Stuttering/skipping frames after overclocking G73JH?

This week I started overclocking the Radeon 5870 in my G73JH, and I was able to get it completely stable at 825/1085. Stock clocks are 700/1000, so it's not like I went completely bonkers on this thing. In fact, I'm not even going to use this overclock at all; I just wanted to get an idea of how far I can push the GPU.

Anyway, after doing the above, I started playing games at my overclock. That was when I started noticing some stuttering or sudden frame rate dips during gameplay. It's most apparent in fast-moving Source games such as Team Fortress 2 or CS:S but it also exists to a lesser degree in other games. So in these games, I'm normally running around at 100+ FPS but about every 10 seconds or so the frame rate drops down to almost 0 for a fraction of a second before going back up to 100+. It almost feels like the game is skipping frames during those times. That split-second freeze also happens when something graphically intensive takes place for the first time, such as when I first turn on the flashlight or an explosion happens.

Since I started noticing this, I've brought my clocks back down to stock, but to no avail; the stuttering is still there. Nothing else on my system is overclocked or has ever been overclocked except the GPU.

Just to clarify, my temperatures during all of this are absolutely fine. I never go above 80 C in FurMark Xtreme Burn-In or games after running for hours on end, so that's not a problem. Also, the stuttering is not due to my Ping during online play because that's fine too. Hard drive has also been defragmented and the system is otherwise performing brilliantly.

Here's the rest of my specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Core i7 740QM (1.73 GHz)
6 GB DDR3 1333 MHz
5400 RPM HDD
BIOS 213
Chastity VBIOS OD2
Catalyst 11.10

 

It could be related to your HDD. Tom's Hardware did a test comparing SSDs to HDDs recently and in some games, those with HDDs did experience some stuttering due to disk access vs SSDs. They also noted FPS were the same when it wasn't stuttering. If the game is caching to disk (virtual memory?) for some reason (windows doing it in the background?) the. It's possible that's what you are feeling. You could try and disable virtual memory in Windows to see if that helps (assuming you have 8gigs of ram, I wouldn't disable it with less personally).

 

typical thing after messing with the clocks, in my experience. Now that you are back at stock clocks, exit CCC turn off/turn on your computer back on, load CCC. This usually helps me. If not, uninstall completely CCC and drivers, reboot, instal CCC and driver anew. This has always fixed stutering, or a downright drop in fps for me. This most likely not your HDD.

 

might be an issue with dpc latency.
but most likely HDD issues.

Read This:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-freeze-like-1-second-every-minute-two-4.html

 

I tried disabling Virtual Memory. Didn't help. BTW I have 6 GB on my system not 8.

 

Well, I've disabled the core parking on my i7 and that seems to have helped a bit. I no longer get skipping every 10 seconds, but there is still a split-second stutter every time something new is rendered during the game. The first couple minutes of a game like Team Fortress 2 are awful because all these graphical effects (explosions, lighting, particles, etc.) are being rendered and each time there is a hiccup. Could it be that my slow hard drive (5400 RPM) is causing this? I can tell you that the HDD indicator on my laptop goes crazy for the first few minutes when playing a game the first time. After that the hiccups pretty much stop and the indicator quiets down too.

BTW is there really that big of a difference between a 5400 RPM and a 7200 RPM hard drive? My desktop is 7200 RPM and I don't get these in-game hiccups.

 

There is a big difference, if you are getting hiccups when new things are loading its probably pulling the textures from disk.

When I switched my MacBook pro to a 7200rpm drive, i noticed a massive difference in VM performance. Granted, virtualization isn't nice on disks in general, but that would be a high utilization example.

 

I could be completely wrong or far off, but it could be "core parking" (or am I way under qualified to help and you're beyond that??)

UltimateComputers.net Forum - View topic - Disable Core Parking Windows 7 Tweak may improve performance

It seems to be a common issue.

Additionally, because I use a momentus XT (SSD/HDD fusion) I experienced increasing hiccuping and issues until I installed the latest firmware.

 

Yeah, now I can see that it's definitely my slow hard drive. After everything gets loaded from HDD onto RAM there are no more hiccups and loading into games are much faster as well.

 

I've already unparked the core. It seemed to help a little bit but the main issue here is my slow hard drive which no amount of software optimization can fix.

 

It looks like the main issue here is a slow hard drive... I guess you should consider a new one

I highly recommend the Seagate Momentus XT HDD/SSD hybrid series

 

If those drop below $100, I'll get one.