M17 stuttering in HL2!

Whenever I get a new computer, the first game I stick on it is Half Life 2. It's been a tradition of mine dating back to, well, 2004 really as that is when it came out. The problem is Half-Life 2, the greatest game of all time (source: me), seems to stutter on the M17. Any way... I've tried using both the stock standard Alienware driver, and E-wrecked 9.3, neither solve the issue. This is gutting. Any one know a good work around?

 

Have you got a quad core?

IF it's a quad core then it's most likely the stuttering issue we all have, i.e. the northbridge becoming too hot. The only 100% working solution so far is a copper mod on the northbridge.

 

Nope, it's a X9100, and I've got 2x 3870's. Works fine for most "new" games, but has problems with HL2 for some reason. Thanks any way.

 

Have you upgraded the drivers from stock?

 

well half life 2 has documented issues running on Vista

i never had a problem ....

 

I am running Vista 64, have one 3870 and a T9400 and 4GB of Ram. But I don't have any stuttering at all.

And with your setup ther is absolutely no reason for stuttering. But as newer games run fine, I guess it's a software problem.

But as you already tried different drivers I have no idea what to try else...

 

do you have all the games latest patchs?

 

try running the game with only one 3870 enabled. Could be a crossfire problem.

 

As this person said.

To disable CrossfireX (hence run on only one card) load up the Catalyst Control Center by double clicking on the ATi icon in your tray at the bottom right. Navigate to Catalyst AI (under 3D) and chech the box that says "Disable Catalyst AI".

 

Tried that. Afraid there was no change.

I noticed that a lot of the stutters seem to occur when there is a lot of dialogue happening. I wonder if this could be a sound card driver issue?

 

Out of curiousity what is your BIOS Revision?

 

what's your driver????

 

this may sound strange but a highly fragmented drive will cause the stuttering also. My friend had this issue and hadn't defragged in awhile. As soon as he defragged it went away. Give it a shot. Steam has it's own defragger also. I use diskeeper.

 

Actually HL2 is not the only game that stutters... In fact, pretty much all of them do. The funny thing is that the frame rate does not seem to drop off at all, it just has stuttering problems.

@Marvie100: I am using stock alienware BIOS. Am not game enough to flash it yet, although if any one has any good guides/resources for flashing I'd love to take a look.

@dondadah88: I am using e-wrecked's 8.12 driver on x64 vista.

@Neoclasiccl: This is a fresh install, should not be that fragmented yet.

I am beginning to believe that the root of the problem is to do with the RAID HDD's. It's just a hunch at this point.

 

Achernar just turn on vsync and all will be goo (i hope)

i have similar problemas with win7 (ore vista) wen i play CS:S... my solution to this has to turn on vsync and define the maximum pre-render frames to 0 (i used rivatuner to do this)... like that i am able to play really REALLY Smooth, good luck bguards

 

Ya, I do use Vsync in games doesn't really help much for this problem. How do you define the max pre-render frames in rivatuner?

For every one else, I will better try and define the problem.

The main gripe I have with most games on the M17 is that they seem to jitter a bit when I move the mouse (not when it is just rendering). i.e. It feels rough to pan your view. This is very annoying in FPS's. Playing an RTS (e.g. C&C3), you can see that everything runs smoothly until you move your field of view and then it jitters again. For some reason, this problem does not effect Dawn of War 1.

I am contemplating un-raiding my system and seeing what that does. If any one else has experienced this problem, please let me know how you solved it!

 

Try turning off Speakers Hardware Acceleration