6990m; games stuttering, even at low settings

So on Wednesday I received my Malibal Satori and I've just now started putting games on it. However I notice an annoying stuttering effect when playing games. To be specific, the games will run glass smooth for a few seconds and then stutter suddenly. This happens in Deus Ex, GTAIV, and Civilization 5 (only games I've put on so far). When I first noticed it, I just turned down the settings, but it kept happening. On Deus Ex even if I turn down everything, and turn off all the fancy DX11 stuff (tesselation, etc.) the performance seems to be exactly the same (glass smooth then stutter). The same thing happens in GTAIV and Civ 5; turn down shadows, draw distance, etc. but performance seems exactly the same; very smooth and then s-s-s-stutter. This gets really annoying during any sort of action.

I tested the computer with 3dmark vantage and got this;

AMD Radeon HD 6990M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2760QM Processor,CLEVO P170HMx score: P14451 3DMarks

(14451 3D marks in case the link doesn't work)

I don't think it's temperature, I've never seen the GPU recorded above 76 degrees Celcius on HW Monitor.

I have the games on my second hard-drive (a Seagate "hybrid" drive with 4gb of flash memory in conjunction to the 500 gb of storage space), could the hard drive be the issue?

Specs are in my signature. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and Microsoft Security Essentials (both of these installed on the solid state). All drivers are stock ones from the CD that came with the computer.

 

The first two things that come to mind are the video drivers or the hybrid drive. Try the newest drivers from the AMD site to see if that helps. If not, install the game to the SSD and see if that's the issue. Hybrid secondary drives are unusual because you get no benefit from the hybrid half if it's not the primary drive.

Do you notice any stuttering when not gaming? Some of the sandforce SSD's have some issues with older firmware/LPM issues. If it's the Intel drive, then you can probably ignore that as they aren't sandforce based

 

Just to be 100% sure, you did not have battery saving on right?
I had not excactly the same issue once but just low preformance even on low settings etc, to only find out i had saving battery on -_-

 

Any help when you shifted to the other HD? definitely sounds like some weird issue. I play Deus Ex on max...

 

Ok, an update. The stuttering happens on both the Intel 120gb SSD and the 500GB drive. The games are all from steam, so I'm moving the steamapps folder and re-installing steam. Should I try deleting all the games and re-downloading/installing them?

Also, how should I update the driver? Just install the 11.9 driver on top of the stock ones or remove the 11.8 driver and then install the 11.9 driver?

I'm also planning on installing a relatively low-resource game (Mass-Effect 1) and then seeing how that works on either HD. Even my old GTX280m in my old laptop could pretty well max that out so if I get stuttering in Mass Effect 1 then I know something is wrong.

 

uninstall the driver. go to safe mode and run driver sweeper. restart and install new driver. restart and see how the game runs. may seem like a lot of work but that way you'll know if it's not your driver. Also, check your temps with hwmonitor.

 

As mentioned previously, make sure "high performance" power configuration is selected, and not "balanced", or any other. It makes a difference for me with my GTX485m.

 

Yes this is the first step always. Then go to other trouble shooting tips.
_

 

And be sure to check the power conservation modes under the hotkey icon as well (if installed). It can also drastically affect performance, even if you have Windows set to High Performance mode.

 

Interesting.. I did not know this existed.. All this time my power conservation has been set to balanced. Thanks for the tip.

 

Moving from Balanced to High Performance has never made a difference with any laptop I've owned. It's only mattered if I was on Power Saver.

 

I agree. Keeping it off power saver is the thing.
_

 

OK, an update, it won't let me install the 11.9 drivers. It says I "your computer does not contain a proper graphics adaptor". Has anybody else had this problem? The card shows up as a 6990m in HWmonitor.

 

You might have the wrong driver package. Try this link and see if that helps:

http://www2.ati.com/DRIVERS/mobile/11-9_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl.exe

 

OK! Seems like the OP is getting proper 3d mark vantage results. Why isn't 3d mark vantage stuttering?

Was this card installed later on...like a replacement or did it come this way from the factory?

How bad is the stuttering? micro stutter or mollli and do fps drop?

 

Laptop was configured with this card, I haven't touched it. The temperatures are also fine (74 degrees is the highest I have seen).

This is a pretty big, annoying stutter (like a freeze frame and a "tear" in the graphics), it's hard to play action scenes when this happens.

I'll try to install that driver package. Thanks for the quick responses Malibal #2

 

If I were you i'd go ahead and do a clean windows install and try the system. If that doesn't work...call them for warranty services.