Movies in my games lag/stutter

Hi

I am having a big problem with my games at the moment. The problem is that in certain games the intro movie and/or the movies in game itself lag. It is more difficult to see but I can hear i clearly. I do not even know if it is the movies themselves of just the sound in the movies.

Games where this happen that I know of: Flat Out 2, Star wars: Knights of the old Republic 1 and 2, Grid, Singularity, and Deus EX: Human Revolution.

The first time I encountered it was with Knights of The Old Republic from 2003. I thought that it was a problem with the game since it was old and I found a fix for it. But it has happened with more games since then.

In some games the movie lagging also coincides with the game acting weirdly. In Flat Out 2 the driving became sluggish and it was hard to turn the car. And it seemed like the driving and the whole game was a lot slower than it used to be. In Grid the car was driving slower for then to get a speed boost every 3 seconds where it would go a lot faster then normal.

But it has also disappeared in some games. I got the same problem with Empire: Total War for a little time but the problem disappeared again as fast and mysterious as it had came. The last time I played Singularity there was no lagging at all in the movies that had always lagged before. I have no idea what made the lagging go away in Singularity either.

The sound lagging in the movies also disappeared in Grid. When the video lagging disappeared the problems with the car speed also disappeared. This happened after I updated my graphics driver to the latest version. But it is only in that game I have seen any differences after updating my driver. So I do not know if the driver update fixed it or if it was purely coincidental as it was with Singularity and Empire: Total War.

I have just discovered that I have the same problem in the intro movies in Dirt 3. But the video problem does not effect the gameplay itself.

I have Win 7 and my graphics card is GTX 260M.

Does anyone know a way to fix this problem?

Thank you for the help

Porhati

 

Does anyone have any idea of how to fix this? It would be of great help.

I have tried to uninstall Knight of the Old Republic to see if there was a file there that caused anything but nothing changed.

 

Do you have any issues with your screen, outside of games?

Mr. Mysterious

 

Imho by the looks of it you're experiencing thermal throttling.
I'm not betting on it, but the whole stutter issue and speed up-slow down-speed up usually is a sign of your card downclocking from 3d clocks to 2d clocks until temperatures goes down to a certain point, then it raises the clocks to 3d clocks, rinse and repeat.

We need to monitor your gpu temperature, you can try two methods:

- download Msi Afterburner from guru3d forum (2.2.0 beta 7) or google for it.
Install it, launch it, go into settings then go into Monitoring and put the check mark near these values:
Gpu temperature
Gpu core clock
Gpu shader clock
Gpu memory clock

Then in this same window there should be an option that needs to be checked called "show in on screen display" (OSD) - you need to do this for every option described above.
Hit apply or ok, if you did all correctly a new notification should tell you that MSI AB server is now started (small airplane icon with a violet number on it should appear in the task bar).

Now launch a game and you should have the onscreen display in the top left corner.
When the stuttering happens watch closely if your core clock changes speed and watch your temperature. If it skyrockets over 90c then it's throttling and it needs a repaste ASAP otherwise you will burn your gpu for good.

- second method is more easy and rapid but also the most stressful.
Download Furmark 1.9.1, install it and launch the burn in test.
A graphic stress window should open with a graph in the lower part of the window that monitors the temperature. If throttling is your problem then the temperature should raise quite considerably and fastly.

Also your full specs of the laptop is appreciated to troubleshot your problem.

 

I ran the Afterburner and then started Deus Ex. For some strange reason the movies were now flawless. My temperature was at steady 50 in the movies but went up to between 74-78 in the game. But i never saw it go up to 80 degrees.

I also ran Dirt 3 and the intro movies worked great there too. The GPU had a temperature of 55 degrees in the intro movies. But in the game I got to 82 degrees. That was when I played 2 races. But I never went over 82 and it was very steady on 82 degrees when I played so I do not know if it will stay steady on 82 or if it will exceed that temperature after many hours of gaming Dirt 3.

My processor is a I7 Q720 at 1.6 Ghz. I have 4 GB ram.
And as said before my GPU is a GTX 260M.

Those two games are the only ones I have had time to try out for now. 80 degrees is a bit much but it is not catastrophic as far as I can tell.

Is there anything you can tell me from what I have told you?

Thanks a lot for your help

 

Ok did you see any clocks difference with AB beside the temperatures, or the clocks will stay at 3d clocks?
If we can rule out the gpu we can try to understand if the CPU is throttling.

Download ThrottleStop from techinferno;
Launch it and keep it open, then try to game with something and see if something changes.

To keep an eye on CPU temp in case of throttling, download CoreTemp and launch it.
Download Prime95, hit just stress testing, then launch a stress test with SmallFFt option. Keep it running and watch closely the temps reported by CoreTemp.

CPU shouldn't reach temps above 75c to stay safe. Also your gpu is doing fine at 80c that's a good heat under load.

If all this doesn't help go into nvidia control panel and under 3d settings set power management from adaptive to prefer maximum performance and display to single display mode.
Also be sure you clean installed 280.26 whql drivers.
Let me know.

 

I ran Deus Ex again today and the movie problem returned. I ran MSI Afterburner to see if there were any changes but I could not see any changes in temperature or to the memory and core clock when the movie lags.

I have also run ThrottleStop when gaming Deus ex but I have to Alt-Tab out of the game when I want to check the program since I do not how or if I can put the numbers in a corner of the screen when gaming like Afterburner.

I ran CoreTemp and did the same thing as with ThrottleStop. The temperatures I saw were up to 60C when I gamed. But I do not know how reliable they are since I have to Alt-Tab out of the game to check them.

I have not Run Prime95 yet so I have nothing to come with there.

I downloaded and installed the newest driver just a week ago. That was just because it was the only solution I could think of to fix this problem. I already had the problem some time before I updated the driver.
So I do not know what that can have to do with my problem. But I just installed it without uninstalling the previous driver. So no, I did not do a clean install.


Thanks again for the help

 

Well, throttlestop doesnt need to be checked. Launch it, click on Turn On (you may have missed it) and leave it running docked. Thats all.

About your gpu drivers, you need to clean install them by Driver Sweeper method.

- download and install Driver Sweeper
- Grab 280.36 Dev driver from here: http://download.laptopvideo2go.com/nvidia/280series/28036_win7x64.exe and extract it
- Grab the modified inf from here: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/infs/280series/28036_win7x64/nv_disp.inf and overwrite the one in the just extracted file above, it goes into Display.display folder
- Unistall the video driver using Windows Program and Featues (add/remove)
- Reboot, after bios post hit F8 and go into Windows Safe Mode
- Launch Driver Sweeper, select Nvidia Chipset and Display, hit Analyze then Clean, if it asks for a reboot, do it
- Reboot normally in Windows. Now you should have a Standard VGA card installed
- Run the setup in the extracted driver folder (be sure you overwrited the inf). After the initial check, accept the agreement, then hit Customize Installation
- Select all components excluding 3D related things, then put a checkmark near "perform clean installation"
- After rebooting modify both Display mode to Single and power management to Prefer Maximum Performance

Keep ThrottleStop open, Turn it On, then do some other tests.

If all this doesnt help, the problem can be 2 things: RAM, or HDD. But i suspect it could be your HDD that is slow loading, or maybe it has some broken/corrupted clusters.
Or maybe is just dyeing from age.
Do you see your HDD access led blinking with regular timings when the stutter happens?

 

It's because bink video player is a piece of !@#$ yet every game likes to use it.

 

I agree, but with the whole range of systems and laptops i have i never experienced such problems, even on sli or older laptops.

 

Id check video drivers but also video codecs.

 

I downloaded the files you wanted me to download. I downloaded a 7zip file called 28036_win7x64.exe. The link you provided did not work since the site did not like me going directly to the download from another site.

I also installed the driver sweeper.

I did download the the nv_disp.inf without problems though.

But I can not find the Display.display folder. The folders I find are:

Display.Driver
Display.Optimus
Display.Update
DisplayControlPanel
NV3DVision
NVI2

Are you sure it is the Display.display folder and not another folder?

Thanks

 

Yep it's display.driver, sorry

 

Hey

Sorry for the late reply but for the last weeks the problem seems to have disappeared.
I installed Red Orchestra 2 3 days after your last post and since then everything seems to work without a problem. The only reason I can think of is that I installed a Microsoft visual or Direct X update when I installed Red Orchestra 2. I don`t remember exactly what the 3rd party program was. But since the problem disappeared in about the same time it is the only explanation I can find.

I have not installed the driver you linked me to yet though. But I do have all the programs so I will do it in not too long.

Thanks a lot for your help in this