Stuttering in Modern warfare 3

[semichaud1]

Guys, no offence, but modern warfare 3 is about the worst game I've played for one reason only. It stutters like hell and I'm talking about the single player campaign. No matter what settings I play on and even at lowest settings and resolution, with all effects turned off. My PC specs: GPU (HD7870), CPU (FX-6100 6 cores), 10 GB DDR3 RAM. And yes all my drivers are up to date, including windows, and yes I have defragmented my hard drive, etc. Nothing seems to fix this. This is my third gaming PC that I have bought and still the same problem occurs. The only time when the stuttering was minimized was when I played it with an Nvidia card. Which could mean that it's the ATI/AMD drivers causing the stutter. It occurs everytime an area needs to load or during streaming as you run forward. If it's AMD they can say goodbye to my hard earned cash.

 

[semichaud1]

10GB of ram seems weird. Try to take out some ram and keep it in dual channel suck as two sticks of 4GB ram in dual channel. This should fix your problem.

Thank for the advice but it still stuttered even when my sticks GB were even. I had 2 sticks of 2GB and I swapped one of the sticks for an 8GB one. So now I have 1 stick at 2GB and another at 8GB. Other games like crysis 3, far cry 3, dead space 3, skyrim, hitman absolution work perfect at max/optimal settings. It's just Modern warfare 3, arkham city, aliens colonial marines, that stutter even with everyting on the lowest settings possible.

I have been programming since 1997. So I have a pretty good understanding of how these games work on the whole. It seems to me that it is an issue related to streaming assets on screen. I would upgrade the HDD if I thought it would make a difference. The only thing I can think of are those game developers not optimizing the streaming aspect of the codes to suit the hardware for which they advertise the game will run on. The other thing I can think of are badly programmed drivers that inhibit the proper flow of streaming textures, polygons, etc. and causes stutter when loading stuff in the RAM and on the screen. Or an incompatibility between how the game loads assets and how the drivers process that. I posted my question here just to see if anyone would have a solution that I did not think of.

 

[egilbe]

Matched sticks of ram. They sell them in pairs for a reason.

 

[semichaud1]

Matched sticks of ram. They sell them in pairs for a reason.

I bought the stick at Maplin here in the UK and none of them are sold in pairs here in PC shops. A single ram is £50 = $76. However, even when I had 2 sticks of 2GB ram the game still stuttered even on lowest settings. Thanks for the advice though.

 

[egilbe]

post the model numbers of the sticks of ram you are running now.

 

[egilbe]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMX8GX3M2A1333C9-Performance-Desktop-Memory/dp/B003N8GVUY/ref=sr_1_9?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1375636591&sr=1-9&keywords=ram

matched sticks

 

[semichaud1]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMX8GX3M2A1333C9-Performance-Desktop-Memory/dp/B003N8GVUY/ref=sr_1_9?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1375636591&sr=1-9&keywords=ram

matched sticks

Thanks a lot guys I'll try and invest in one more 8GB ram to make it even on the motherboard but I doubt it will solve the stuttering because as I've said even when I had 2 sticks of 2GB there was still stutter at lowest settings. The only time there was no stutter was when I played the game with an Nvidia card (GT 440 1GB GDDR5). There's a lot of issues with AMD/ATI.

 

[semichaud1]

OK guys. I took out the 2GB ram from the motherboard out and kept the 8GB and the stuttering is gone. I had been waiting for 6 years to have a solution to this stuttering issue in some games. Seems to be resolved now since using only one 8GB stick because the sticks are no longer mismatched. I'll be getting another 8GB stick, exactly the same one from Maplin again to have 2 matching sticks. Thanks a lot. I'll see if the stuttering is really gone. I'll resume modern warfare 3 single player campaign right now. This might be my favourite site from now on. Again thanks.

 

[egilbe]

buying another 8GB stick that's not tested and sold as a matched pair may be problematic, or it may not. Just be aware that the stuttering could come back, or not.

 

[semichaud1]

buying another 8GB stick that's not tested and sold as a matched pair may be problematic, or it may not. Just be aware that the stuttering could come back, or not.

Yeah I know, been reading a bit on that. Just to help others out there trying to find a solution to this stuttering problem. The stuttering is still present in modern warfare 3 for me. It is not completely gone, but it is slightly less than beforeI would say about 10% less than before but it is still there. I wish these developers would actually test the performance on a medium rig instead of using PCs with the latest GPU from nvidia and other latest hardware and just assume it will work on other decent pcs just cause they have scalable settings. Sometimes they leave bugs in their programs (Deus ex: memory leak in city hubs) due to lack of time to fix them I suppose or simply they are not paid to and won't bother. I'll just repeat what I heard on the net "the state of pc gaming these days" it's like s**t. Sorry guys problem not fixed but thanks for trying. I personally believe that switching to nvidia might help like when I was using a GT440 1GB GDDR5. The gameplay was smoother although stutter would still occur sometimes but with a HD7870 or HD5770 the stutter is horrible in some games. By the way I even got Deus ex human rev on the xbox 360 and I could still see the game stuttering (a lot less than PC but still there, it's just that the stutter lasts less longer) especially when attempting to run in cities, just like on the pc version. It's a coding problem, bad optimization. Not hardware. I bet 20 years from now when our grand kids decide to pop in a modern warfare 3 cd to see how retro the game is, it will still stutter even with hardware 20 years from now.

 

[semichaud1]

buying another 8GB stick that's not tested and sold as a matched pair may be problematic, or it may not. Just be aware that the stuttering could come back, or not.

Yeah I know, been reading a bit on that. Just to help others out there trying to find a solution to this stuttering problem. The stuttering is still present in modern warfare 3 for me. It is not completely gone, but it is slightly less than beforeI would say about 10% less than before but it is still there. I wish these developers would actually test the performance on a medium rig instead of using PCs with the latest GPU from nvidia and other latest hardware and just assume it will work on other decent pcs just cause they have scalable settings. Sometimes they leave bugs in their programs (Deus ex: memory leak in city hubs) due to lack of time to fix them I suppose or simply they are not paid to and won't bother. I'll just repeat what I heard on the net "the state of pc gaming these days" it's like s**t. Sorry guys problem not fixed but thanks for trying. I personally believe that switching to nvidia might help like when I was using a GT440 1GB GDDR5. The gameplay was smoother although stutter would still occur sometimes but with a HD7870 or HD5770 the stutter is horrible in some games. By the way I even got Deus ex human rev on the xbox 360 and I could still see the game stuttering (a lot less than PC but still there, it's just that the stutter lasts less longer) especially when attempting to run in cities, just like on the pc version. It's a coding problem, bad optimization. Not hardware. I bet 20 years from now when our grand kids decide to pop in a modern warfare 3 cd to see how retro the game is, it will still stutter even with hardware 20 years from now.

You clearly are inexperienced with gaming on a PC. Your problem is ram related case closed.

Been gaming on PC since 2006 that's 7 years so far. I have built 3 gaming desktop pcs so far. I am 28 yrs old. I don't think that qualifies as inexperienced. As I said before some games run perfectly without a single freeze or stutter or micro stutter. But this modern warfare 3 stutters like hell at every turn of the camera and every loading of any asset or bad guys if you want on the screen. If it was ram related this would occur in every game. and again as i said before the stutter was still present when i had 2 identical sticks of 2GB each before upgrading. and again i will repeat myself when i swap to my nvidia gpu the game runs very well. how can i run crysis 3 and far cry 3 with no stutter and then have a non graphically demanding game like modern warfare 3 stutter like hell? ???? i can only state what i know and see with my own eyes. if i say it runs without stutter with nvidia gpu then it is the case it is my personal experience. i am stating what i see.

 

[semichaud1]

i can only state what i know and see with my own eyes. if i say it runs without stutter with nvidia gpu then it is the case it is my personal experience. i am stating what i see.

BFBC2 stutters on HD 7850 but not GTX 560 SE. Deus Ex Human Revolution stutters on GTX 560 SE but not on HD 7850. See some games play better on one architecture or the other so there is no one for all solution unless you can afford to buy the best of the best.

Yes I agree. That must be it. These games are programmed a certain way that will work best with certain hardware and their architecture. It's a shame because the call of duty series are one of the best shooters out there and modern warfare 3 is great except for the performance side with my hd7870. i was thinking the prob could be related to loading from the HDD but there's nothing wrong with my drive and it works perfect on most games except for those that stutter as i mentioned before. it might be related to how the programmers coded their texture or 3d object streaming from the hdd to the ram etc. don't think it's cpu related cause just bought an fx-6100 6 core 3.3 GHz 1 month ago. anyway some things you just can't fight. just came back from work and i'm quite tired so need to relax eat some food and hit the gym benching 220. maybe i should put games aside as a whole unless i buy a ps4 and put up with the crappy graphics that it will become in a few years time.

 

[semichaud1]

OK I found the problem. I disabled shadows in graphics settings and the game does not stutter at all anymore. How come my HD 7870 OC (have set it back to stock settings so it's not overclocked anymore) can't handle a simple shadow feature in a game. I've had worse cards that could handle shadows in this game. My guess is it is somehow incompatible with amd drivers. Funny thing is my HD7870 can handle crysis 3 at maxed out shadows as well as Far Cry 3 and Bioshock Infinite. Go figure.

 

[semichaud1]

No the stutter is still there. I only get stutter when using amd gpus though. Nvidia is stutter free for this game. Anyone else with an amd gpu getting stutter? By stutter i mean the game would be running at 60 fps but then drop to 0 fps for a fraction of a second and then go back to 60 fps again.

Again my specs:
GPU: HD 7870 2GB GDDR5
CPU: FX-6100 (3.3 Ghz x 6 cores)
RAM: 8 GB DDR3
PSU: G7 Power Extreme 680 W
Motherboard: GA-78LMT-S2P

And please don't say it's my hardware because my rig can run Crysis 3 on high settings at 60 fps and very high settings at 25-30 fps.

 

[shutten]

So I was searching on Google about a problem I have, I freeze, lag and stutter as hell on MW3, MW2, World at War and Black Ops 1 with my specs FX 6100, 7870 and 16GB ram. Same specs as you, I see u have the same problem, how did u fix it?

 

[semichaud1]

Hi shutten. I never fixed the problem. I think the problem is related to how these games are programmed. It could be their programming is not compatible with the architecture of the graphics card we are using. I have used other GPUs before like the GT440 1GB GDDR5 and that is a far weaker GPU than the 7870 (which is supposed to be better than next gen which are equivalent to 7850). The GT440 ran modern warfare 3 without a single stutter. Was just perfect. When I play Oblivion I also get some stutter with the 7870 that last a tiny fraction of a second especially when walking in the world outside. I had Oblivion on the ps3 and I remember that when walking outside the game would pause for some seconds and a message would say "loading area". It could be that my system loads the area so fast that the message doesn't come up but not fast enough fot the stutter not to happen. So I think the stuttering is mainly due to a texture or object live streaming timing issue. In short I never fixed the problem. I just got Splinter cell blacklist and Crysis 3 and there is not a single lag or sutter in these game at maxed out settings (splinter cell) and high settings (crysis 3) at 1080p. So I really think it's the devs not opimizing enough for PC. Don't worry your system is not the problem it's the game itself. Bear in mind that now that the next gen consoles are coming out and that they are using 7850 equivalent GPUs, games should be better optimized for AMD GPUs and the HD 7870 is only one range above the 7850 which means games should quite well optimized in the near future for the GPU we are using.

 

[shutten]

Hi shutten. I never fixed the problem. I think the problem is related to how these games are programmed. It could be their programming is not compatible with the architecture of the graphics card we are using. I have used other GPUs before like the GT440 1GB GDDR5 and that is a far weaker GPU than the 7870 (which is supposed to be better than next gen which are equivalent to 7850). The GT440 ran modern warfare 3 without a single stutter. Was just perfect. When I play Oblivion I also get some stutter with the 7870 that last a tiny fraction of a second especially when walking in the world outside. I had Oblivion on the ps3 and I remember that when walking outside the game would pause for some seconds and a message would say "loading area". It could be that my system loads the area so fast that the message doesn't come up but not fast enough fot the stutter not to happen. So I think the stuttering is mainly due to a texture or object live streaming timing issue. In short I never fixed the problem. I just got Splinter cell blacklist and Crysis 3 and there is not a single lag or sutter in these game at maxed out settings (splinter cell) and high settings (crysis 3) at 1080p. So I really think it's the devs not opimizing enough for PC. Don't worry your system is not the problem it's the game itself. Bear in mind that now that the next gen consoles are coming out and that they are using 7850 equivalent GPUs, games should be better optimized for AMD GPUs and the HD 7870 is only one range above the 7850 which means games should quite well optimized in the near future for the GPU we are using.

Okey thanks for the answer!
Really appreciated.

 

[shutten]

You can try downgrade drivers to 12.8 and see if it works, tell me if it works please! 😀
And what model of 7870 do you have? Sapphire? Because I have Sapphire and I got other problems with this card before and got a new by RMA, but still got problems..

 

[semichaud1]

You can try downgrade drivers to 12.8 and see if it works, tell me if it works please! 😀
And what model of 7870 do you have? Sapphire? Because I have Sapphire and I got other problems with this card before and got a new by RMA, but still got problems..

Yeah I've got a HD 7870 OC Sapphire 2 GB GDDR5. I'm getting the black screen issue during gameplay due to bad components being used by the manufacturer on the card, causing static or something, but I've added extra ventilation (fan with open casing) and no longer get the black screen. Planning to get a dual GPU card soon (HD 7990), maybe next year. Have to save up enough money though. It costs £500 on Amazon. The HD 7870 is really a great card. I prefer not to waste my time trying to RMA it because I bought it on Amazon and it might be too difficult to get it replaced, and also I can't bear to have this card away from me cause it can play all games maxed out and I wouldn't bear the time I would have to wait before getting back to gaming again. I also had a HD 5770 and got stutter just the same in modern warfare 3, arkham city, deus ex hr. No black screen or any issue with the HD 5770. So the problem is not with your HD 7870.

I haven't tried any previous drivers but since I couldn't find anyone on the net who had fixed the stuttering by installing old drivers, I'm not going to bother. So what I do now is accept the stuttering and just play the game. I think if you play modern warfare 3 for a long enough in the same level the stuttering stops. Then it will start again once the game loads textures and objets, etc.

 

[shutten]

I also have serious problem with Minecraft, I got around 20-40FPS EVEN on LOWEST settings..
SERIOUSLY, is AMD that bad?!?!??!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?
I don't UNDERSTAND.
Can you check if you also have problems with Minecraft?

 

[semichaud1]

I also have serious problem with Minecraft, I got around 20-40FPS EVEN on LOWEST settings..
SERIOUSLY, is AMD that bad?!?!??!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?
I don't UNDERSTAND.
Can you check if you also have problems with Minecraft?

I heard about minecraft and know that it is one of the most popular games but I have never tried it. I prefer cinematic or open world games with story lines. I really think that the drivers are responsible for amd cards not working properly. Rage and Metro last light were other games that caused amd cards to lag and in the end the only thing that fixed these two games for me was an update patch from the developers that fixed the issue with amd cards. My experience is that using a Nvidia card I get a lot less issues in games.

 

[shutten]

Also have problems with CSGO, stutters and freezes.

 

[Alexander Tsodikov]

Has anybody tried Hialgoswitch for COD MW3 to remove stuttering?

 

[semichaud1]

Also have problems with CSGO, stutters and freezes.

Well I have a bit more experience now with the whole stuttering issue. What can cause stuttering is basically having the resolution or graphics settings set too high for your pc. Also non-matching RAM sticks can cause it. And lastly, the game is just not optimized for pc or it's badly programmed. The best you can do is make sure your pc matches the specs of the game you want to play, your drivers are up-to-date and play the game on default graphics settings. The rest would be a case of the game being badly programmed for pc. In that case you can wait for a patch or just stop playing the game if the stuttering is too annoying. I have to say again, I never experienced a single stutter in console games.