HD4870 insane stuttering

[Jer88]

Hi!

I bought a Visiontek HD4870 1 week after its release, and the card has some very strange behaviors. In Crysis, Gears of War and Call of Duty 4, the game freezes for 3-7 seconds each time I turn around or when I look at very open spaces. I know the textures must be loaded but it was not that bad with my old 8800 GTS G80 (1 second lag max). However, when this stuttering isn't happening, the framerate is absolutely fantastic. Other games have no problems at all.

Here are my specs :
- E6750 @ 3.2Ghz
- HD4870
- OCZ StealthXtreme 600W
- 2Gb RAM 800Mhz
- Vista 32 bit

I tried reformatting, and I tested with every single driver available since 8.6 hotfix (even betas and custom drivers...). I also tried overclocking the card but it was actually worse. Temperature is not the problem. I ajusted the fan speed and my temps never go above 45C. My chipset drivers are up to date.

Any help/suggestions will be highly appreciated because right now, these games are unplayable.

Thank you and sorry for my bad English.

 

[Nica Guy]

you dont have a bad english

 

[angry_ducky]

Upgrade to 4GB RAM?

 

[Jer88]

Upgrade to 4GB RAM?

That's what I'll do if I don't find any solution, but I'd like to hear the opinion of someone who has a similar setup (with 2Gb RAM).

 

[ahslan]

welcome to using vista with 2gb of ram...lol...that was the main reason I abandoned vista ultimate 32bit ship...

 

[Dekasav]

Vista does really like RAM. Did you clear out your old drivers before installing any new ones, and the HD 4xxx should be run with 8.7 or 8.8 (I believe).

 

[Jer88]

Vista does really like RAM. Did you clear out your old drivers before installing any new ones, and the HD 4xxx should be run with 8.7 or 8.8 (I believe).

Yes, I cleared everything and I'm using 8.8.

"welcome to using vista with 2gb of ram...lol...that was the main reason I abandoned vista ultimate 32bit ship..."

So before I got the 4870, the only reason why these games were not stuttering that much is because my 8800 GTS had 640Mb Vram?

 

[Winly]

what Dekasav is trying to say is that you need more than 2GB of memory RAM in order to play those games. all in all, Vista need more RAM lol. you need at least 3GB of RAM.

 

[Jer88]

what Dekasav is trying to say is that you need more than 2GB of memory RAM in order to play those games. all in all, Vista need more RAM lol. you need at least 3GB of RAM.

Even if I could play COD4 and GoW with everything maxed out perfectly with a 8800GTS 640Mb ?

 

[Dekasav]

It sounds like a different issue than just ram, though. 8800GTS 640 did have more ram, but I think ATI uses a better compression dingy, as it seems to do exceptionally well given it's limited 512Mb VRAM. Is it getting enough power? 600w should be enough. I don't know, I can't really think of anything.

 

[Winly]

mmm maybe your video card is damage, but i dont think this is the case. maybe the games are giving you some type of error or the video card its not working properly. also it could be something in the settings of the video card is activate causing the video card to stop working. i will suggest you to check the settings.

 

[XDarkcrystal]

I was recently contacted by the computer guy who was managing my new build. Mine is pretty similar to yours with 2GB of RAM. He said that a high-end card like a HD4870 could not perform well with that RAM amount. Therefore, he wanted me to upgrade the previous quotation of 2GB to 4GB of RAM.

I am not really sure about what he said as I have never heard such a thing b4, I don't know whether he just wanted to squezee a few more dollars from me. I just wanted to let you know about this.

 

[Sus-penders]

I had a similar problem to that (Crysis would freeze for a few seconds every minute or so, very annoying). It turned out to be my antivirus software. I turned off backround monitoring and it solved my problems.

 

[lunyone]

Has anyone thought that the PSU might be having issues with the 4870?? The 4870 consumes about 130w at full load. The 8800gts consumes about 103w at full load. Now the Stealth Extreme (if I'm reading it right) says that 12v2 (CPU2 & PCI-E2) and 12v4 (PCI-E1) are powering the GPU. This would lead me to believe that you might be sharing some of the power with the CPU. Now the PSU has a maximum of 35A on the combined 12v rails (580w-155w/12v=35amps). Under normal circumstances this might be okay, but maybe with the added heat and possible capacitor aging that the PSU just can't handle this much work. This might be your root cause, but it's hard to tell. I'm just pointing out a possible issue with your setup. I'd probably would have used a better PSU than the one you have, but that is just me. If you have a friend with a different and more powerful PSU, borrow it and see if that changes anything. Otherwise I'd consider a different PSU. I'm sure the lower amount of memory might have some slight possibilities, but when running under a game, I believe most of the issues are related to the GPU and not to your memory.

 

[nano84]

i have had the same thing, i tryed to increase the fan speed but that didn't work. it locked up all the games i use to play.
list.. Crysis, crysis warhead, WoW, age of conan,Lord of the rings online,Arma, all my stream games and like 15 more.

i didn't get to try the anti virus thing Sus-penders sayd, i send it back to where i got it. hoping for the non OC version or an gtx260.

my spec is.
Core 2 Q6600 3.0Ghz
ASUS P5N32-E SLI
Kingston 4x1024Mb DDR2 667
NQ-4775-500BU2 OEM PSU
right now im running my Asus 7950GX2 with Modifed Fans from NorthQ.
i mean i have never had any problems with that card but its to damn old.