Microstuttering in multiple games with i7, 5770

[westbrook348]

Seen this problem on the forums, but no solutions have worked for me. I have a new i7-2600 and a 1gb 5770, 460w psu, 8gb ram, & I'm running Windows 7 64-bit. I installed latest AMD drivers (CCC 11.7 and driver 8.872). My proble is that while playing a game, I have lag that occurs for a fraction of a second pretty regularly but independent of how much action is occurring. It even happens when I turn graphics settings down, & happens with v-sync on and off. The stuttering looks different from typical lag that happens when the gpu can't handle the graphics settings. FRAPs says I have good enough fps (30-50). The main games this happens for were CoD4 and GTA4. Call of Juarez (DirectX 10) ran flawlessly with no stuttering. I enabled Triple Buffering for OpenGL in CCC and it seemed to help with CoD4 but not with GTA4. I downloaded RivaTuner with D3DOverrider to try to enable Triple Buffering for DirectX9 but this actually made the stuttering worse. If I had to guess, I would say there's something wrong w/ the communication between CPU and GPU, but I really have no idea how to fix this. Any ideas?

 

[shanky887614]

if i remember right they had this problem on games like assasins creed, it is where your computer cant load the data quick enough,

your computer tries to predict what you will do and preloads data, if you do something it didnt preload it stutters


it might not be your problem but many people have installed ssd's and the problem has disapeard for them (could do raid instead of ssd though)

 

[Gman450]

What HDD are you using ?
RAID0 can most likely fix the problem. SSDs are expensive, but they too can solve the problem.

 

[westbrook348]

Thank you for the reply. I don't think the microstuttering is my hd for a number of reasons.

1. the stuttering went away in cod4 after i enabled triple buffering with openGL.
2. i've never had this stuttering before when i've played on other computers that have used regular 7200 rpm hds.
3. i have 8gb of ram; the games should be loading stuff in my near vicinity from my ddr3 ram, not from the hd.
4. the console versions of these games don't stutter & they don't use ssds.

It really seems like it's something in the pipeline, in the connection between gpu, cpu, motherboard, monitor. All the pieces seem to be working well; the pc can handle ultra settings. There's just a delay as they communicate. Maybe I could play GTA4 smoothly if I could get triple buffering for it, but like I said in the initial post, I tried D3D Overrider & it made the stuttering worse. GTA4 is still playable at high settings, but I wish the lamp posts & street signs moved at consistent speeds as I pass them by.

Maybe it's an audio issue? Everything sounds fine while playing, but I've heard of audio problems causing video issues before. I have Realtek HD Audio, but I'm not using it because I have HDMI plugged into my 5770 (first time I've ever had my gpu outputting audio). Device manager says the drivers are all up to date though. And I don't know why the stuttering would occur in GTA4 but not Call of Juarez, and in CoD4 but only with Triple Buffering disabled.

Quite a puzzle.

 

[Gman450]

GTA IV - A badly ported game.
Stutterings are common for it, believe me.

4. the console versions of these games don't stutter & they don't use ssds.

In some games, like Crysis 2, even consoles comes down to a bad frame rate issue. But not stuttering. Their ports are entirely different.

 

[westbrook348]

HD is a SATA II, 1.5TB 7200rpm. Could the stuttering be caused by a bottleneck due to a cheap motherboard? I don't even know what motherboard I'm using; the PC is a Dell XPS 8300.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i think its game specific, and its NOT "microstuttering", that only happens with crossfire/sli. You can just call it stuttering/frame rate drops. Things to do - Run Memtest86+ to test your ram for problems, Run your hard drive manufacturers diagnostic tool to check it for errors, re-install the games, that has fixed similar problems for people, defragment your hard drive. An obscure solution i heard for some stuttering was to have the windows page file on a separate hard drive, regardless of how much ram you have, windows stupidly still pages data to the HDD. Another thing to try is to get MSI afterburner and change the fan speed profile - read this http://www.overclock.net/graphics-cards-general/796040-new-crossfire-micro-stutter-fix.html

 

[westbrook348]

Best answer selected by westbrook348.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey