware knowledge is not up to the level of most of the forum users here :)
 
So I ran a DPC latency checker while I was playing a game that was skipping.

This one to be exact = http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml.

It stayed really low and always green no matter what. Is there anyway I could test the DPC latency for a specific thing like sound drivers as you suggested?



Other than that, I am about to try the clean install of video drivers.
 
running wired or wireless for you network connection?

if you are running wireless, try a hard-wired connection and see if anything changes.
 
You have a really nice computer. I would say replace that hard drive with a 64GB SSD for your operating system and run nothing but games off of the hard drive. The hard drive will then queried only for gaming stuff and not general OS stuff.
 
I'm thinking it s a Hard drive problem or an application that is loaded at startup, runs in the background that could be taking up cycles. An example would be using Acronis Backup software in that it is always backing up versus using the schedule option.
 
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