Is My Hard Drive Causing Me to Stutter in Games?

[donneil123]

Hell, I recently built a computer with these specs

Asus M5a97 Motherboard
XFX 6870 1GB Video Card
AMD 965 Black Edition Processor over clocked to 4GHz
Cooler master 212 plus Heat sink
8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz RAM
Western Digital Blue Caviar 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
ASUS DRW-24B1ST DVD drive
Corsair cx 600w PSU

I noticed that every game that I play a game stuttering occurs when my system has to load anything. This annoys me because a lot of RPG games require you to be constantly loading, mainly Diablo 3. So my question is do you think that I got a faulty hard drive, or is it just not fast enough in general. Would it stop the stuttering if I were to buy the same drive, and then run the two in raid 0?

Oh, and I ran a diagnostic on the drive and it seemed that everything came out perfectly fine.

 

[swifty_morgan]

what monitor and resolution are you playing at..... what opsys/and 32 or 64bit ?

 

[donneil123]

what monitor and resolution are you playing at..... what opsys/and 32 or 64bit ?

Asus VH236h @1920x1080, windows 7 ultimate 64 bit.

 

[swifty_morgan]

try lowering your in game settings. if the rpg games do need to move lots of textures your 1gig card may not be able to contain it within itself and yes, offload to the HD. I stopped using 1gig cards at 1680x1050 because of problems. games get newer creating more demands........ anyways, lower all settings from inside the games control panel and see what happens. if it's positive start increasing settings until the problem starts back up. also check your monitors refresh rate. native it it might be 60. check on that.

 

[donneil123]

try lowering your in game settings. if the rpg games do need to move lots of textures your 1gig card may not be able to contain it within itself and yes, offload to the HD. I stopped using 1gig cards at 1680x1050 because of problems. games get newer creating more demands........ anyways, lower all settings from inside the games control panel and see what happens. if it's positive start increasing settings until the problem starts back up. also check your monitors refresh rate. native it it might be 60. check on that.

Doesnt work, I am almost 100% positive that this is a hard drive related issue, because even when everything is set to the lowest possible settings in Diablo 3 I still stutter like crazy. Diablo 3 is also not a demanding game at all, it is outdated actually.

 

[chase3567]

If it's just happening with Diablo 3 then Diablo 3 is the problem. There is a work around posted in the Diablo forums for the stuttering. Basically whenever you go into a new area everything is loaded at that point from the hard drive and not when the game is loaded. People that have SSD's don't really have the problem.

 

[donneil123]

If it's just happening with Diablo 3 then Diablo 3 is the problem. There is a work around posted in the Diablo forums for the stuttering. Basically whenever you go into a new area everything is loaded at that point from the hard drive and not when the game is loaded. People that have SSD's don't really have the problem.

Its not only diablo 3 for me though, when I load up a map in TF2 it stutters for the first few seconds of the game, but it runs perfectly afterwards. when I load up the Arkham City demo the same thing happens, but it is also choppy when pre rendered cut scenes play, and I am guessing that is because it is playing directly from the hard drive. In league of legends when I first enter a game it stutters but then start going perfectly, then as soon as I touch the grassy part of the map it stutters again, but does not stutter any more for the entire game. Diablo 3 is just the most extreme case since it is always loading up stuff.

 

[swifty_morgan]

ever check for game patches ? is your HD overly full ?

 

[donneil123]

ever check for game patches ?

All the games I play are required to be on the newest patch version at all times.

 

[ttcboy]

I suspect that ur graphic card have some fault. I can play D3 with my old rig without any issue at 1920 x 1080 with high setting and the config is Core2Duo E6400 o/c at 2.7Ghz, 3GB ram , sataI 500GB hdd & Palit nvidia GTS240.

 

[jessterman21]

You may just be noticing the natural limits of a 7200RPM HDD. A cheap solution would be a cache-SSD like the Crucial Adrenaline or Corsair Accelerator.

 

[donneil123]

I suspect that ur graphic card have some fault. I can play D3 with my old rig without any issue at 1920 x 1080 with high setting and the config is Core2Duo E6400 o/c at 2.7Ghz, 3GB ram , sataI 500GB hdd & Palit nvidia GTS240.

Doubtful of that it is the graphics cards problem, the main reason being that when ever I see a frame drop my hard drive LED is blinking. Also if a lower the settings I still get the problem.

 

[lycros]

It's a problem with diablo 3. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5235703994?page=1

Did you instal windows in AHCI mode?

 

[swifty_morgan]

check your machine for malware and virus'. the thing with the HD blinking.......... everybody's does. it means\s it's working..........and the thing about "go out and buy an SSD because nobody has these problems........... BUNK.

 

[swifty_morgan]

also a question on your memory. 2 sticks ? and at what speed are they running ? you may have to set them in the BIOS to run right. I think the processor doesn't support 1333 out of the box. The newer Phenoms do.

 

[donneil123]

also a question on your memory. 2 sticks ? and at what speed are they running ? you may have to set them in the BIOS to run right. I think the processor doesn't support 1333 out of the box. The newer Phenoms do.

2 at 1600

 

[jessterman21]

and the thing about "go out and buy an SSD because nobody has these problems........... BUNK.

Come on, man. I said "this may be your issue - if so, a solution is..." - nothing about "nobody has these problems."

 

[swifty_morgan]

cmon' ?..... cmon' already. the solution isn't swap in an SSD. there's a logical solution that can be found if the issue is pursued. Saying what you said ranks right up there with people who blurt out "reformat" as the only way to fix a problem without looking into or thinking of ways to fix an issue.

 

[Ali Husain]

Hell, I recently built a computer with these specs

Asus M5a97 Motherboard
XFX 6870 1GB Video Card
AMD 965 Black Edition Processor over clocked to 4GHz
Cooler master 212 plus Heat sink
8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz RAM
Western Digital Blue Caviar 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
ASUS DRW-24B1ST DVD drive
Corsair cx 600w PSU

I noticed that every game that I play a game stuttering occurs when my system has to load anything. This annoys me because a lot of RPG games require you to be constantly loading, mainly Diablo 3. So my question is do you think that I got a faulty hard drive, or is it just not fast enough in general. Would it stop the stuttering if I were to buy the same drive, and then run the two in raid 0?

Oh, and I ran a diagnostic on the drive and it seemed that everything came out perfectly fine.

Using a 1GB video card is definitely going to throttle at 1080P, however, it could be that you are using to different types of RAM together (I am not exactly sure on how this works exactly, but I know it can cause issues) Even if it is an old game, 1GB is really low, and not sufficient. If you ran a disk check - and it proved your HDD was fine - then the problem is GPU or bad RAM configuration.