Issues with Stuttering

[Cormierre]

(My apologies if this is in the wrong section; I honestly can't distinguish by the forum layout)

I'm in a bit of a bind with my computer.
For as long as I can remember, there has been an awful case of stuttering (frequent skips) while running games on this PC.
I've been searching all over the place for some information about it but so far it hasn't helped.

Anyway, my basic computer specifications are:

Manufacturer: Acer
Motherboard: Acer RS740DVF
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (SP3)
Processor: AMD Athlon X2 4800+
Memory: 3GB DDR2
Hard Drive: 640GB SATA
Video Card: (EVGA) GeForce 9800GT
Sound Card: Onboard IXP SB600

What I don't understand is that it happens in ALL games that I've tried running.
Anything from the hungrier games like Bioshock, Crysis, and Fallout 3, to old and simple games like Doom, Quake (1-3), or Deus Ex.
This, of course makes me want to tear my hair out, catch on fire and explode.

This issue doesn't happen with my upstairs computer (though it's not quite powerful enough for Crysis), and I've tried
swapping out my 9800GT with an old Radeon x1600 Pro, and the stuttering persists. I really don't know what to do at this point.

If anyone could help in any way, or provide any information or fix, it would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks very much for reading.

 

[Mongox]

I'd look hard at the other programs running. To give an example, when my computer does its Virus-scan, nothing runs smoothly.

Try killing off everything that's resident and see how things go. And, make sure you don't have a virus or other nasty things.

And, defrag the hard drive...

 

[Cormierre]

Thanks for the reply!

I've tried shutting off everything until my processes are down to explorer.exe and a game itself.
Also, I have in the past, and once again (just in case) defragged the harddrive,
but neither thing quite seems to fix the issue.

It doesn't decrease my FPS, it just doesn't show multiple frames at set times apart.

 

[Mongox]

Might try posting in either the Games or Graphics card forums - I'd try the GAmes forum and list what you did above.

Also might chk for an update on the drivers for that video card - but don't see how it would still do it with the other card if that was it.

Might look into how your memory and virtual memory is being allocated in XP? And whether there's BIOS choices on ... ummm, not up on video tech stuff ... the frame rate or such. Page size maybe.

Seems like the system is doing something with swapping RAM and virtual RAM to me, using the drive to store what should be either in the vid card's memory or system memory.

Maybe someone with more knowledge will find this, but likely not under motherboards!

 

[Cormierre]

Is there any way to move this thread to the other forums?

 

[jlear3]

bulldozer?