Help needed with Unreal Engine games stuttering on my rig

[LifeOnMars]

It seems that on my rig I have a stuttering issue with some Unreal engine based games. Some of them just seem to stream really badly whereas others are flawless, it's really hit and miss. Most notably and recently the problem games have been "Bulletstorm & Alice: Madness Returns".

Here's a full list of the games which stutter on my rig using the Unreal Engine

Alice : Madness Returns
Bulletstorm
Blacksite - Area 51
Wolverine

Games which use the unreal engine and play fine without any issues (on my rig) -

Bioshock 1 & 2
Batman AA
Duke Nukem Forever
Borderlands
Gears Of War
BIA - Hell's Highway
Mass Effect
Singularity
Mirror's Edge
Medal Of Honor Airborne
Rainbow Six 1 & 2

I'm looking for any major things I can do to optimise the engine to work better with my current setup. I will update the first post with your suggestions so it can also help others in the future.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[LifeOnMars]

Anybody? I'm specifically looking to see if I can get Alice - Madness Returns and Bulletstorm running smoother without the loading/hitching/stuttering occurring during gameplay, thanks.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

I read that if you are using Unreal Engine you want to change the following settings in the UTEngine.ini file to:
[Engine.ISVHacks]
bInitializeShadersOnDemand=False
DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=False
UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=False

Edit:
I need to also add that UTEngine.ini may not be the exact name of the file for any particular game.
Here is the source of the infromation.

 

[LifeOnMars]

It turns out it's my WD 640GB Hard drive. It has errors and explains why some games I have played have this pausing/stutter effect to them. It's mostly unreal games and open world games which are streaming in data on the fly which I have had trouble with. All other games have been flawless.

Going to get a replacement from WD but also invest in an SSD at some point. Currently jobless but will make it a priority for a new build when I am working again.