Hello
 
I just put together a new system, and all the basic functions work fine.
 
When I load up Unreal Tournament 3 however, it doesn't run so good. It will run silky smooth for a while, but then drop to like 2 frames per second for a few seconds. Then it will go back to smooth again. A few times it even crashed the game during one of these stutters.
I'm not sure if its just random times, or if it stutters when some new effect or texture comes on screen. Hard to tell.
 
Team Fortress 2 does the same thing....smooth, stutter, smooth, stutter.
 
Heres my machine:
 
Vista Home Premium SP1
Asus M3N78 EMH HDMI mobo
Athlon X2 6000+
2 gigs Crucial Ballistix Dual Channel  RAM
XFX Geforce 8600 GTS XXX --- 175.19 driver
1 IDE drive, 2 Sata drives
Realtek HD onboard audio
Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
 
Thanks

You might have the wrong driver installed.  Are you 32bit or 64bit?
 
Go to Nvidia website and get the right driver.  Save to desk top.
Uninstall existing driver from Control Panel.  Reboot.  
Install correct driver. Reboot.
 
Even if you have the right driver try a reinstall.
 
If you still experience problems try an earlier driver.  Dont forget to uninstall any existing or unused driver(s) before installing new ones.

I have the wrong driver?
I went to 'Geforce' >> 'geforce 8 series' >> 'vista 32bit'
and it brought me to the 175.19 page.
 
Which drivers are right?

You have the newest drivers from geforce, but they might be causing you problems. Like knot said it's a good idea to roll back drivers in case this particular driver is whats causing your problems. Try the drivers from the install disk  which will be older drivers.

what range of settings and res's have you tried.

more RAM....4GB min with Vista.  Do you have a lot of programs running in the background?

Ditto for SpinachEater.

+1 to more RAM. I think it stutters when it needs to swap to the HDD.
 
Maybe a faster HDD would help too, if yours is slow. What do you have now?

Thats a 256mb card no? Sounds like your running your textues/IQ to high and are running outta frame buffer forcing the card to get info outta main memory. When that happens your game will most definitely stutter,and at that point increasing system ram will fix nothing.

The onboard graphics is ATI/AMD.
Your video card nvidia.
Does the onboard automatic disable when installing Nvidia card or do you have to change BIOS/settings?
 
Read your manual about installing PCI-E x16 card
 
Are you trying to use your HDMI?  That wont work.

After you check 86's suggestion,if it still isn't fixed, load up UT3. Rip around til it bogs and check your hd led light,if its lighting up for a bit while it bogs you are running outta system ram,if it doesn't your probably running outta vram on your vid card.

Did you install AMD's dual core optimizer?  
Have you disabled HDD indexing?

WOW, so many suggestions.
My old machine was slower than my current one, and it ran UT3 just fine with 2 gigs RAM. My new one is significantly faster (CPU and RAM especially)
 
-I will try rolling back the driver. I beleive UT3s website recomends a certain verion. I'll try that.
 
- I don't have any programs running except for the Zboard software (which I'll try turning off). Its a fresh windows install
 
-The hard drive the game is on is a Sata 3G, brand new. Windows is on an older IDE (7200rpm) drive. I'll watch the hard drive light next time, maybe that will give me a hint.
 
-It has an onbaord Geforce 8200 which is disabled (I think). It doesn't show up in the device manager.
 
-I havn't tried the dual core optimizer. I havn't heard of HDD indexing, how do I do that?
 
Many thanks for the suggestions.

What about page filing?  I don't have Vista so I am not familiar with all of the settings but I heard of people tweaking windows to use less resources and they had some improvement in gaming.  
 

Unstall Vista, go back to XP, everything will work.  Or buy 2 more gigs of ram and it still might not work.

I ran game just fine in Vista on my old machine with the same video card. I hope I don't have to ajust the page files.
My best guess right now is the drivers. The video drivers was the first thing I installed once getting to the windows desktop for the first time. Maybe the environment has changed since then.

If it was running those games fine before at the same settings its not the video ram then,and most likely not the system ram.It could very well be a driver problem,but its affecting both games so i'm thinking chipset drivers.Do you have the latest nforce drivers installed?

 
Ogdin is right.  If you were running with 2GB before with the same card and didn't get that problem then your new mobo is the next thing to look at.  Also, what components are new in comparison to your old system?  If you can juxtapose the specs for your two systems that might help everyone out.

I installed the drivers off the disc that came with the mobo, but havn't updated since then. Definatly worth a try too.
 
My systen RAM is new. Assuming its working properly, it should be faster. I had old 184pin ram before, now I have 2GB of dual channel (800 mhz)
 
I've got a lot to try when I get off work in 2 hours..LOL

Is the sound card new?  I have heard of Soundblaster not liking vista or nvidia chipsets.  Perhaps you can try taking out the card and using onboard audio.

The sound card was carried over from my last machine too, and it worked fine.
On my new board I can't seem to disable the Realtek audio in the BIOS. Once I applied service pack 1, the 2 audio device seem to get along ok. I just have to go to the audio devices window, and pick which one I want.
 
I tried the game before installing the sound blaster, and it was stuttering then. I tried disabling the realtek in windows too, but that didn't make any difference either.