FatalTheRabbit

About six months ago I put together a new system by myself with an Evga 7800GT CO, AMD Athlon 3200+, 1 gig of OCZ premium ram, OCZ 450 Watt PSU, and a Gigabyte K8NF-9 motherboard. After putting it together and trying to play some games I noticed that they all stuttered, some quite heavily, on settings that even my old computer handled with ease. First I simply tried to reinstall everything including windows, the graphics drivers the chipset drivers, and flash the bios. This did nothing, the problem remained, so I figured it was the hardware. I took it into a PC repair shop, and they determined that there was nothing wrong with the hardware. The best they could give me was a "software problem", but they had no idea what sort of problem since all the installations and versions were proper and up to date. With no success so far I decided to take it to yet another PC repair shop, and they first suggested that it was some sort of conflict between the processor and the ram, so we switched out my 1gig of OCZ, and put in 2gigs of muskin black extreme performance. It did not solve the problem. I kept the ram, but they didn't charge me for the testing since we didn't solve the problem.

After taking the machine to TWO sepearate shops and trying my best to figure it out at home, I was no closer to solving the problem, so I decided to start all over again. I purchased an ASUS A8N-E motherboard, kept my old powersupply and the 2gigs of muskin ram from the second repair shop, bought a Sapphire X1900XTX 512MB graphics card, a new samsung 40gig HD, and an AMD Athlon 3700+ processor with 1mb cache. There was no way in hell I thought this new set up would be anything but butter smooth for the most demanding games out there. I put it all together, installed some games, and lo and behold the very same stutter problem occured! At this point I was nearly going out of my mind. It made no sense whatsoever. They were two different systems! The only constants are the power supply, PCI Express, and the Nforce chipsets.

I basically just put up with it for a while, until recently. I just can't stand it anymore, and it's partially because of some strange findings while trying to optimize my performance in the Company of Heroes Beta. The game curiously enough ran without much noticeable choppyness except during the cutscenes(in game cutscenes always stutters badly for all my games even when the gameplay choppyness is minimal. Rise of legends for example has heavy stuttering during cutscenes but minor stuttering during gameplay), until they released a patch which supposedly was optimized to increase performance across the board for all systems. In my case however it slowed it down considerably, and I had to set terrain quality to low in order to get relatively smooth gameplay. It bugged me a lot because until then it had actually run better than most games I had installed. I started messing around with in game settings, and my card settings in order to identify the source of the stuttering. I set all my card options to application controlled, removing all AA and AF, and turning all the games settings to low at a resolution of 1280x1024. Even at those settings the game still stuttered, so I brought up the games statgraph in order to check the frame rate. It was at 70-80 frames per second but units still stuttered across the screen the same as before, and scrolling still stuttered! With all card and in game settings remaining off or as low as possible, I then set the resoution to 1600x1200, and my framerate stayed the nearly the SAME, but the stuttering became very pronounced!

There is only one game I have played on this computer that did not stutter, and it was PREY. I have no idea why. Rise of Legends, the joint task force demo, Company of Heroes beta, battlefield 2, neverwinter nights, EVE-online, ALL stutter, though some more than others.

What could this possibly be? Is there something that I've missed in puttig these two computers together which is causing this that not even two seperate PC repair shops would pick up? Could there be some conflict occuring despite each piece of hardware being completely functional seeing how it's occured the same on two different systems?

niceguyrichy

swap out that PSU for a more powerfull one for sure, X19's are power hungry cards, sounds like it's not getting enough juice

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Al_Vampyre

Well, we can't say you haven't given us enough information!! Welcome to DH FatalThe Rabbit hope you enjoy your stay...

OK, this is just a wild stab in the dark and I would have to assume that the PC repair shop(s) checked this...do you have a swap file enabled in Windows and what size is it?

2Gb of RAM should negate the need for a swap file but some programs like to know there is one there, regardless of the amount of RAM installed.

The other thing that springs to mind is the order that everything was installed, make sure that the motherboard drivers are installed before graphics drivers...

If you're overclocking anything turn it back to stock, run Memtest on your memory (although it should be fine)

Hope that helps...

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FatalTheRabbit

I have the pagefile set to 1024mb, and I've tried to set it as low as 256 in order to force the games to use the ram instead of the page file, but it didn't change anything. The stutter doesn't necessarily occur as a result of bad frame rates. I think something is hanging up for miliseconds repeatedly and that's creating the stuttering, because sometimes the frame rate isn't really that bad at all. The stuttering is pretty uniform, and is present even when settings are low.

Remember also that I used a 7800GT CO that also suffered the same stuttering, and my PSU is well within it's range I think. Since the frame rates can get pretty high even with the stuttering it makes me wonder if the PSU is much of a possibility. Of course I would like to swap it out for another just to test, but I don't have one, and I can't just buy an expensive PSU to test. I'm thinking about taking it in to yet another PC repair shop, but I have a feeling it will be as futile as before.

Installation order is, 1)Update BIOS, 2)Install chipset, 3)install graphics driver. Everything is completely up to date. Catalyst 6.8, Nforce 6.86, BIOS version 1013. I use driver cleaner when I udate also. Nothing is overclocked.

Once I figure out how to get a fraps video to a small size I'll post a video of it.

CDsDontBurn

welcome to DH FatalTheRabbit .

as for your stuttering issue, i'm w/richy on this one. when you take it down to the PC repair shop, ask to see if they have a better PSU than yours to put in there to test it out.

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Dyre Straits

Could you post the list of the processes running, please?

Also, do you notice any abnormal HD activity during these stutters? LED light flashing?

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FatalTheRabbit

First half of process list-

Second Half-


The LED is a solid orange most of the time. I don't really hear any HD activity either. Thx for the welcome guys.

Dyre Straits

If the HDD LED on the front of the computer is lit up most of the time...not simply flickering off and on during access seeks to the HDD/s and the CD/DVD drives....then that could very well be the source of the problem. The HDD LED on the front of the computer indicates that there is activity. It should only flicker occasionally; not be constantly on.

I'm curious as to whether this process: wdfmgr.exe is the source of this constant use? It's related to Windows Media Player. It can be shutdown without harm as it's not an essential process. You can read more about it here:

http://www.liutilities.com/products/...ibrary/wdfmgr/

I would try to end task on processes that continually scan the drives for content. File Managers, etc.

Also, Windows Update is something that can be turned off and controlled manually by the user. That will prevent the computer doing downloads without your knowledge. Most of today's computers, however, wouldn't notice a performance hit like this even with Updates turned on. That process is: wuauclt.exe.

If you can determine which app or apps are making constant scans of the system, you'll likely discover the source of your problem.

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FatalTheRabbit

Alright I feel stupid. When I looked over at the lights on the case there were two, and I took notice of the wrong one! The LED light is mostly off. What I guess is the power light is always orange. Just turning on my computer tonight and watching the lights as it loaded showed me this. Sorry.

H3X4D3C1M4L

Try removing any hardware you can from the power supply first and see if that helps. Reinstalling Windows (multiple times if necessary) or updating chipset drivers are options too

BlueMak

Why do you have 3 CLI's open, especialy when I don't see any such window open?

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Dyre Straits

The three CLI's are related to ATI CCC. I would show you but I don't use CCC.

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Cube623

As Dyre said it's ATI's Catalyst Control Center and everytime it is loaded there are 3 CLI processes.

Also there shouldn't be a window open as it runs from the taskbar

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FatalTheRabbit

H3X4D3C1M4L, my system is pretty bare already. I use onboard sound, but I disabled that already to see if it was the culprit, and it wasn't. The only additional hardware I have hooked up is my two optical drives, my HD, and my graphics card. I'll ditch the drives, but they seem minimal. I've updated the chipsets several times, over several versions, and a windows once before on this system, and several times over on the first one. There's got to be something I'm missing in putting these computers together... some settings somewhere... It's either that or the PSU, but that seems like a stretch. This is so bizarre.

Randomletters

If you looking to upgrade the PSU I could probibly purchase the OCZ off you.

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[hobo]eclipse

what about that diskeeper process? is it possible diskeeper might be messin with the harddrive constatly? do you have it set to defrag while idling? maybe try uninstalling Diskeeper or turning off the Diskeeper service in services.msc

FatalTheRabbit

I only recently installed diskeeper in order to defrag and set the page file at the front of my drive in the hopes that it might be the source. No luck.

Randomletters, if my PSU turns out to be to the source of my trouble, because it's not powerful enough I'll consider selling it to you, but if it's malfunctioning I won't!

Randomletters

heh ofcorse im just in the market for a psu and was looking at OCZ is yours a modstream?

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FatalTheRabbit

Yeah, it is.

[hobo]eclipse

the only other thing i can think of besides a PSU problem is a heat issue, hows the ambient temp of your computer area and the hows the airflow through the case? also i may have missed this earlier, but were the PC techs at the shops able to reproduce the problem?

BlueMak

Have you checked to see if both the BIOS and the motherboard (switches if it has) are set up correctly for the CPU/Memory?

Have you installed the Windows patches, at least SP2? (if you have Windows XP)

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

FatalTheRabbit

The temperatures are within proper ranges for the card, and I have warnings for the Mobo/CPU but they've never come on. I have windows service pack 2. For CPU settings, and RAM settings I don't know what would be proper. They are just set at the defaults. I know absolutely nothing about switches on motherboards, so I couldnt say.

Yes the techs were able to 'reproduce' it(it's just there, not some occaisonal bug that needs to be coaxed out of hiding.), it's very apparent. Some games, like NWN are unplayable. It's pretty hard to miss.