(Original) Bioshock PC stuttering -argh!

O

Objekt

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 6, 2012
Messages
302
I know, I know, I'm late to the party, but in the last week I finally got around to playing the original Bioshock on PC.

I have the 1.1 patch, which, I believe, was the very last patch. Yes, video card drivers are current, as are all other drivers, and Windows 7 itself has all the latest updates applied.

So why do I get these occasional freezes/stuttering during gameplay?

Usually it's just a fraction of a second, but occasionally it's a good couple of seconds. I'll end up getting killed if in combat, or if not I'll suddenly be a good distance across a room.

There's no chance this is due to inadequate hardware - see sig. So what's going on?

FWIW, my display is a CRT running at 1600x1200 @ 75 Hz, with Vsync turned on (can't stand tearing). I don't know explicitly how many fps I'm getting in Bioshock, but it certainly looks smooth to the eye.
 
Sounds like the game is hitting your hard drive, and this is what is causing the stuttering. Is the game installed on your SSD, or is it installed to a mechanical drive?
 
I'll have to check when I get home.

Seriously, though, you think the game has problems running from a mechanical HDD? That would be Really Bad, seeing as when the game was released (2007), SSDs were still extremely expensive and rare. If a game can't run properly off a mechanical drive (even a "slow" 5400 rpm job), the game is defective.

I've found other complaints of this issue from 2008-ish but no solutions so far.
 
the only well known documented stuttering for Bioshock was a driver problem. there were a couple of sets of drivers back then where you had to change the pre rendered frames to zero and that fixed it. and newer drivers permanently fixed it.

and yeah no game should ever stutter during gameplay because of the hard drive and I have even heard of that.
 
If you have any type of AA on in the CP, try turning it off. I remember issues with AA in BIOSHOCK.
cannondale06 said:
and yeah no game should ever stutter during gameplay because of the hard drive and I have even heard of that.
Click to expand...
Titles that stream data from the hard drive to the game can have serious performance degradation on an HDD. Think RAGE some MMO's.
 
I just was playing this a couple weeks ago and i had some issues on win 7 x64. try running it in dx9 mode.


"C:\Program Files\2K Games\Bioshock\Builds\Release\Bioshock.exe" -dx9

I also did this

For Bioshock to function properly, the Tablet service should be disabled as per these instructions:

To disable the Tablet service, open the control panel in the classic view and choose "Programs and Features." In the sub-categories listed, click on "Turn Windows Features on or off" (it should have a little windows 'shield' icon next to it). A window should pop up with various services and features listed. The one you're looking for is: "Tablet PC Optional Components." Make sure this feature is UNCHECKED (disabled). You will have to reboot your machine as well for this setting to take root.
 
Does it seem like a loading-style hitch or is it jerky gameplay?
 
Objekt said:
Seriously, though, you think the game has problems running from a mechanical HDD?
Click to expand...

No, it doesn't. It's running off my Seagate 2TB (7200rpm) drive just fine.

bigdogchris said:
If you have any type of AA on in the CP, try turning it off.
Click to expand...

I didn't turn on anything in the nVidia control panel (I assume that's what you mean) and yes, mine works OK....no stuttering.

The only issue I've had with the game is the loss of sound after the intro movie, and that is fixed by turning on the 'Stereo Mix' audio device in Win7 64bit.
 
Just for the sake of completeness, I copied the install from my 3 TB 5400 rpm mechanical HDD to my Intel SSD.

As expected, this didn't make a lick o' difference. In a play session earlier tonight, I got a really long "stutter," to the point I was convinced the game had locked up. Then, I got a few of the usual split-second pauses, later on.

Had the audio glitches (a seeming limit on the number of sounds that can play at one time) as well.

Bah.
 
According to FRAPS without V-Sync on I get like 350FPS, but similar to you, I can't stand the tearing (moreso what I see is the flickering on areas with electricity/flashing). I'm running a 560 SLI compared to your single, but the point is you should still be able to pull 60FPS easily with V-Sync on.

I know you said you have up to date drivers but you might want to uninstall the video drivers, run Driver Sweeper [free] and clean off any left over traces of any display drivers, nVidia or otherwise, and then reinstall the current drivers and see if that helps. It sounds like a driver issue and could be "leftovers" mucking up the works.
 
Could be, and worth a try.

I could also try running the game from within Windows 8, to see whether it makes a difference. I have a Windows 7/8 dual boot on the system discussed, so it's easy to do.
 
Nope, didn't get around to trying it from Windows 8.

Never did find any fix for the stuttering. I finished the game last night (on the "hard" difficulty) and so I'm done with it. Bioshock was a good game, but doesn't really have any replay value, now that I know the plot and alternate endings.

eta:
I did try the "completely uninstall Nvidia drivers, clean, reinstall" thing. No effect. Also, it required extra effort to get the Nvidia drivers completely removed, since after rebooting Windows 7 automagically installed the basic graphics driver. Usually, that's a helpful and desirable thing. :)
 
Last edited:
Fortunately, Bioshock 2 doesn't do any of that garbage. Runs smooth as can be, no mysterious hitches/stuttering.

Bioshock 2 does other stuff, such as controls randomly not working (e.g. the q key to switch plasmids), but there are workarounds. So I guess original Bioshock is just buggy on Windows 7 and will never be fixed.
 
Are you using on-board audio? If so, do you have an old Sound Blaster (or similar) PCI sound card you could throw in and then retest? That or just disable the on-board sound from your bios then log back into Windows and see if you encounter the stuttering again.

I haven't gamed without a dedicated sound card in a few of years but I remember seeing odd performance issues in several games the last time I tried using on-board audio. Oblivion was the biggest offender; I would see random and fairly frequent stuttering/freezing that ranged from > 1 to 3 seconds in length (very similar to what you described). As soon as I disabled the on-board sound card from the bios I saw the stuttering go away completely. Switched back to my old Sound Blaster and I was able to play stutter free with sound.
 
Last edited:
I did have a dedicated sound device (Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS) installed for a while. However, I got so frustrated trying to make it work, that I removed it, and have been using the motherboard sound device for the last few months.

The problem is that the drivers for the Audigy 2 ZS are just plain broken, with regard to Windows 7 64-bit. The Audigy 2 ZS works fine for output in Windows 7, but I could not find any way to get the microphone to work under Windows 7, no matter what I tried. And I tried everything: the old Creative Labs drivers (last updated in 2010), Daniel K's drivers, the KX drivers. The mic just wouldn't work.

I'm not 100% sure what was going on. I got tired of wasting my time trying to troubleshoot, so I gave up and removed the card.

I had the same problem with an older desktop, but in that case I was able to have both the Audigy 2 ZS and the onboard device active at the same time. So, I used the Audigy for output, and the motherboard device for the microphone. This worked perfectly for the last few years. For some reason, I couldn't make this setup work in my newer desktop. If I installed the Audigy 2 ZS, the onboard sound device wasn't even visible in Windows 7 and didn't work, so I couldn't use it at all.

Glitches/poor game performance with onboard sound devices were one reason I originally purchased the Audigy 2 way back in 2004, but it hasn't played nicely with Windows 7 x64 as far as the microphone. I don't need the mic for games that I only play in single-player mode, such as Bioshock and Bioshock 2, but I do need it for e.g. Day of Defeat Source.

I'm not interested in buying a newer Creative Labs sound card, given their evident lack of interest in making their gear work properly with Windows 7.
 
Objekt said:
I did have a dedicated sound device (Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS) installed for a while. However, I got so frustrated trying to make it work, that I removed it, and have been using the motherboard sound device for the last few months.

The problem is that the drivers for the Audigy 2 ZS are just plain broken, with regard to Windows 7 64-bit. The Audigy 2 ZS works fine for output in Windows 7, but I could not find any way to get the microphone to work under Windows 7, no matter what I tried. And I tried everything: the old Creative Labs drivers (last updated in 2010), Daniel K's drivers, the KX drivers. The mic just wouldn't work.

I'm not 100% sure what was going on. I got tired of wasting my time trying to troubleshoot, so I gave up and removed the card.

I had the same problem with an older desktop, but in that case I was able to have both the Audigy 2 ZS and the onboard device active at the same time. So, I used the Audigy for output, and the motherboard device for the microphone. This worked perfectly for the last few years. For some reason, I couldn't make this setup work in my newer desktop. If I installed the Audigy 2 ZS, the onboard sound device wasn't even visible in Windows 7 and didn't work, so I couldn't use it at all.

Glitches/poor game performance with onboard sound devices were one reason I originally purchased the Audigy 2 way back in 2004, but it hasn't played nicely with Windows 7 x64 as far as the microphone. I don't need the mic for games that I only play in single-player mode, such as Bioshock and Bioshock 2, but I do need it for e.g. Day of Defeat Source.

I'm not interested in buying a newer Creative Labs sound card, given their evident lack of interest in making their gear work properly with Windows 7.
Click to expand...

That's funny, I remember having a somewhat similar experience with an old Audigy card on my wife's PC. For whatever reason I could not use the Audigy while the on-board audio card was disabled. I could see the Audigy in device manager but it was as if it was permanently disabled. When I turned the on-board audio back on through the bios then I could use the Audigy but I couldn't consistently get all applications to utilize the jacks on the Audigy.

Since she didn't really do any gaming at the time I decided to just take the Audigy out and roll with on-board sound.

I forgot to update it in my sig but I recently upgraded to an Asus Xonar Essence (for the built in headphone amp) and haven't had any issues to speak of. Might be worth looking into an Asus card if you find out that it was on-board audio causing the stutter. There is a site that still puts out custom driver updates (on a regular basis) for Xonar cards which have worked well for me: http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

You could probably get away with a newer Creative card (my X-Fi worked without issue in Windows 7) but I definitely understand your frustration with their driver support. They tend to only focus their driver/software support on their latest generation of sound devices so it can be kind of a crapshoot getting legacy devices to work in newer OS's.
 
Last edited:
Thanks, I'll give that a look. There's a Xonar model around $50, which is more my speed, so perhaps I'll get one of those.

I haven't had any problems attributable to using onboard sound, other than those I described with plain Bioshock (and no audio probs so far in Bioshock 2). Might give the Audigy 2 ZS another go, just to see if I can get things to work. It's possible I had the onboard sound disabled in BIOS, or something dumb like that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top