Microstutter on single card?

[3dfx_zombie]

Ever since I upgraded to Windows 7 (from XP), I notice some games have 'microstutter', but I have a single GTX 460! MSI-afterburner shows a constant 59-60 fps, but when moving around, you can clearly see it is not entirely....'smooth', especially near the edge of the screen you can see the 'jumps' in location.
I tried turning off/on VSync, latest nvidia beta drivers; no effect.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Not all games/engines are smooth even on a single GPU. Does this happen in all your games? Or only specific ones? Try using a fps limiter, set it to 59 and you should be good.

 

[3dfx_zombie]

Why would 59 be better than 60 for smoothness? And could you point me to a fps limiter?

 

[LuminaryJanitor]

...when moving around, you can clearly see it is not entirely....'smooth', especially near the edge of the screen you can see the 'jumps' in location.

If you're getting visible jumps, it's not microstutter. It's just stutter.

IIRC there's a frame limiter built into the GeForce drivers, but you need nVidia Inspector to enable it.

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

And which games are you talking about? That will help tremendously with the diagnosis.

Also, the Aero interface in Windows 7 and Vista uses up a bunch more VRAM (about a couple hundred MB's), and your card only has 768MB of VRAM. Is it possible you have some settings too high in your game and are exceeding your VRAM capability? Running out of VRAM will cause things to start to lag as the graphics card has to swap things into and out of main system RAM more often...

Try the following:
1. Turn off Aero, fire up game with same graphics settings
-or-
2. Turn down some graphics settings in game, starting with AA levels

If either of those 2 settings (or a combo of both) fixes the problem, you have found your culprit.

 

[3dfx_zombie]

And which games are you talking about? That will help tremendously with the diagnosis.

An example: Skyrim intro. When the wagon goes around the last bend before the village, you notice it.

Also, the Aero interface in Windows 7 and Vista uses up a bunch more VRAM (about a couple hundred MB's)

I have Aero turned off.

Your card only has 768MB of VRAM. Is it possible you have some settings too high in your game and are exceeding your VRAM capability? Running out of VRAM will cause things to start to lag as the graphics card has to swap things into and out of main system RAM more often...

No my card has 1GB of VRAM. And according to afterburner it uses way less than 800MB in that particular Skyrim scene.

 

[kalston]

Skyrim's engine is pretty bad tbh, are you certain it behaved differently in XP?

 

[WojtekGee]

An example: Skyrim intro. When the wagon goes around the last bend before the village, you notice it.

That seems pretty trivial to me. It could be a variety of things, not just video card related that create that stutter.

If you load a game that has a consistent world and you're spinning 360, experiencing stutter then, that's a different story.

 

[wadec22]

i would agree you probably need to fps limit. depending on the game, you can often enable one via console command. i remember having to do it awhile back when i was playing far cry 2 with a gtx 280.

 

[grambo]

What is the rest of your system config like? What resolution/detail settings are you at in specific games giving you problems?