Brother is getting long hitches in games - help me troubleshoot.

[Ralfies]

I recently gave my brother a GTX 670 to replace the terrible GT440 in his system. Ever since installing the new card he has had issues with hitching in all games. He says they last for 5-10 seconds and then the game will resume normally for a time. I have had him verify that the games aren't paging out by using GPU-z. The hitches still happen when VRAM usage is below 1GB on his 2GB card. The hitches happen even on lowest settings. I have had him do a driver sweep and reinstall with the latest drivers which did not help. I have also had him verify all temperatures are good and nothing is throttling.

His spec's are as follows:

i3-2100 @ 3.1GHz
Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H
6GB DDR3 1333MHz
ASUS GTX670 DCUII Top
Antec EA650 Green Power Supply

His drive is mechanical but I don't know the specs of it.

Strangely enough he says that after about 10 minutes of playing the frequency of the hitches reduce substantially. I haven't had a chance to troubleshoot in person but I've had him try everything I could think of over the phone.

Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with a similar issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Toothless]

HDD is either choking or there is a thermal issue somewhere.

 

[OneMoar]

it would help if you told us what game hes trying to play
either way stuttered coupled with higher then normal disk usage means there isn't enough ram available

 

[Blue-Knight]

Not enough memory!? 6GB is considered a joke for today's standard last time I checked.

 

[OneMoar]

Not enough memory!? 6GB is considered a joke for today's standard last time I checked.

6GB should be enough unless something is eating a bunch of ram in the backround
could also be whatever game hes running isn't playing nice with hyperthreading now that the gpu isn't a massive bottleneck anymore

 

[Blue-Knight]

should be enough unless something is eating a bunch of ram in the backround

It seems like he has Windows installed... The RAM usage on it rises very quickly every start up program you have installed.

And people usually have tons of them... This if he does not have security software installed, otherwise it is even worse.

Just my opinion.

 

[Ralfies]

Thank for all the quick replies. I had him check ram usage right after posting this thread. He said it wasn't getting used up but didn't give me any specific data.

The stuttering is happening in all games, old and new. He mostly plays racing games. I'm not sure which ones besides dirt and project cars, I'll have to find out tomorrow. I know project cars is quite demanding.

The only thing I can think of that would cause this is data having to be read from the drive, but he says he has free ram available. Could it be an issue with the page file?

BTW I only have 8GB in my rig and have never had an issue.

 

[Blue-Knight]

The stuttering is happening in all games, old and new.

Is his system overclocked?

I would also check the HDD behaviour and usage during these spikes... Plus more system relevant data such as CPU usage and etc...

You can use the ordinary Windows monitor for that (if any).

 

[Ralfies]

Is his system overclocked?

Nope, everything is stock. It strikes me as odd too. Like I said, I haven't had a chance to troubleshoot in person yet. I guess I'm trying to get some ideas together for when I do.

I apologize for making this thread a little prematurely without having first hand knowledge of the system and issues.

 

[OneMoar]

p.c.a.r.s will use 5GB of ram if you crank the details
as for DIRT if its DIRT1/2/3 its not gonna run worth a shit on a hyperthreaded duel core

 

[Ralfies]

p.c.a.r.s will use 5GB of ram if you crank the details
as for DIRT if its DIRT1/2/3 its not gonna run worth a shit on a hyperthreaded duel core

Good to know, I have no experience with those games. He says he's having the issue in older games as well, I'll have to get more specifics tomorrow. When I had the card in my pc with the G2120 I never came across any issues like this. I'll have to have him try some games that I was able to run well on that system.

 

[Devon68]

Is it possible the cpu is bottle necking the card.?
That is the only thing that comes to mind. Can he put the old card back in the system and try those older games and see if it happens with that card too, if not the new card is to blame.

 

[Mussels]

i'd be double checking his temps in person, sounds to me like CPU thermal throttling - you can alt tab to check a program and have it cool instantly, making it hard for a beginner to notice.

 

[Ralfies]

Is it possible the cpu is bottle necking the card.?
That is the only thing that comes to mind. Can he put the old card back in the system and try those older games and see if it happens with that card too, if not the new card is to blame.

The cpu is almost certainly bottlenecking the card, but that should just result in frame rate dips and lower than expected performance. I've never heard of it causing hitches.

The more I think about it the more I think he must be running out of system ram. I think 6GB is just barely enough. I'll find out how much RAM windows is hogging tomorrow and see if he can't free some up by disabling some unwanted services.

i'd be double checking his temps in person, sounds to me like CPU thermal throttling - you can alt tab to check a program and have it cool instantly, making it hard for a beginner to notice.

I'll have him double check temps with a stress test tomorrow. It's only been a couple months since I installed the cpu for him and I made sure temps were good then. The cooler could have shifted during travel, or he could have bumped it when installing the new gpu. Those stock Intel HSF's don't mount so tight.

 

[Batou1986]

The cpu is almost certainly bottlenecking the card, but that should just result in frame rate dips and lower than expected performance. I've never heard of it causing hitches.

The more I think about it the more I think he must be running out of system ram. I think 6GB is just barely enough. I'll find out how much RAM windows is hogging tomorrow and see if he can't free some up by disabling some unwanted services.

I'll have him double check temps with a stress test tomorrow. It's only been a couple months since I installed the cpu for him and I made sure temps were good then. The cooler could have shifted during travel, or he could have bumped it when installing the new gpu. Those stock Intel HSF's don't mount so tight.

Those tiny stock intel HSF's also clog with dust quite quickly
I'm in agreement with the others sounds like hdd is on its way out or something is throttling.

 

[Mussels]

i had similar sounding stutters on my system about 2 weeks ago, FPS would suddenly dip then recover.

turns out the power cable to my H80 water pump had come loose, so you know - derp. Thermal throttling really does give you the roller coaster ride of FPS craziness.

 

[XSI]

2100 doesn't get too hot. but worth checking anyway.
what i would do just in case, from hardware point of view
clear pc from dust.
remount cooler,
remove and insert ram back,
check all connectors

from software: simply reinstall windows.

 

[Ralfies]

It seems he figured it out last night. He had some malware that was eating up resources. After running a scan and removing it he reports no more hitching and much better fps. That should have been the first thing I had him do! Thanks for all the help guys.

 

[Mussels]

another successful case of blind guessing all the wrong solutions, well done team!

 

[Ferrum Master]

another successful case of blind guessing all the wrong solutions, well done team!

At least we didn't recommend him visiting church or sacrificing virgin blood etc...

Cleaning out PC a daily routine thing that should be done anyways.

 

[...PACMAN...]

p.c.a.r.s will use 5GB of ram if you crank the details
as for DIRT if its DIRT1/2/3 its not gonna run worth a shit on a hyperthreaded duel core

I disagree, my G3258 (flat out dual core) plays all of those games mentioned without a hitch at 1080p.

Glad the OP's brother got it sorted, malware can be a bitch.

 

[64K]

I run an AV, keep my firewall up and run Malwarebytes every couple of months. I almost never have any malware but I don't visit 'bad neighborhoods' and I don't download/run anything or open email attachments unless I know exactly what they are. It's really pretty easy to avoid malware.

 

[Ralfies]

I run an AV, keep my firewall up and run Malwarebytes every couple of months. I almost never have any malware but I don't visit 'bad neighborhoods' and I don't download/run anything or open email attachments unless I know exactly what they are. It's really pretty easy to avoid malware.

Totally agree. I run a scan about once ever few months too and I haven't had anything pop up in years. Probably why it didn't initially occur to me. I'm now remembering having to work on my ex's laptop all the time because it was constantly getting infected. Now that I think about it, I wonder what she was doing on there...

 

[INSTG8R]

Totally agree. I run a scan about once ever few months too and I haven't had anything pop up in years. Probably why it didn't initially occur to me. I'm now remembering having to work on my ex's laptop all the time because it was constantly getting infected. Now that I think about it, I wonder what she was doing on there...

You need to ask your brother what he is been doing on there too. On that note he obviously needs some protection. Personally I just run MSE but then like you and most of us we are smart surfers

 

[Ferrum Master]

I wonder what she was doing on there...

You know the poem about the curiosity killed the cat... Obviously we all know what they do...