Micro Stuttering after upgrading?

rvg90

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I recently upgraded from 8 64-bit pro to 8.1 and i am installed all available windows updates and i do experience random stuttering and frame drop to 10-15 in BF4, at first i thought it might be the latest bf4 patch but then i noticed the same thing happen in Dota 2 just at random time the game would freeze for a split second and then goes back to normal.

System Specs:

Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
ASUS M5A97 R2.0 Mobo
AMD FX-8350 @ 4Ghz
AMD 7850 2GB OC
8 GB DDR3 Rams
1 TB WD HDD 6gb\s
1920x1080 Resolution

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
Yeah, oh and for next time [Alt]+[PrintScreen] takes just the active window. I'm on ISDN and downloading Windows Updates while reading the forums btw. ;-)

Those drivers probably won't hurt, but I do not know if they contain the southbridge / SATA AHCI / storage driver in question.

I do know that using the stock Microsoft one after an OS Upgrade generally causes some stuttering in games. (It is sad that AMD/ATI do not point this out more, as on Intel platforms it is 'less often' the cause for various reasons I won't go into. 'And' also that AMD/ATI have had a bad year with consistant frame render times even without Crossfire with the bulk of their drivers this year sadly....).

I'm still sporting a AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6870, and I don't play Skyrim...
Indexing service?

Win8.1 may also have changed your SATA ACHI driver, I know the Intel one to use (they all should use iaStor.sys for the most part, but they have diff optimizations).

I'm not as up to date with AMD motherboard chipsets and their south-bridges (AHCI Storage Controllers) as I used to be back in the Opteron 200/800 days.


I'd start looking there though, as I know the same two things can cause frame drops on Intel systems too.

IObit GameBooster helps with one (it stops the Indexing Service, and other 'undesirable services' whilst a game is running), it does not however suggest the best SATA AHCI driver to use).

Go into Device Manager, and right click your SATA AHCI object, then check if the driver is by 'Microsoft', or 'AMD', or '3rd party SATA AHCI controller goes here'.

If it's a stock Microsoft one you can bet that's at least 50% of your problem, (they're awesome for a quick Office PC set-up, but terrible for the more extreme end of the market).
 
Yeah, oh and for next time [Alt]+[PrintScreen] takes just the active window. I'm on ISDN and downloading Windows Updates while reading the forums btw. ;-)

Those drivers probably won't hurt, but I do not know if they contain the southbridge / SATA AHCI / storage driver in question.

I do know that using the stock Microsoft one after an OS Upgrade generally causes some stuttering in games. (It is sad that AMD/ATI do not point this out more, as on Intel platforms it is 'less often' the cause for various reasons I won't go into. 'And' also that AMD/ATI have had a bad year with consistant frame render times even without Crossfire with the bulk of their drivers this year sadly....).

I'm still sporting a AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6870, and I don't play Skyrim (or didn't, I don't know if it's still popular on PC) so I've avoided some issues and just bided my time. Waiting for April 2014, or maybe even Oct 2014 for my next move.
 
Solution

rvg90

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Thanks i didn't know the PrintScreen thingie :p.

About the drivers, while attempting to install it shows the following components:

- AMD Catalyst
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
- Display Driver
- HDMI Audio Driver
- Accelerated Video Transcoding
- USB Filter
-Catalyst Control Center
-Evolved App

Now i don't wanna over write my 13.11 beta9.2 display drivers and there is no option to remove display driver installation, but anyway it doesn't show any SATA drivers.

Where am i supposed to get the SATA drivers i am looking for or what exactly am i looking for? AMD Sata ahci drivers?

UPDATE: I downloaded 64bit Win8 AMD AHCI driver v1.3.1.156 WHQL and installed them and that's how it looks like now :)

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3678/10927548466_6f3dd8321f_o.png

So i am assuming that's what we were looking for, although i am not sure this will fix the problem as this is the first time ever i install AMD AHCI driver which means i always used the stock windows ones yet i never had stuttering like i did now but still i will test it and get back to you :).

Thanks for your help :).
 

rvg90

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The problem is now solved, it appears that for some reason AMD Evolving App is causing the problem i had horrible stuttering in Dota and started closing background apps and as soon as i closed this the disk usage went down from 100% to 20% and everything is smooth again.

You still helped though, credit for the SATA driver thing i am sure i will see improvement using that :).
 
Man, AMD used to lead to roost too.
Heck they even have their own x86 compiler... something happened to that company that gutted their tech. and QA at some point.

The stuff you listed was from Uninstall Programs, not Device Manager btw.

If you don't have a SATA AHCI driver installed, and just installed the OS in 'IDE Mode' then it will always stutter at times, even with an SSD.
 

rvg90

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The SATA AHCI is now replaced by AMD Sata Controller, but the stuttering is completely gone now after i turned off AMD Evolving application, it appears that the in-game support in that program is completely broken.