Too many stutters on my system in games

[eden]

I have a "killer" system for today's games, but in most that I play, there are far too many stutters coming out for no reason. Keep in mind I say stutters NOT frame skip, because in reality the games run damn smooth and the FPS never drops.
My system is as shown:
AXP 1600
Epox 8kHA+
256DDR
GF3 Ti200 clocked at GF3 levels
15GB 7200rpm drive and 6.4GB slave 5400rpm
SBLIVE 5.1 DE
WinXP

In games like Red Faction, and Medal of Honor AA Single Player not Multi, the games really lag at many moments, lag as in stutters a lot, and in RF online there is also this, even though my old P2 350 with Voodoo 3 2000 was not doing this in RF!
It seems to me the drive is accessing far too much or something like that, but I would like insight on what should I do with WinXP options to make sure I don't get these stutters? I am sure it isn't the card or anything because any game runs smooth at max, and MOHAA online IS ALWAYS smooth without a stutter (except in beginning to get the card loading the movements into memory) or frame skip.

--
The other day I heard an explosion from the other side of town.... It was a 486 booting up...

 

[AMD_Man]

Normally, I would say it's slow main memory but since you have DDR that's not an issue. Something doesn't seem to be feeding your graphics card fast enough at times. I'm guess maybe you have too many apps in the background and your memory is nearly full. Another 256MB RAM will definitely cure your problem. I have WinXP and I don't doubt that it uses up most of that 256MB at times itself alone.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[AMD_Man]

Normally, I would say it's slow main memory but since you have DDR that's not an issue. Something doesn't seem to be feeding your graphics card fast enough at times. I'm guess maybe you have too many apps in the background and your memory is nearly full. Another 256MB RAM will definitely cure your problem. I have WinXP and I don't doubt that it uses up most of that 256MB at times itself alone.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[phsstpok]

Try <A HREF="http://www.geforcefaq.com" target="_new">www.geforcefaq.com</A> for suggestions.

One suggestion not listed there is to disable Video RAM Caching in your BIOS. This sounds counterintuitive but here is the reasoning.

Video RAM sits on your video card. As far as the CPU is concerned this memory sits across the AGP bus. Caching this memory serves no purpose and is detrimental to overall system performance because valuable L2 Cache is being wasted on the video memory when it could be better suited serving main system memory.

The link I had did have a better description of this but that link is dead. I did confirm that enabling Video RAM caching does cause stuttering. It was much more pronounced using my old Duron, which only has 64KB of L2 cache, but it does show up on my Tbird as well.

<b>We are all beta testers!</b>

 

[Guest]

I had a similar problem. It turned out to be my SCSI Cd burner was being polled for a disk every few seconds. Somehow it tied up the system bus and games would freeze a second every time it did this. You might try disabling components one by one and see if anything changes. I'd start with your CD drives and sound card. Then any other non-essential components you might have.

Consider this a last resort option in case you can't find a software solution.

G-Luck

 

[eden]

Well I checked the Gforce faq, and as for IRQ no IRQ is shared with my GF3 Ti 200 however the Network and Sound card are shared together.
I am running in background many things but since it's WinXP I really don't know the many "processes" it so uses compared to Win98 but I know I have on my taskbar the following:
MSN
Paltalk
AIM
NAV AP
Network Connection DSL
Sound
SB LIVE WDM Audio HQ
Disk Detector and Direct CD

What should I check in the alt-ctrl-del menu to know what is gobbling memory? And doesn't Winxp have some memory management such virtual memory to help improve stuttering like in Win98?


--
The other day I heard an explosion from the other side of town.... It was a 486 booting up...

 

[AMD_Man]

Once WinXP requires the page file, there isn't much you can do. Yes, WinXP has far superior memory management, but it can't do anything about full memory. Try closes all those apps in the background and see if that fixes it. If it does then you need more RAM.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[marneus]

I sometimes get stutters but is usually the fault of my Cd drive accessing data (eg Diablo 2 with music or not full install) it will freeze, access the data & carry on as if nothing has happened

1.2Gig Athlon 'C' Epox 8KHA+, 256DDR & Kyro2 64MB, 40GigHDD & Vlogic sonicfury sound but still an relatively old CD drive (32x Teac 1998) I have...

U could try running UR Gfx card at unclocked setting & see if any different...

did U wipe & reinstall everything when U upgraded UR HW (old/obsolete drivers can cause strange effects)

---If at first you dont succeed... get a bigger hammer... that'll teach it !!!---

 

[monkeyspank]

are both your hard drives on the same IDE channel?
If so, you might benefit from putting the secondary one on the 2nd ide. make sure that your primary drive is UDMA enabled.

-- There are no answers to find in the bottom of a glass. But you can have fun looking for them.

 

[svol]

And download Cacheman to optimize your memory, even under XP:
<A HREF="http://www.outertech.com" target="_new">http://www.outertech.com</A>.

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground .

 

[AMD_Man]

Yes, I forgot about that! Cacheman is great cure to any low memory problems!

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor