Hmmm, stuttering bad in HL2, or skipping?

IceWind said:
Same problem here. I'm gonna try turning off AGP fastwrites and changing sound quality to medium. But I sure as hell aint gonna freaking reduce my texture quality!

Now I wish I had an ATI card.....owell. :(
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According to driver heaven the Radeon X800Pro and 6800GT are pretty close. Considering those cards compete directly with each other it's not bad. Of course the X800XT-PE whips that ass, none of the top cards run it badly.
 
I get it so bad I can't even understand what people are saying and it locks the machine up for up to 30 seconds at a time. I've updated all my drivers to the latest ones, so tonight I'm going to kick off a defrag and see if that helps it. First off I spent 3 hours trying to get through the Steam BS just so I can play the game that I bought at a store, now I can't even play it because everytime I go to do something it stutters so bad its unplayable. Thanks Valve!
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
According to driver heaven the Radeon X800Pro and 6800GT are pretty close. Considering those cards compete directly with each other it's not bad. Of course the X800XT-PE whips that ass, none of the top cards run it badly.
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Those benchmarks at DH are completely false. Hell, they didnt even run the benchmarks...they simply stole them straight off some old ATI PR Slides.

Please, everyone reading this, refrain from ever using anything you see at DH for any decisions, arguments, facts, etc. They are obviously ATI biased, and will stop at nothing to make ATI look better.
 
My machine:
p4 2.53b
512mb pc1066 rdram
Geforce 4 Ti4600
Asus P4t533-c
Emu 1820M souncard/box
Event TR-8 Studio Monitors
200gig 7200rpm WD se drive with 2 partitions

I got this in the very beginning of playing slightly.

It's almost gone entirely after the initial train sequence, HOWEVER I'm using an 1820M prosumer soundcard(about $500) which isn't exactly a solution to this problem.

BTW once you play on studio monitors, playing on regular speakers just sounds silly :p

I got the impression that it's their lipsyncy thing lagging everything slightly. My sound processing is almost entirely offboard so it may alleviate the stuttering a bit. I'm not sure here, but that's my best guess.
 
Same problem here.
Went from the memory leak error to this, but I can actually play the game now.
Happens mostly when someone starts talking and when music starts.
Great game so far, just kind of lose the immersion factor with the stuttering.
 
This is what I can say is not causing it for me, because i've tried all these fixes.

RAM - memtest comes back ok... all other games including doom3, tribes vengance, sims 2, matrix online, dark age of camelot, etc have no problems.

nvidia nfoce drivers (tried 66.71, latest stable (forget the version #) and the latest best out.)

hard disk fragmentation

sound quality settings ingame or in windows (dxdiag and sound acceleration or in control panel)

sound card drivers (tried http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/ even, which i never even heard of, but it works pretty decent. :) origial drivers from MS, and the OEM drivers from creative)

PCI slot that the creative card is using (i moved it to PCI slot 3 as per knowledge base article on steampowered)

and also onboard (totally different sound chip - AC97 trash), same problem.

the biggest thing is that turning off sound ingame and just using closed captions (LOL)
fixes it for awhile, and then it locks up visually. this is not an auto-save problem, i feel the slight stutter ingame and then it's fine, also it's not a "Loading..." problem, this happens half-way in the middle of a level.

the cpu is not overheating - using MBM temps are normal, and ambient is about 45° i have the window open, hehe. the GPU is not overheating, feels moderately warm to the touch.

this is a game-stopping problem and it's starting to piss me off pretty good. my friend with nearly similar specs (all the same except he uses a P4 2.4 + 9800xt where i have a64 3000+ + 9800pro) played all the way through without a break for 11 hours and beat the game. i feel like going to Gabe Newell's house, and holding his computer hostage while i play on it, but i fear that alot of people would be in line before me.
 
Same symptoms as everyone else. Happens in the middle of the level. Audio will loop for a couple seconds, video will pause, windows cursor comes up over the targetting reticle and a couple seconds later I'm back at the desktop. The machine never locks up, only the game. If, during the audio looping, I hit the windows key on the keyboard it gives me the Start menu that's just as responsive as any other time.

Athlon XP-M 2500+ Barton currently at stock. (Good temps.)
1GB of upper-mid level Corsair XMS PC4000.
MSI K7N2-ILSR.
Sapphire 9800 Pro 128 playing at all stock speeds under Omega drivers.
Audigy 2 ZS Platinum.
 
I had the same problem with the stupid freezing and looped audio. Thankfully installing the new nvidia drivers, switching to medium sound quality, and reducing the o/c on my card fixed it. No idea which one of them worked, since I did them all at once. I still get a slight pause when autosaving though.
 
CyberCRAP said:
I had the same problem with the stupid freezing and looped audio. Thankfully installing the new nvidia drivers, switching to medium sound quality, and reducing the o/c on my card fixed it. No idea which one of them worked, since I did them all at once. I still get a slight pause when autosaving though.
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Thats to be expected, every single game i've come across does it with autosave.
 
Same problem here. Except that I know that it's not autosaving. The GMAN intro at the beginning stutters a LOT. wawawawawake-up Gorgorgorgorgordan...

ARGH. I'm going to try updated ATI & Creative drivers tonight. And Defrag. Oh -- and perhaps a sacrificial chicken?
 
Same here.

It has even locked my machine up twice.


It has nothing to do with me de-fragging either. I did that before the install and my HD is clean as a whistle.
 
[Fate]Doom said:
Same here.

It has even locked my machine up twice.


It has nothing to do with me de-fragging either. I did that before the install and my HD is clean as a whistle.
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Yea, just recently defragged and about 30 minutes later it locked up completley.
 
I have the same problem. It only happens once or twice per level though. All suggestions I've tried haven't worked.

Specs:
2.4C->3.0ghz
9700 pro
sound blaster
512 pc3200
80gig wd
 
My system is completely at stock and while I have no hitching and stuttering I did just have a BSOD. Using 61.77s.
 
same here, sound stutters see sig for system..

Doom 3 and far cry worked wonderful, i just think it is a HL2 problem... Maybe they should have asked JC for help. :)
 
Just logged into the forums here to see if anyone else was having a stuttering problem...hm I guess I'll just join the crowd! :( The game runs "flawlessly". absolutely beautiful, and then it will stutter.

My initial tests show that the game is only using around 350mb ram, I have plenty free! While running the game in a window and watching system resources, it stutters when there is no shortage of ram. It appears the game may be accessing the HD for some reason though.

System spects are athlon xp @2.21, hercules gtxp, 768 pc2700 ram, radeon 9800pro. I think I'll check out CS:S for any issues. But this is very dissapointing that they release the game with what seems to be a serious bug affecting many people.
 
Fistandantilus said:
Just logged into the forums here to see if anyone else was having a stuttering problem...hm I guess I'll just join the crowd! :( The game runs "flawlessly". absolutely beautiful, and then it will stutter.

My initial tests show that the game is only using around 350mb ram, I have plenty free! While running the game in a window and watching system resources, it stutters when there is no shortage of ram. It appears the game may be accessing the HD for some reason though.

System spects are athlon xp @2.21, hercules gtxp, 768 pc2700 ram, radeon 9800pro. I think I'll check out CS:S for any issues. But this is very dissapointing that they release the game with what seems to be a serious bug affecting many people.
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It is accessing the HD because of the autosave feature. 95.6 % of my sutters are from autosaves.
 
Well, I'm now able to play the game and enjoy it. Here's what I did...

Went into the cfg(C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\username\half-life 2\hl2\cfg) and changed the following:

snd_mixahead from 0.1 to 0
and
sv_force preload from 1 to 0

Setting any audio option to anything but 2 speakers and low quality gives me static.
I still get a stutter here and there, but it is so much better now. Hope this helps.
 
jaspur said:
Well, I'm now able to play the game and enjoy it. Here's what I did...

Went into the cfg(C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\username\half-life 2\hl2\cfg) and changed the following:

snd_mixahead from 0.1 to 0
and
sv_force preload from 1 to 0

Setting any audio option to anything but 2 speakers and low quality gives me static.
I still get a stutter here and there, but it is so much better now. Hope this helps.
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I got worse audio stuttering and static when I did that. And it didn't fix my problem. I wonder if mixing further ahead might help?
 
I'm really pissed! I've turned my monitor into a punching bag because of the stuttering and sound looping problem! I agree, it is BETA AT BEST. I spent 80 dollars on the collectors edition, money that I could have spend on another game that doesnt f**k up!!!!
 
As sad and n00bish as the suggestion to defrag your drive was...I was desperate so I tried it. Lo and behold, it actually worked. All of my stuttering is gone now...gameplay is smooth as butta with my 6800.
 
Yeah, I thought it might be that simple here, but after defragging there was no improvement. Actually it seemed worse after defragging but that's likely just coincidence.
 
Same problem here and IT'S NOT AUTOSAVE. I get the usual stutter while it's autosaving of course but this is way worse. It loops audio and the video stutters for....a while. Could be 2 seconds and it could be 2 minutes. During the long bouts of it I gave up and restarted the game. It doesn't happen at the same point...it seems random. Just entered black mesa east and the opening sequence stuttered the whole way...had to end it. I've had the game completely lock up my system while in this state. Doesn't happen often but it happens enough to really annoy me.

Oh...and it happened just hours after a defrag....so that isn't an issue.
 
I think that I may have solved the stuttering on my rig ( gaming rig in sig ). First i defraged my HDD. And I installed the 6.14 beta nForce drivers. I do notice an occasional hiccup when it autosaves but that I can easly live with. My HDD was only 10% fragmented so i think that the driver upgrade did the trick.
 
Had similar problems. Moved to the BETA 4.12 drivers, everythings good now :)

Rig:
AMD XP2500
512 PC3200
Radeon 9700 pro
 
Mine is still doing it, but it seems to be getting better.

HOWEVER, now my machine hard locks periodically.

This is getting damn annoying. I really am having a hard time enjoying the game wiht all these technical problems.

Someone also needs to tell Valve how bad their choices for loading times are. Using the Airboat you get load times at the worst times during action. Kind of kills the immersion...
 
Me too, same problem, it's funny because quake3 used to do that to me for years as well with the stuttering. ill have to try out some of those suggestions, thanks
 
I have the problem too... very slow or stopped video frame rate coupled with suttering audio... I really don't think it's the auto-save either (at least not all the time) because sometimes it'll happen twice in 10 seconds, and sometimes it'll be a couple of minutes... explosions or sudden changes in the sound often seem to trigger it... like it doesn't have the necessary sound file loaded and can't find it for a sec... My system should be plenty fast enough too... I've defragged with no effect, I've swapped sound cards to an audigy with no effect, my vid card isn't overclocked... it really pisses me off... ruins the game immersion.

P4 2.23 @2.7
ASUS P4P800E-D
1GB Crucial @200Mhz
BFG 6800OC w/ pipes and shaders unlocked
2x 36Gb Raptors in RAID0
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Win XP SP2
 
Forgive me if I'm way off (I don't have the game yet!!!! :eek::mad:)

But could it be caused by HL2 needing to access data out of the GCF files in the SteamApps folder (or does it extract everything? All i know is that it extracts the files in the bin folder and cfg files.)
 
I was wondering if it's related to whether you're playing the game off a CD/DVD install or a steam download. I'm a steamer myself and have the 'skipping'. Anybody getting it with a CD/DVD?
 
Just checking in to say that it also does this in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (Another Source Engine game).
 
I get stuttering when I first enter a new map but after that it's smooth as silk. I feel bad for everyone having problems. It really is a good game.

XP3200+
Nforce2
9800 pro
1 gig pc3200
WD raptor
 
Well my FPS were fine in 1600x1200, but I cut it down to 1280x960 and it looks about the same but the stuttering is almost completely gone. Now it's an extrememly short pause. It's still a bit annoying but I can enjoy the game a bit more now. The stutter I get now is momentary and something I can tolerate now.
 
i went down to 800x 600
i also put in 6681 drivers.
i also made the virtural memory bigger
and i truend down the audi hard ware thing,
and the shuttingdoes not happen as much as it did before,
but we should not have to do this to our pcs to get a game to work,
we should be able to put the game in and enjoy it
 
I get the very odd stutterbut otherwise the game runs perfectly for me.

Using a A64 3500+
160 GIG HDD
onboard sound on ABIT AV7
Geforce 6800 GT

I reckon it might be slow harddrives, and it freezes as it loads in stuff.

Gav
 
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