Question There is In-game stutter - - - I think it's whenever something needs to be accessed from disk ?

[williamjeremiah]

Be sure the "Low Latency Mode" within the Nvidia Control Panel, beneath "Manage 3D Settings" is set to "on".
Setting this to "Ultra" can cause stuttering.

 

[silver085]

Well then, if you're sure it's not ESET then it's back to my original draft.

You've got this issue with drive access. It's either the spec's just not up to it, there's a hardware problem, or there's a software problem.

They're old games on SSD so if the spec is fine it looks like a hardware or software problem.

The CrystalDiskMark scores look spot-on across the board, temps and health are fine, so it looks like it must be a software problem.

If it's across all games, it's something more fundamental than an issue with that one game.

If you're saying that the obvious ones like drivers and settings can be discounted, and it's not any of the other processes you've got running, then there's not a lot left to try. Reinstalling Windows is about all you've got left, but if you don't want to do it without a guarantee that it's going to fix your issue then you're stuck because I can't see how anybody can genuinely give you that.

I will say on this bit:

So maybe you have indeed disabled some important process or service and a fresh Windows install is necessary. To be honest, the days of keeping the system tray to a minimum for 'maximum performance' are long gone now that multicore processors and OSs that can use them are standard. I haven't bothered doing it since WinXP. You're running an 8-thread processor with 16 GB RAM. Unless you absolutely know that a background process is causing you problems you're better off just ignoring it, rather than deleting it because you're not sure you need it. Chesterton's Fence.

I don't know if this is of any significance or if it helps narrowing it down, but I noticed that alt-tabbing out of 3d application will produce this stutter again with RTSS even if it is 3, 4, or 5th time of opening it.

I suppose this only confirms that RTSS overlay gets purged out of memory if you alt-tab out.

 

[silver085]

Well then, if you're sure it's not ESET then it's back to my original draft.

You've got this issue with drive access. It's either the spec's just not up to it, there's a hardware problem, or there's a software problem.

They're old games on SSD so if the spec is fine it looks like a hardware or software problem.

The CrystalDiskMark scores look spot-on across the board, temps and health are fine, so it looks like it must be a software problem.

If it's across all games, it's something more fundamental than an issue with that one game.

If you're saying that the obvious ones like drivers and settings can be discounted, and it's not any of the other processes you've got running, then there's not a lot left to try. Reinstalling Windows is about all you've got left, but if you don't want to do it without a guarantee that it's going to fix your issue then you're stuck because I can't see how anybody can genuinely give you that.

I will say on this bit:

So maybe you have indeed disabled some important process or service and a fresh Windows install is necessary. To be honest, the days of keeping the system tray to a minimum for 'maximum performance' are long gone now that multicore processors and OSs that can use them are standard. I haven't bothered doing it since WinXP. You're running an 8-thread processor with 16 GB RAM. Unless you absolutely know that a background process is causing you problems you're better off just ignoring it, rather than deleting it because you're not sure you need it. Chesterton's Fence.

I tried LatencyMon, does this help with anything?

 

[Moonstick2]

I tried LatencyMon, does this help with anything?

So ATAPI Driver Extension has the highest DPC and execution time outside of the monitor. On a system that doesn't even have any legacy drives I can't see why it would even be running. I can find ataport.sys in my System32/drivers/ but no evidence of it running at all, although this is Win 11.

Given that it's a disk-related process that's spending a lot of time interrupting when it probably shouldn't even be running, and you're having problems when accessing the disk, it seems like a decent clue.

It might have been that during your process cull you did something that caused Windows to fall back to ataport.sys or otherwise gave it undue prominence, again pointing to starting over with a complete fresh full reinstall to see if that fixes things.

I'd be minded to try running the games with those two non-SSD drives physically disconnected, to be absolutely sure the system isn't trying to access those during the games for some reason.

 

[silver085]

So ATAPI Driver Extension has the highest DPC and execution time outside of the monitor. On a system that doesn't even have any legacy drives I can't see why it would even be running. I can find ataport.sys in my System32/drivers/ but no evidence of it running at all, although this is Win 11.

Given that it's a disk-related process that's spending a lot of time interrupting when it probably shouldn't even be running, and you're having problems when accessing the disk, it seems like a decent clue.

It might have been that during your process cull you did something that caused Windows to fall back to ataport.sys or otherwise gave it undue prominence, again pointing to starting over with a complete fresh full reinstall to see if that fixes things.

I'd be minded to try running the games with those two non-SSD drives physically disconnected, to be absolutely sure the system isn't trying to access those during the games for some reason.

I unplugged both P300 HDD's but no difference.

I checked in BIOS and registry to verify that my drives are running in AHCI mode. Basically my MOBO supports "Intel Rapid Storage Technology" a downloadable driver from manufacture's site. Even my previous H97 board (ASRock H97 Pro4) was supporting it, so basically I always had it installed for as long as I can remember.

https://linustechtips.com/topic/100...-storage-technology-and-should-i-be-using-it/

I checked if it can be safely uninstalled, because I was suspecting it, even though I've been using it like forever, but still it's disk related so I wanted to give it a try. So I read it can be uninstalled and after reboot Windows will simply install it's default Microsoft's generic driver and I think that's why it's running.

I also ran Latencymon without those HDD for a couple of minutes, here are the full results :

I always have this spike when I launch chrome

Spoiler

ekrn.exe is my antivirus proccess while that particular svchost on 2nd place is probably Superfetch that I have recently turned back on.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Full text report:

Spoiler

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CONCLUSION
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.
LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for  0:12:00  (h:mm:ss) on processors 0,1,2 and 3.


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SYSTEM INFORMATION
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Computer name:                                        SEBASTIAN
OS version:                                           Windows 7 Service Pack 1, 6.1, build: 7601 (x64)
Hardware:                                             MS-7850, MSI
BIOS:                                                 BIOS Date: 02/16/16 14:45:21 Ver: V5.9B0
CPU:                                                  GenuineIntel Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1240 v3 @ 3.40GHz
Logical processors:                                   8
Processor groups:                                     1
Processor group size:                                 8
RAM:                                                  16315 MB total


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CPU SPEED
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Reported CPU speed (WMI):                             340 MHz
Reported CPU speed (registry):                        340 MHz

Note: reported execution times may be calculated based on a fixed reported CPU speed. Disable variable speed settings like Intel Speed Step and AMD Cool N Quiet in the BIOS setup for more accurate results.


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
MEASURED INTERRUPT TO USER PROCESS LATENCIES
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The interrupt to process latency reflects the measured interval that a usermode process needed to respond to a hardware request from the moment the interrupt service routine started execution. This includes the scheduling and execution of a DPC routine, the signaling of an event and the waking up of a usermode thread from an idle wait state in response to that event.

Highest measured interrupt to process latency (µs):   13427,195356
Average measured interrupt to process latency (µs):   9,346154

Highest measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs):       318,336548
Average measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs):       5,305572


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 REPORTED ISRs
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Interrupt service routines are routines installed by the OS and device drivers that execute in response to a hardware interrupt signal.

Highest ISR routine execution time (µs):              258,217353
Driver with highest ISR routine execution time:       ataport.SYS - ATAPI Driver Extension, Microsoft Corporation

Highest reported total ISR routine time (%):          0,017541
Driver with highest ISR total time:                   ataport.SYS - ATAPI Driver Extension, Microsoft Corporation

Total time spent in ISRs (%)                          0,028416

ISR count (execution time <250 µs):                   891405
ISR count (execution time 250-500 µs):                0
ISR count (execution time 500-1000 µs):               1
ISR count (execution time 1000-2000 µs):              0
ISR count (execution time 2000-4000 µs):              0
ISR count (execution time >=4000 µs):                 0


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
REPORTED DPCs
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
DPC routines are part of the interrupt servicing dispatch mechanism and disable the possibility for a process to utilize the CPU while it is interrupted until the DPC has finished execution.

Highest DPC routine execution time (µs):              215,010
Driver with highest DPC routine execution time:       iusb3xhc.sys - Intel(R) USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Driver, Intel Corporation

Highest reported total DPC routine time (%):          0,037829
Driver with highest DPC total execution time:         rspLLL64.sys - Resplendence Latency Monitoring and Auxiliary Kernel Library, Resplendence Software Projects Sp.

Total time spent in DPCs (%)                          0,079458

DPC count (execution time <250 µs):                   1081146
DPC count (execution time 250-500 µs):                0
DPC count (execution time 500-10000 µs):              0
DPC count (execution time 1000-2000 µs):              0
DPC count (execution time 2000-4000 µs):              0
DPC count (execution time >=4000 µs):                 0


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 REPORTED HARD PAGEFAULTS
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hard pagefaults are events that get triggered by making use of virtual memory that is not resident in RAM but backed by a memory mapped file on disk. The process of resolving the hard pagefault requires reading in the memory from disk while the process is interrupted and blocked from execution.

NOTE: some processes were hit by hard pagefaults. If these were programs producing audio, they are likely to interrupt the audio stream resulting in dropouts, clicks and pops. Check the Processes tab to see which programs were hit.

Process with highest pagefault count:                 ekrn.exe

Total number of hard pagefaults                       19771
Hard pagefault count of hardest hit process:          7506
Number of processes hit:                              12


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 PER CPU DATA
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CPU 0 Interrupt cycle time (s):                       8,848708
CPU 0 ISR highest execution time (µs):                258,217353
CPU 0 ISR total execution time (s):                   1,637144
CPU 0 ISR count:                                      891406
CPU 0 DPC highest execution time (µs):                215,010
CPU 0 DPC total execution time (s):                   4,476128
CPU 0 DPC count:                                      1075336
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CPU 1 Interrupt cycle time (s):                       1,020023
CPU 1 ISR highest execution time (µs):                0,0
CPU 1 ISR total execution time (s):                   0,0
CPU 1 ISR count:                                      0
CPU 1 DPC highest execution time (µs):                70,837059
CPU 1 DPC total execution time (s):                   0,007850
CPU 1 DPC count:                                      714
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CPU 2 Interrupt cycle time (s):                       1,26810
CPU 2 ISR highest execution time (µs):                0,0
CPU 2 ISR total execution time (s):                   0,0
CPU 2 ISR count:                                      0
CPU 2 DPC highest execution time (µs):                210,332647
CPU 2 DPC total execution time (s):                   0,085264
CPU 2 DPC count:                                      4294
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CPU 3 Interrupt cycle time (s):                       1,113630
CPU 3 ISR highest execution time (µs):                0,0
CPU 3 ISR total execution time (s):                   0,0
CPU 3 ISR count:                                      0
CPU 3 DPC highest execution time (µs):                74,502647
CPU 3 DPC total execution time (s):                   0,008642
CPU 3 DPC count:                                      802
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Moonstick2]

You uninstalled the Intel SATA driver because you thought you didn't need it, you seem to have lots of interrupts from an old MS driver that's mainly designed for IDE optical drives and you appear to be suffering from stuttering every time your games access the drives.

Just bite the bullet and do a full fresh install, install all correct drivers, don't remove anything and take it from there.

 

[silver085]

You uninstalled the Intel SATA driver because you thought you didn't need it, you seem to have lots of interrupts from an old MS driver that's mainly designed for IDE optical drives and you appear to be suffering from stuttering every time your games access the hard drives.

Just bite the bullet and do a full fresh install, install all correct drivers, don't remove anything and take it from there.

Interestingly enough when I went to driver support page https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/H97-PC-Mate/support#driver and selected Win 7 64 I can't find Intel RST, but once you switch to Win 10 64 it adds a new tab called On-Board SATA AHCI/RAID Drivers and that driver is right there.

On my old MOBO https://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/H97 Pro4/#Download Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver and utility ver:13.1.0.1058 appears even under Win 7 64, but I'm sure I also had it installed on my new MOBO. I uninstalled it idk just a few months ago.

Googling this gives me the exact same version here https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/MOTHERBOARD/Intel/MSI-H97-PC-Mate-Intel-RST-Driver-13101058.shtml

But the latest version that supports Win 7 is this https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/M...-Storage-Technology-RST-Driver-15021044.shtml

If I were to do a fresh install, I'd rather install Win 10 now but for this I'd like to have better CPU and RAM first, so there's that...

Regardless it was happening with RST too, hence I removed it and it's not like it's needed anyways.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...ed-for-msi-h97-pc-mate.2461977/#post-16086448
https://linustechtips.com/topic/100...-storage-technology-and-should-i-be-using-it/