Periodic 1 second graphic lag - any game I play.. why?

Hello -

I have tried Bioshock, WoW, Warcraft III, and Quake 4 Demo.. no matter what, every so often, I'll get a periodic 1 sec lag.. my fps normally runs at 60+. Is there ANYTHING I can do to stop the stuttering. Its getting annoying -.-

 

Wow... I have the exact same problem... and the exact same setup (except I use vista and I have an extra gig of ram)

 

hmm cant see what drivers ure using.

 

i have the same proble too, i have this :


E6600 @ STOCK

4GB RAM

8800GTX (i had 163.44 , i thought if i uninstall it and use 162.18 it will be fine , but i didnt )

XP64

 

I have the same problem as well!! My desktop 7600GT never does this and it's the same drivers...

 

Do you notice abrupt hard drive activity at the points of lag?

 

Not that I can recall. How would this be related to the HD? I thought it was entirely GPU related

 

I'm using the 101.xx stock drivers. I've tried 163.44 and .67 - same problem.

 

Well, if the system decides that it has to wait for something from the harddrive, then it'll... wait for something from the harddrive.

Of course it could be the GPU, but keep in mind that the GPU operates on a very different timescale. (It runs billions of instructions per second, and renders 60 frames per second. A 1-second freeze is *huge* for a GPU. And the time between it happening are even greater. So it seems possible that the cause is one of the slower components, such as the harddrive.

What are you running in the background? Any antivirus? Firewall?

You might check the Windows performance monitor. (Under administrative tools). it can track a bunch of different things over time, such as harddrive (or pagefile) accesses, CPU usage and a ton of other stuff. Run that in the background, and check it afterwards to see if it shows any particular processes regularly spiking on CPU usage or HD access.

And of course, check temperatures on CPU and GPU and other parts.

 

Yeah the temperature of my cores are 39 celsius and my HD isnt too far from that. Relatively cool.

 

I originally thought it was the HD as well since it is the lowest performing piece of the CPU, memory, and GPU. It seems to stutter for a brief moment every now and then.

It's constantly chugging in Vista... the brief period of time I had XP on t he system, I only played games for half hour and I was very impressed at the speed of them, but I could have just been happy XP was working so I'm not sure.

 

That would make sense w/why mine stutters as well, even w/the slight difference in hardware.

Hmm.. so what can a person do to fix this besides getting a different HD?

 

Interesting. How could it have interfered in the first place if they operate independently?

 

Check the DMA settings of your hard drive, as well as your power options. You may have DMA disabled, which will cause funny locks like you're seeing. Check to make sure you don't have any hardware driver errors, etc. When a computer "freezes" like that, it's usually due do an interrupt not being handled in a timely fashion. You may also see if you can tweak around your IRQ assignments, so that things like your video card and network card don't share the same IRQ.

 

how do i check dma

 

Windows is fun in that it allows all kinds of random file locks, and distributes the processor badly sometimes. The DellMedia Direct service was probably issuing an IRQ or something else that it would wait on to get feedback from, which would lock up your game (or anything else intensive) whenever it did the update. This really should be in the other thread, though, not in a new thread.

Under XP: right click on My Computer->Properties->Hardware tab->Device Manager button. In the Device Manager, expand the "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" section, and then double-click on the "Primary IDE Channel" device. It may be different with an SATA drive, but that's what I have. Under the Advanced Settings tab, make sure all options are set to "DMA if Available".

 

I originally thought it was the HD as well since it is the lowest performing piece of the CPU, memory, and GPU. It seems to stutter for a brief moment every now and then.

It's constantly chugging in Vista... the brief period of time I had XP on t he system, I only played games for half hour and I was very impressed at the speed of them, but I could have just been happy XP was working so I'm not sure.

 

Open the nVidia control panel, go to "Advanced 3D Settings," and set "Threaded Optimization" to "Off." I had the exact same problems you're discussing, and this fixed it for me.

 

Dude I Friggin Love You!!! <3

 

My Games Run Perfect Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

Nice one! It works much better now!

 

nice - what game(s) do you play jb1007?

 

wait.. which solution did you do to fix it?? the DMA or thread optimization one?

 

thread optimization

 

I turned thread optimization off and it still happens...

 

Nevermind. Still getting lockups. /sigh

someone please help. im getting frustrated

 

Is it comparable to this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymKqC9t1RgA

 

yes

EXACTLY

 

anyone have any other suggestions

 

I'm having the same problem. This is making it unberable to play Oblivion. The threaded optimization fix did help a little, though. Maybe it's just vista.

 

im sure there has to be a fix somewhere - ive been googling all day. if anyone has had this problem before and know of a solution please tell us - thanks

 

This is sort of starting to worry me. Half Life 2 OB comes out next month I believe and so does Hellgate: London and I've been waiting on those for quite a while. If this "glitch" continutes it wouldn't be worth buying them.

 

You know what I did? I switched to XP. As much as I hate it (I'd love Vista if it wasnt for this retarted stuttering) that's the only solution at the moment. What really kills me is that I bought Halo 2 Vista when it came out and I can hardly play it because I'm always getting sniped when it stutters. The stuttering DOESNT STOP. This is ridiculous.

 

still stuttering here - any other solution jessi3k3?

 

Windows XP downgrade or (in Toshiba's laptops) a BIOS downgrades fixes this issue. There's more on this stuttering issue here over at the Nvidia forums
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=30162

Over 43 pages and 800+ replies and no solution other than reverting back to xp. If anyone has any suggestions please do tell us because we are stumped with this issue. Toshiba doesnt want to help us, Nvidia doesnt want to help us, Microsoft ignores us. Please, anybody.

Edit: Check Dell's website for a BIOS upgrade. If there's one try it and see if it fixes the problem.

 

does is stutter when watching a movie?

 

For me, yes. I go to Gametrailers.com and watch a an HD video and it always gets out of sync with the audio because the video stutters.

 

hmm..

still looking into this issue

 

Its got to be a driver issue. Thats all I can think of - someone correct me if I'm wrong

 

i still have the problem

 

I changed the multi threaded optimization back to auto, seems better. Narrowed down to Vista because everything runs smooth as butter in XP.

The game I had the biggest problem was in COD2, it had the most notable 1 second hiccup. I turned off Global AA from the NVIDIA control panel, but you know what... it doesn't work. I ended up turning off AA in the game as well and now it's much smoother.

It must be some sort of driver issue with mobile nvidia cards.. my desktop 7600 GT is blowing away the 8600m GT right now.

 

get more ram

 

Since it appears to work under XP that would suggest it is related to Vista exclusive settings, features, or hardware that only operates in Vista. (I rule out DX10 since 7xx0 users are reporting the problem as well).

My recommendation would be:

1) Try the Vista tweaks http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3945

2) If you have Intel Robson Turbo memory in your system try disabling it (tests on these forums have shown that some system preform slower with it enabled).

3) Try turning off superfetch (like hard drive indexing this will cause the OS to access the hard drive for other things while your game is running).

Does anyone know what is different between the Toshiba BIOS that work, and the one that doesn't? Knowing the difference may help isolate the cause of the problem, and lead to other ways of correcting the issue.

 

thats odd because im using XP

so disable superfetch?

 

Version 2.40 BIOS for Toshiba is the one that doesnt stutter in Vista. This BIOS was Pre-vista. When BIOS 3.30 came out for Vista users (and XP) it mainly brought "optimizaitons" for vista. Turns out this BIOS and those up until 4.00 cause the stuttering issue. Here's the history of Toshiba's BIOS's on their P105 lineup

See for the 3.30 BIOS, those changes messed up everything. I wonde what they changed because BIOS 2.40 runs Vista perfectly. Only thing is that I cant downgrade because Toshiba notebooks that came preinstalled /w Vista (mine) cant downgrade below 3.30.

 

does xp use pre-fetch?

it cant be vista related - im using xp.. unless i need more ram.. but why in the world.. wouldnt 1gb be enough in azeroth?

 

please help me - i've tried reformatting, reinstalling wow, no effect. i left threaded optimization alone

 

I have 2 GB ram and i get the 1 second lag aka stutter. I disabled superfetch but that doesnt change the stuttering.

Edit: I noticed that Vista still has 900mb Cached even though I turned off superfetch. I only have 5 mb free ram. What's going on?

 

how do i enable or disable superfetch? also how are the new forceware drivers doing

 

i'm using 163.67, not .69 . Every drive I have ever tried makes my laptop stutter. I find it kind of pointless upgrading to .69 at the moment since it wont change a thing. To disable superfetch go to msconfig and under services uncheck the box for superfetch. Restart after that and your done.