HD 4870 insane stuttering

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Dwarfius

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: Dwarfius
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R

Did you install all the chipset drivers?

Everything that came with the CD.

Update them

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492

Originally posted by: thilan29
Qarl's texture pack is known to take a huge amount of video ram...so that would be your problem since you have a 512mb card.

Why only certain areas and only some of the time - and why does it "lock" into a super-low-FPS mode...

I myself haven't used Qarl's texture pack so I'm not really sure of exactly why it would happen. I just know that many people have reported huge vram usage with that configuration in Oblivion.

There's a program that lets you view vram usage...I can't remember what it is...anyone else remember? Try that program and check your vram usage during Oblivion, and especially in the cases where you know it happens....you might see why you get the stuttering.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: thilan29
There's a program that lets you view vram usage...I can't remember what it is...anyone else remember? Try that program and check your vram usage during Oblivion, and especially in the cases where you know it happens....you might see why you get the stuttering.

Rivatuner allows this in XP/W2K, but because of the way Vista handles video memory virtualisation, OP won't be able to get monitor this on his Vista-64 system (info from Rivatuner vidmem plugin).

 

[Aberforth]

oh man, this is getting crazy. Didn't i tell you how my friend fixed this issue?? Upgrade your RAM, this problem occurs only with Radeon cards because most of the games are optimized for nv cards. It is generally seen when adjusting driver level settings like AA and Post Processing. Disabling these options will reduce the stuttering but cannot be eliminated until you upgrade your RAM.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Im just surprised that the majority are suggesting to solve this problem by throwing more money at it. Get a faster CPU, get more RAM, get this, get that.

Since when did buying ATi cards required more RAM to reduce this "stuttering"? so basically users with 1~2GB needs to get more RAM in addition with their newly bought cards?

Why not try to narrow this problem down? trying it on a different machine is a good start. Try different driver versions (cat 8.7, 8.8). Update the chipset, OS related drivers to their latest. etc etc.

edit - when i mean the latest, it means the latest from the manufacturer's website.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
Im just surprised that the majority are suggesting to solve this problem by throwing more money at it. Get a faster CPU, get more RAM, get this, get that.

Since when did buying ATi cards required more RAM to reduce this "stuttering"? so basically users with 1~2GB needs to get more RAM in addition with their newly bought cards?

Why not try to narrow this problem down? trying it on a different machine is a good start. Try different driver versions (cat 8.7, 8.8). Update the chipset, OS related drivers to their latest. etc etc.

edit - when i mean the latest, it means the latest from the manufacturer's website.

*agreed*

none of the "extra RAM" suggestions make any sense to me
- yes, UPDATE the chipset drivers - the ones on the CD are ancient and often Beta

Upgrade your RAM, this problem occurs only with Radeon cards because most of the games are optimized for nv cards.

There is so much wrong with this anectodal comment, on every level, i cannot even begin to respond other than with, "nonsense"; if this were true, i would NEVER recommend AMD GPUs.


Solve the issue before you toss money at it; the OP's 4870 could be defective

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492

Originally posted by: thilan29
Qarl's texture pack is known to take a huge amount of video ram...so that would be your problem since you have a 512mb card.

Why only certain areas and only some of the time - and why does it "lock" into a super-low-FPS mode...

There's a program that lets you view vram usage...I can't remember what it is...anyone else remember? Try that program and check your vram usage during Oblivion, and especially in the cases where you know it happens....you might see why you get the stuttering.

I think there's a way to monitor vram usage INSIDE Oblivion, if I recall correctly. Bring up the console and type in TDT. Then, I think it's the page up or page down key that cycles through some different sets of info and one of them is realtime VRAM usage.