Frustrating stutter step problems in all my games

[Ozymandyus]

Just built myself a fine new system.

Athlon 2800+
Abit NF7-S
Antec True-430W Power supply
2x 512MB Crucial DDR 3200 RAM
MSI GeForce FX 5200-128VTDR <AGP slot>
SB Audigy 2 Platinum <PCI 2, but currently out>
WD 120GB SATA <SATA port 1, boot drive>
Maxtor 200GB ATA-133 (SATA 2 port with adapter)
Plextor PX-708A DVD R/RW
Lite-On DVD drive (generic)
Adaptec AHA-2940 AU (for a scanner) <PCI 3>
HSP56 Micromodem <PCI 4>
Windows XP Pro SP1, DirectX 9.0b, all latest patches, all latest drivers

I loaded up my two current games right after install was finished, Star Wars Galaxies and Dark Age of Camelot. In both cases, the interface now 'stutters' every two seconds or so...both movement and sound are effected. I tried everything I could think of with no success. Out of desperation I took the sound card out (the stutter in sound was noticeable, thought it might be that) and did a fresh install of everything, right down to a low-level format before getting started. BIOS settings are all at the most conservative levels this time around. The issue persists, tested it before installing anything else.

Done quite a few searches on the topic, with suggestions ranging from moving cards around to disabling shadowing in the BIOS (not an option in this BIOS btw), with no luck. Have heard rumor of specific resource configurations being required, but no hard fact. This is killing me, I'm about 18 hours into this nightmare now. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

--Oz

 

[Ozymandyus]

This is the first time I've used SATA drives, is it possible this is a read/access problem on the drive?

 

[MDE]

The FX5200 sucks for anything over semi-serious gaming, so look at that. Try different video drivers. What do you mean by interface, is it the game's menus that stutter?

 

[etech]

Some reading for you,

for what it's worth, you aren't alone.

amdmb

 

[Jeff7181]

I think I know what you're talking about... I only experience it in Morrowind... I've always heard it referred to as cursor lag. What I've come to realize is that it only seems to happen when the video card is dumping frames... for example...

In Morrowind, it only happens when I'm in a small building and the FPS gets maxed out at 85, where I have it limited to match my refresh rate. So, I set the max FPS to 300, and the FPS went up to about 250-260 and there was none of that "stuttering."

I'm not sure if my assumption is correct, that it happens when the video card has to dump frames... because it doesn't happen in any other game I have.

 

[jiffylube1024]

What version video card drivers are you running? Try a newer one (ie 44.03, 45.23) if you're not already.

Since you have the Audigy installed, did you make sure to disable onboard audio in the BIOS?

Also, if the Maxtor drive is Parallel ATA, you can try to move it back to the Parallel IDE channel - there's no tangible performance difference either way. However, I doubt that this is the source of your problems...

 

[Ozymandyus]

Here's a few updates. I got ahold of the beta 45.33 Detonator drivers, but this did nothing. However, putting my older Ti-4200 card in got rid of MOST (but not all) of the stuttering. I checked the IRQs in use and see a couple of instances of things sharing with my video card and/or my SATA controller, so that's also a possibility. And yes I did have the onboard sound disabled.

Etech, thanks for the link to the thread on the Amdmb forums, quite a wealth of information there. The most promising idea I see there is disabling the onboard NIC and trying a stand-alone. I will post my results here and let folks know how it goes.

--Oz