Stuttering video performance

R

Raelz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 14, 2002
Messages
389
It has been a long time since I posted anything here at hardforum, but it appears I have reached my wits end with this system. I need to call on the power that is hardforum.com for some additional help.

Essentially, I am having trouble with my rig's performance in video and 3d gaming. What seems to occur is best described as a random 'stuttering', where the machine stops playback of the video or rendering for a brief second. Sometimes the audio stops as well; sometimes the audio keeps playing but the video stops. I have completely turned down the settings for every game I own, and nothing helped. I turned the card down in the catalyst center, and nothing helped. I reinstalled DirectX and ran Windows Update, still nothing.

The first thing I decided to check after this, was Windows, and I found nothing. After scanning for virii with two separate scanners(Kaspersky and Symantec), I found my system clean as can be expected. I then pegged it on spyware, again, multiple scanners report no infection. I then went through all the services that are running on my machine and found none to be out of order or unnecessary. I checked the event viewer and saw no extraneous errors or warnings that were occurring at all. Sigh.

At this point I figured it was something with the drivers for the video card, an ATI Radeon x850. I removed the drivers completely and reinstalled them from the CD that came with the card. After getting the card back and functional, I upgraded to the newest drivers from ATI's website. This produced no benefit. I then tried the Omega drivers - nothing. I then proceeded to update every driver in my system, the chipset, the sound, the disk controllers, everything was brought up to date.

Still nothing. I thought that maybe because the video and audio skipped, that it might have been something wrong with my sound card. I disabled the Audigy card and enabled the on-board 6 channel sound hardware. The stuttering still occured.

So, I decided to upgrade the video card from my x850, to an x1650, and add 2gb more ram to the system. I was going to be upgrading soon anyway, but if this helped the performance out for the meantime, I could wait to upgrade. This also produced no change in performance; the video actually lagged more it seems with the x1650.

At this point, I figure that it could only be one of two things: the hard disk or the power. I know that newer model cards require power sources, and I thought that maybe they were draining my machine to the point that it wasn't going to be stable without more power. I decided to disconnect both my DVD drives, my floppy drives, some extra case fans, and a small temperature meter. The only devices being powered now were my HD, my video card, and my cpu/mobo. Still, the computer continued to stutter during video playback and gameplay.

With 3gb of ram, I tried running windows without a pagefile to see if the pagefile was on a bad disk to no avail, continued stuttering.

I'm at a loss, I am not sure what steps to take next. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to list them to me, I will try anything at this point.

I have already gone ahead and ordered a new barebone core 2 duo rig, so I will have plenty of time to troubleshoot this one once that one arrives, but I would still like to figure out what the hell is going on here!

I still think it is a power issue, and I am troubleshooting to that end, but I am not getting anywhere. Such a stubborn issue :(.
 
It doesn't surprise me that the video card switch made things worse.. the x850 is a better card, but anyhow...

Did you run DriverCleaner after uninstalling your old video drivers? If not, do. Uninstall your current drivers and run DriverCleaner, and download the drivers directly from ATI.. don't bother with the ones that came with your card. You can install the driver only, you don't need CCC.. you can use AtiTrayTools instead, and you may have better luck with that setup.
 
Thanks.

x850 is a better card? Care to elaborate? I've been out of the loop for quite some time now :eek: .

Drivercleaner appears to cost money, and I'm not sure I want to spend money on the app just yet. I did install the newest drivers, still stuttering :(
 
It looks like you should be alright with power, although, if your video card isnt getting the amps it needs, that could be causing it. Im going to assume your motherboard doesnt have integrated audio, but if it does, try using that. Also, I dont recognize the name of your psu, so it might be better to get an Antec or something similar.
 
Raelz said:
x850 is a better card? Care to elaborate?
Click to expand...

Yeah.. sorry, I have had nothing but bad experience with the entire x16xx line of cards.. and that was just my opinion... I suppose I should have said that.....

And.. now the important part. DriverCleaner charges for their software for a reason..... and that reason is it works. The built in uninstaller in Windows and the ones that come packaged with video drivers simply don't work well enough. DC was free for a long time, but I think it got to the point that they had to start charging for their products... ATI and NVIDIA are releasing new drivers constantly, and these driver packages are so large that the built in uninstallers can't remove everything. Inevitably there are "scraps" left over that conflict with the new drivers, many times causing problems like the one your describing.. so it's really up to you... Ten dollars is nothing compared to what you have spent on the hardware that these drivers are designd to work with.......
 
Raelz said:
Thanks.

x850 is a better card? Care to elaborate? I've been out of the loop for quite some time now :eek: .
Click to expand...

yes the x850 is the still the better card. Here's a quick comparison: http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html?modelx=33&model1=574&model2=588&chart=214

As you can see, even though the x850 I selected is AGP, it still beats the x1650 PCI-E version. If you go through the benchmarks on that page, you'll see that x850 will win a majority of the time.

Anyway, google, download and install HDTune to see if there's anything wrong with the drive. To make sure that the drive isn't the problem, also google, download, burn and run Drive Fitness Test from Hitachi. Run it and see if any problem show up about the drive.

I don't recognize the brand of your power supply either. See if you can get your hands on another power supply to rule out that problem. If you need to buy new, I recommend this power supply:

XClio 450BL ATX 450W Power Supply - $37.99

Also, did you try to reformat and reinstall Windows XP again? It could be one of those weird problems only solved by a reformat.
 
Hmmm. That's interesting, good info thanks.

I've played with HDTune on the drive, there are a few errors on it, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. I am going to do the fitness test tomorrow to see if it gives me any more headway into the drive. The new machine has a 600w PSU in it, Antec I believe, so I should be good there. It also has a new SATA HD that I'll be imaging my current drive to, so if the drive I'm using right now is the culprit I'll find out about that as well.

After that, if I still have issues, I will reinstall. I have so many apps and settings that I cannot bear the thought of reinstalling XP, even though I think this may be one of "those times" that you are speaking of.

Thanks!
 
So, I ran HD Tune.

On my 100gb 7200rpm IDE drive, the benchmark won't even finish and gets a read error. In fact, it's completely wonky and all over the place. It reads like an ekg during a panic attack, thusly:

HDTUNE_Maxtor6l.png


Alternatively, my USB2.0 HD reads like normalcy in action:

HDTUNE_ONETOUCHMAXTOR.png


I'm gonna snag a 100gb HD from the office and write my most recent image to it, and see what happens, but from this benchmark and the error that occurred, I think I already know the result.

Thanks again for the utility, any other comments about these pictures would be helpful.
 
It appears, after ghosting my disk to a new 160gb hd, that my problem has been cleared up. I am still wondering if the board caused the drive to become corrupted or if the ribbon cable is damaged in some way; but at least now I am not stuttering ever, just when too much is going on at once.

Thanks everyone, seriously appreciate it.
 
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