help me cure stuttering once and for all

[chaotic_uk]

please help me cure the stuttering i am getting in all games , at first i thought it to be my gfx card . but today i tested fc2 @1024x768 and @1680x1050 , my system stats are below

CPU Model
Phenom II x3 720BE
Video Card:
Sapphire HD4870 512
Motherboard:
MSI KA790GX
Ram:
Kingston HyperX 8500 4GB
Storage:
Hitachi 7K160 Deskstar
Soundcard & Speakers:
Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Power Supply
Seasonic S12+ 550w
Case
Coolermaster cm690
Operating System: OS
vista 32bit

my farcry2 ultra results :

@1024x768
Average Framerate: 48.09
Max. Framerate: 76.58
Min. Framerate: 31.99

@1650x1050
Average Results
Average Framerate: 51.10
Max. Framerate: 81.97
Min. Framerate: 33.30

as you can see not much between the 2 results , but even at 1024x768 it still stutters . i have tried all the drivers for my chipset and gfx thats been released in the last 6 months , but the stuttering still remains no matter what i try . what would you recommend i do next ? , same results with my old mobo also (gigabyte ma-770-ds3) . even relaced my memory to kingston hyperX 8500 2x2gb instead of 4x1gb corsair dominator , cpu's i have also tried are the athlon x2 6000 windsor and the athlon x2 7750BE . only thing i have not changed is my hard drive , could this be the cause ?

 

[pbmaster]

What is the stuttering you speak of? Those results don't seem that far off, the FPS varies depending on what's going on in the scene.

 

[chaotic_uk]

as i move in game the picture on the monitor gives stutter (short pauses)

 

[chuck216]

Dumb question but are you running an anti virus program in the background while gaming? Some of them have the bad habit of scanning every file, audio etc. that a game accesses which is known to cause stutterring.

 

[ucanmandaa]

have you tried uninstalling your video drivers and installing them again?

 

[chaotic_uk]

i turn off my av when gaming , yes i have tried that with the drivers

 

[Sasqui]

And old... and I mean very old cause for early NVidia cards was flashing icons in the sytem tray on the desktop causing pauses (studders) in the GDI - even when in full screen games. Quite a few drivers later and it was fixed.

Like others say... check for background stuff that may be sucking up CPU time, like AV.

 

[erocker]

The infamous Far Cry 2 stuttering problem. I honestly tried everything to get it fixed. Reinstalling Windows, moving the pagefile around, running with no other unnecessary programs, several different drivers, trying with no sound devices installed, running stock, overclocked and underclocked, different PSU's, a priest, a shaman and Santa Claus. It drove me nuts as you can see. The one thing that fixed it was installing a different video card. I had to check your system specifications in between writing this and low and behold you are using the same card I had troubles with.

 

[chaotic_uk]

The infamous Far Cry 2 stuttering problem. I honestly tried everything to get it fixed. Reinstalling Windows, moving the pagefile around, running with no other unnecessary programs, several different drivers, trying with no sound devices installed, running stock, overclocked and underclocked, different PSU's, a priest, a shaman and Santa Claus. It drove me nuts as you can see. The one thing that fixed it was installing a different video card. I had to check your system specifications in between writing this and low and behold you are using the same card I had troubles with.

so it's my gfx card even at 1024x768 ? , it's not just fc2 though (stalker cs and fallout3 as well)

 

[ComradeSader]

I've got the same problem with my graphics card (HD4870 1gb). Apparently its something to do with the BIOS and the memory values changing between 2D and 3D mode. You have to flash the BIOS with a modded one which I still haven't gotten around to Although running without any graphical drivers gets rid of the problem lol, ofc this isn't recommended :shadedshu

EDIT: Thread I started a while back about it > http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=88448

 

[ktr]

Is there high hard drive activity when you play FC2?

 

[chaotic_uk]

Is there high hard drive activity when you play FC2?

no not much at all tbh

edit : well there is a little

 

[BradleyKZN]

I dont suppose you have one of the cards with the bad bios?

 

[chaotic_uk]

not sure but i did ask sapphire if any new bios's were available , they said no

 

[Asylum]

Sounds like you need a 64 bit OS and a good graphics card with 1 gig memory!!

 

[chaotic_uk]

i was going to change my mobo as it is not that good , but instead is it worth my getting a 1gb 4870 or get a gtx260 ? . wanted to stay amd/ati tbh

 

[hat]

Probably the hard drive. If I could afford it I would have a bunch of SSDs in RAID 0. Mechanical hard drives are slow because... they're mechanical.

 

[BradleyKZN]

To me your mobo seems fine, i would get the one gig card if i was you. What res do you game on btw

 

[chaotic_uk]

res i play at is 1680x1050

 

[Wile E]

I had the same issue on my Powercolor 4870 1GB. I used RBE to edit my BIOS to change all the memory values to the 3D values, and the stuttering went away.

 

[BradleyKZN]

Try wile E's suggestion if you can or get someone too help you. I see you ran your tests on ultra, try set them to low and see what happens.

 

[hat]

I still wanna say it's the hard drive. His specs only list one drive. That one drive is all over the place with the pagefile, the operating system and whatever game he's trying to run. I have 2 hard drives, one is for my OS and my games, the other for storage (movies, music, about 50GB worth of game installs/images/patches etc) and pagefile.

 

[BradleyKZN]

Another suggestion, to make sure your bios does need to be flashed, is get rivatuner and use it to monitor your card while running a game. It will show you the mhz that your card is running at. After upgrading my bios, my idle settings fluctuate between the 2d and 3d speeds. Check that out and let us know

 

[Frizz]

Its pagefile thats causing the stuttering I've had this problem once before.

 

[Biker]

....also make sure your motherboard drivers are up to date..... an old, incorrect or uninstalled PCI-E driver can cause stutter..... then defrag that hard drive....

Edit: oh and turn off most of that Vista crap running in the background; 95% of users nave no need of the majority of it.

Also make sure you manage your virtual memory properly: If left to its own devices Windows will create a dynamic page file. You want to lock that down to the same value all the time,
in your case i'd say setting the Max AND Min values to 2048MB would be perfect