Games | SSD or HDD

[Tibor Hazafi]

Microstutters are to do with things like the performance of the graphics card (especially dual/multi GPU setups) game engine issues, driver issues and maybe one or two other things.

Hitching can be due to things like loading graphics data from storage on the fly, this will always hitch, no matter how fast your SSD and is worse when using high res modes and high res textures where more data needs to be pulled in. It can also be due to driver issues, or other running programs on the PC suddenly taking up resources which interrupts the smooth processing of the game. Hitching can either be very intermittent or almost continues depending on the exact details of the problem.

For example, I ran Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare when it first came out and it played well enough (I had only one 780 Ti back then) in 1080p, with only slight hitching sometimes. Bump the resolution up to 4K DSR however and it hitched unplayably, although the card wasn't overloaded. One of the updates I saw for that game was to improve hitching issues, in fact. Also, there's a setting in the game which allows more data to be preloaded at the expense of longer level loading times. It made no difference when I tried 4K at the time though. I haven't played the game for ages now, so I couldn't tell you what 4K DSR hitching performance is like now.

DSR = Dynamic Super Resolution, an NVIDIA feature. I think AMD has something similar under a different name.

I have a VGA with one GPU (R9 280X) with Omega driver. Nothing special runs in the backround, just (maybe one of these is the source of the problem):
-ESET smart security (Game mode enabled, so during games it doesn't work)
-D3DOverrider (to force VSYNC and Triple buffering)
-Fraps (to monitor FPS)
Should I lower the resolution even if the game runs with 60fps fix? Except those microstutters of course (1-2 per hour). Or as you said is it "normal"?

 

[P4-630]

I have a VGA with one GPU (R9 280X) with Omega driver. Nothing special runs in the backround, just (maybe one of these is the source of the problem):
-ESET smart security (Game mode enabled, so during games it doesn't work)
-D3DOverrider (to force VSYNC and Triple buffering)
-Fraps (to monitor FPS)
Should I lower the resolution even if the game runs with 60fps fix? Except those microstutters of course (1-2 per hour). Or as you said is it "normal"?

Hmmm, I had frame drops using fraps in GTA V, using Steam fps counter now when I need it, no more frame drops.
D3Doverrider, don't you have these settings in AMD control panel?

 

[Tibor Hazafi]

Hmmm, I had frame drops using fraps in GTA V, using Steam fps counter now when I need it, no more frame drops.
D3Doverrider, don't you have these settings in AMD control panel?

Interesting, then I will try games without Fraps. No, sadly AMD control panel doesn't have the proper settings. It has VSYNC, but Triple buffering is only for OpelGL like Nvidia.