pls help-same Stutter issue with new pc and old pc

[Starmonger]

Hello, Im wondering if you could help me with a very annoying issue im having with my games performance. The games im trying to run are: Warhammer Dawn of war, Battlefield 2, Eve Online.

My pc was getting stutter in all my games, and also seems to stutter a bit when scrolling pdf documents and websites . In the games it's not a hugely obvious stutter, but still very annoying.
i had bought a new graphics card (7900gt) even though my current one was more than enough for playing dawn of war (x850xt pe) but that didnt help. I had tried a differnt processor, ram, hard drive, etc untill there was nothing else to try. had formated about 10 times with differnt combinations of monitor/mouse/keyboard etc which stil didnt solve the problem.

So then i had taken my pc to 3 differnt pc repair guys (none of which actualy played games though) and they all said that there was nothing wrong with the pc. basicly they said that my 3d mark score was what it should be and that they can't find what's wrong.

So then eventualy i went and bought a new pc. I got a core 2 duo e600, intel board and 2 gig of ram which came in a bundle from overclockers uk so i know that they'r compatable, a nvidia 7600 GT, soundlbaster x-fi soundcard, and basicly everthing else except for a monitor which i have taken from the old pc. the monitor is a 19 inch acer Al1912. . I have tried virus scans, latest drivers etc so there is nothing left to do now.

Basicly i still get the same results on all games which is that they stutter when turning round/scrolling. And iv'e run out of things to try. I have mainly been wanting to play dawn of war, and that seems to be pretty smooth except when i scroll the screen around and move over some units which makes it stutter. Im wondering if you have any ideas i can try. the only thing i can think of is that it's the electricity in my house messing up my computer but i doubt that. im pretty sure it's not my imagination though as the games are all pretty old compared to the graphics card/s. thanks

 

[Beomagi]

scan for spyware. It can take up memory and cpu cycles at spurts resulting in that.

also check your cpu and video card temperatures. your cpu can throttle if it gets too hot.

 

[Sasqui]

I went through this with an ATI card (9700) and finally determined (after killing MANY processes one-by-one) that my flashing tray icons were the culprit. Actually, the ATI drivers were the real blame... On a forum, in a galaxy far, far... an ATI rep even acknowledged the problem.

I doubt that helps much, but perhaps there is something running in background that is causing it, including spyware as Beomagi mentioned.

Luck.

 

[bruins004]

Hey Star,
I think it could possibly be the one piece of hardware you did not replace.
How old is you monitor and is it an LCD or CRT?
It might be dying on your or if it is an LCD, might have a crap refresh rate hence the stuttering.

Also, do you happen to have a wireless mouse/keyboard?
If so you might be suffering from wireless lag possibly.

 

[stealthfighter]

Sasqui and burins make some very good points. If your monitor is sh1t it could be displaying crappy refresh rates... also it could be wireless lag... and system tray icons are always bad, whatever you don't need weed out... And I would reccomend trying some of the tweaks I mention on another fourm: http://www.totallyuseless.proboards...&board=ittipsqueries&thread=1158450777&page=1
If you run windows XP you can try some of these tweaks for XP...

 

[Sasqui]

Hey Star,
I think it could possibly be the one piece of hardware you did not replace.
How old is you monitor and is it an LCD or CRT?
It might be dying on your or if it is an LCD, might have a crap refresh rate hence the stuttering.

Also, do you happen to have a wireless mouse/keyboard?
If so you might be suffering from wireless lag possibly.

After another read of Stars post... definitely got to look at the common denominators here, including the hardware and software. ...I won't mention the user jk

 

[KennyT772]

check your programs running in the background. better yet take a screeny of everything running.

 

[zekrahminator]

Check your virus scanner. I'd blame that before ANYTHING else. Norton has been known for halving PC performance, and badly configured AV software can make a P4 HT with 1GB RAM perform like an original pentium with 128MB RAM. Firewalls and spyware scanners will also check every program before and even as it's running. Turn them off, and see if the lag is any better. If you have any idea how to use computers you shouldn't need them anyways .

 

[trog100]

"I won't mention the user"

dunno praps u should.. its the only comon denominator i can see that might affect or cause the problem..

trog

 

[Starmonger]

thanks for the good reply's. Im sure it's not virus or spyware though, unless they have infected my motherboard because i do a reformat of xp and get the same problem even before I install my wireless adaptor and any anti-virus software. So i have just done a clean format, then install my chipset drivers, then my graphics drivers, and then the game- and it still performs like this. Also i have tried another monitor which was a few years old but still, it's another lcd screen and shouldnt be causing this problem. Also my mouse keyboard are wired and i have tried various mice/keyboards. The stutter isnt there when I scroll when there's no units and then suddenly it jerks when there are. any other ideas? i really need some guru to rescue me from this evil problem

 

[Beomagi]

check your cpu temp to make sure it's not throttling.

http://www.techspot.com/download400.html

Bring up the performance tab of task manager, play your game till it stutters then alt tab out. You can see how much memory and processor usage you were taking up. you can do the same with throttle watch to see if at any point your proc throttles.

 

[trog100]

okay how about u have your games set to use the lcd monitors native resolution setting..

how about the fact your grfx card cant handle the games at the monitors native resolution setting..

how about the fact u dont know this..

i am just extrapolating possibilities based on the two commmon denominators.. the monitor and the user..

trog

 

[zekrahminator]

If the problem's been happening across multiple PC's, maybe the OS disk is corrupted in a way that lets it install a bad copy of Windows?

 

[Starmonger]

well i thought that could be it so i downloaded another copy of windows just to see but still the same thing. Also ive tried changing my refresh rate to maximum. maybe when i plug my network adaptor in it just screws up something on my motherboard so every time i reformat it just stays the same. i cant think of anything else

 

[trog100]

my monitor as a native screen resoltution of 1680 x 1050.. i cant play games at that thow..

what resolution are u running for games.. ???

trog

 

[Starmonger]

it's a 19 inch monitor, running at 1204 x 1024. it seems to be jerky at loading stuff even not in games, like when you maximise a website which was minimized for example.

 

[Sasqui]

it's a 19 inch monitor, running at 1204 x 1024. it seems to be jerky at loading stuff even not in games, like when you maximise a website which was minimized for example.

Sounds like a peripheral has some sort of latency problem causing your system to wait... CD, HDD, PCI card???

 

[Agility]

What are you using? DVI or VGA? When i was using my VGA monitor to VGA X1600pro, i have shutterings happening. If you happen to have a DVI monitor to DVI card, i THINK those shutter will disappear. And while shuttering it lags.

 

[trog100]

well there is big difference between 2d and 3d.. if its not opeing up a minimized window properly something is well wrong..

if u have windows set to show contents while moving and u click on the active title bar can u move the window about okay..

trog

 

[psychomage343]

post specs, do you have an nforce board, did you install the chipset drivers and also intall the nvidia ide drivers, cause you aren't supposed to? you need to post system specs man.

 

[Starmonger]

to be honest, when i say that it also judders in 2d stuff like scolling pdf's and sometimes when i maximise windows, its not that bad and may possibly be like that on all computers. It may be a normal thing which i have just started to notice. but i dont know. Also could you explain what exactly you mean by "if u have windows set to show contents while moving and u click on the active title bar can u move the window about okay.." please, i think my understanding of that is that you mean when i click on the top title bar of a webpage and drag it around the screen- well it seems to be ok from what i can tell. sorry about my misunderstanding. Also, my graphics card has 2 dvi outputs, but my monitor is a vga lcd. so i have to use a dvi to vga convertor on it. does this cause noticable lag?

My current spec:

Core 2 duo e600
Intel 965P LT motherboard
2GB Corsair XMS2-6400C5 DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
(these 3 were a bundle so they are supposed to be compatable)
BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music -
OCZ GameXStream 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter

 

[zekrahminator]

well i thought that could be it so i downloaded another copy of windows just to see but still the same thing.

Last time I checked, Microsoft didn't offer downloadable versions of XP . Remind me, is the lag at regular intervals? If it isn't, then maybe it's just something that happens on all computers. Even the best systems have small jumps every now and then. Though, if it twitches every time you turn, you may have all manner of problems, like low RAM, lack of swap space, the speed of swap space (playing with your page file and buying a new hard drive would fix those last two problems), slow proccie, or bad drivers. Creative was never good with drivers, and if you format right after installing your network thingy, you should replace both of them.

 

[trog100]

well apart from an average grfx card i see a super computer.. he he

okay what does it run something like 3dmark 2005 at.. if u dont have it download it and run it.. post the score..

then we can try a super pi..

lets take it step by step..

trog

 

[Starmonger]

thanks for helping still i wil try 3d mark later tongith and post the score. this problem has had me for about 6 months now. But i have allways asumed there was something going wrong as all the games i tried seemed to be jerky. But now im starting to question whether this is true. I have only tried dawn of war, Fear, and battlefield 2 on my new pc, and actually bf2 seems to run pretty smooth, especialy compared to my old pc which had a similar spec'd graphics card (x850 xt pe). Fear on the other hand, well i have tried it on maximum settings minus the aniso filtering and a couple of settings, and it seems to be getting what it should i think on the test settings page. i think i read somewhere that with this graphics card it should get around 17 min fps, and 33 average 70 maximum. Here is where it says this http://peripherals.about.com/od/videographicscards/fr/xfxnvidia7600gt.htm

At these same high settings like in the review i seemed to get a slightly better result: minumum 20 fps, average 45, maximum 96. I know this card isnt really all that good as it's a budget one. I used to have dawn of war when it was first released and had no problems even on a 9800 pro card, i lost some of the cd's and so i more recently bought the "game of the year" edition. It could be possible that this game of the year edition is corrupted and stutters, and that the whole past 6 months of insane troubleshooting has all been my imagination and this games fault partly. and that my old pc couldnt quite handle the high settings on games like bf2 even though the graphics card could. But i doubt that one version of a game could be released like this. But who knows, anythings possible. That's what i have learnt from this experiance. Anyway, im going to try a m8's copy of dawn of war and see if it's the same. Also i will try other games out and see what i get. We could be floggin a dead horse here- but then i just don't know

Im still kind of convinced theres something wrong, but i do definatly have doubts now. especialy after posting this in another forum and getting the first resopnse:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?p=1801998#post1801998

 

[Starmonger]

i have now tried another copy of dawn of war, and the results are still the same which suggests that its not a corrputed version or something. oh well.