Stuttering in games

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B1GG5

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Jun 30, 2010
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I just RMA'd my second gtx 280 and got a gtx 470 back from EVGA. My first 280 suffered from artifacting and its replacement suffered from the "pink screen of death". Around when i started getting the PSOD on my second 280, i started noticing that some of my games would have weird stuttering problems. I thought this was just another problem caused by the card going bad ,but it seems that the stuttering is still persistent with my 470. Crysis has the most stuttering out of all my games, but STALKER and Penumbra: Black Plague also have this issue.

My framerate will be very good in every game. Crysis will usually have around 40 fps (very high, 4xAA, 720p). The problem seems to happen whenever I move or look around in the game. I can't even sprint in a straight line without having several split-second hitches in the framerate.

I don't remember having this issue until recently. Updating my drivers didn't seem to do anything. I tried bringing my CPU back down to stock speeds but that didn't help either. I'm still not sure what is causing the problem. Any help is greatly appreciated!


i7 920 @ 3.0ghz
GTX 470 EVGA
Corsair 4gb DDR3 RAM @ 570mhz 9-9-9-24
EVGA x58 SLI LE
Seagate 500gb HD
Corsair TX750w PSU
 
Solution
anwaypasible
wow..
this thread was disgusting

those chokes are from hard drive access problems.
mainly because everything doesnt load up into RAM.
you can thank people with lower amounts of ram for the problem.
or
you could blame the game developers for setting the minimum amount of ram too low.


choppy strobe light is the graphics card / CPU combination
halts like you were talking about are the hard drive / ram combination

everybody should be running RAID hard drives.
and if the game still doesnt fix the stutter ... it is the video game (or some program on your computer)

those halts havent been happening for a generation already it seems.
you really shouldnt be expecting much performance from a hard drive that does like 20MB - 30MB per second...
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Yeah its a very weird problem. Its really strange because my PC used to not do this until here recently.

Thanks for all the help tho. If anyone else has any idea what the problem might be please help. If any more info is needed please ask.
I might have to take a trip to a computer repair place if I can't figure out the issue soon.
 
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Hmm I think I might have found the issue. My HD has started making these weird ticking noises and it has been getting louder and more frequent. Loading files also seems to have started slowing down. Could my HD be dying? Could this be causing the weird stuttering my pc has been having?

Running SeaTools still shows no errors for some reason. My HD ticks like crazy when running the tests though.
 
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Give some thought to heat. I had stuttering and went on a 2-week goose chase only to realize that my southbridge chip was running hot. Even in a system with 2x150mm fans in, 2x120mm fans out plus fans on both graphics cards, the southbridge needed more. I pointed another 120 right at it and that did the trick.
 
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Hey sorry i havent replied in a while. Ive been pretty busy

Anyways I'm pretty sure the problem is HD related. I did a few tests and the HD light on my mobo did light up and flicker whenever the stuttering would occur. Idk if the problem is the HD itself or not though. I'm going to buy a new 1.5tb Western Digital since I need some more space anyways. So I guess we'll find out whenever I get it.

Oh and the problem isn't heat. I got a desk fan and set it to blow straight on my pc and it didn't help any
 
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Hello everyone. I know I've been gone for a while and am kinda diggin my thread back out of the grave lol. Unfortunately a new hard drive did not seem to help 🙁 . I copied all my files directly to my new hd with HDClone and took out the old one. It's like all my problems still persist, just on the new drive. It even still makes the same ticking noise as my old one!
I'm starting to think that the problem might be the actual data or that i have a virus I dont know about or something.
If anyone could help me resolve this i would be forever grateful! You guys dont know how much of a headache this has been! :cry:

@DjSavage - I feel your pain man. I havent used my pc for gaming in months. Feels like such a waste haha
 
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Just a thought, but have you turned off the indexing service on that drive? In Windows XP, use either Windows Explorer or My Computer, right-click on the drive and then click Properties. At the bottom of the info box there is an indexing service checkbox that XP defaults to selected - unselect it to turn off indexing. I think Vista also has indexing on by default, while Win7 does not.

Also whenever I upgrade to a new video card, I make sure to uninstall the old card drivers before making the switch. You don't want old driver files sitting around in your system folders..
 
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@fazers_on_stun
Indexing is where the hd remembers where everything is for faster searching right? I believe I turned that on but I dont remember really how to turn it off. Would that help?
Also I made sure to clean out all my drivers when I first got my 470. Oh and I'm on Windows 7

@swifty_morgan
Yeah its not the fans but I think I might just be mistaking common hd access sounds as "bad" sounds.

Anyways Ive run several "free" spyware/adware scans that have come up with quite a lot of stuff so I think that might definitely be a problem. It is just hard to find a free program that actually cleans out all the problems.
 
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If you're running AVG free I can understand. It's one of the crappier ones. It'll find stuff but it doesn't stop anything... LOL.... try microsofts security essentials. Free and works.

Try trend micro house calls. hey have a 32bit and 64bit. It used to be good stuff for scanning every once in a while.

malware bytes/super anti spyware/a couple of decent apps. there's good "free" ones out there you just have to look.
 
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I already know that vsync is not the issue and I don't see why I would need to get a better TV (though a 1080p LED would be nice lol)

I actually have been using MSE and it seems to work for the most part. It's just when I ran Spyware Doctor it came up with over 700 problems. Most of them were cookies and stuff but yeah, not good. The thing is that the trial only lets you scan your system, then it's all like "Your pc is f'd! Give us money and we'll fix it for you!" hahaha

I'm going to try the things you suggested though
 
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Ok I tried all the programs you guys have said and cleaned out a TON of stuff. But the problem is still there *sigh*

Alright I'm fairly sure the problem is going to be hard drive related. Maybe RAM but I doubt it and maybe the mobo but yeah also doubt it.
As I believe I've said before, the problem only occurs when I'm moving around in the game, as this is when the hd would be accessed to load the new textures and stuff. This doesn't occur in all games so I suspect it depends on the method the game uses to stream environments. The problem should not be my GPU since the stuttering still occurs on the lowest settings and lowest resolution. Its not the CPU or monitor or anything.

Hmm I feel like its going to be something wrong with my computers data or something simple like a setting I've screwed up somewhere.

PS. I have an EVGA 470 GTX. I know it is not a problem of my pc being too weak, especially not at the resolution i play at (1360 x 768)
 
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Yeah the problem exists no matter what settings/resolution I have it on. I also have a 750w Corsair PSU.

Could you guys please explain how to do both of those things for me?
 
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Yeah the problem exists no matter what settings/resolution I have it on. I also have a 750w Corsair PSU.

Could you guys please explain how to do both of those things for me?
 
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did you check to see if you can set the ram to run in xmp mode ? And did you check the monitors refresh rate. And did you go into the nvidia control panel and look for the 720p monitor setting .... if that's what you're running..... if you're forcing the monitor to run in the wrong resolution you can have problems.
 
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Yeah its not the monitor. Where would i find the settings to check for an xmp mode?
Also my hard drive is running on the ide setting instead of raid or 1 other thing. I don't know if that might have anything to do with it or not.
 
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fraps can cause a loss of FPS by itself. You may need it for some games however crysis has a FPS tracker built in. if you hit ~ you bring up the consol then type r_displayinfo 1 . In the top right corner you will see a bunch of stuff including mem usage and FPS
 
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I play every game with loads of AA and most games barely ever drop below 60 fps. The fps stays perfectly smooth except for the stuttering issue that occurs in several of my games. The game seems to stutter whenever the game is streaming new resources into the game. This is why it is 100% smooth when i dont move around ingame.
 
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