Help troubleshooting in-game stutters.

[Bat123Man]

I have a GTX 570 1.2 GB Nvidia card. Most of the time it works flawlessly in games with high FPS (Skyrim, GTA Lost and Damned), but on occasion when I start the game, it will stutter constantly until I reboot.

I have a first gen core2Duo 6420 OC'ed at 3GHz with 4 GB Ram. Although I understand this is not going to be as efficient as a latest gen iCore 7, most of the time it works flawlessly. If the game starts without stuttering, it won't stutter. I can play for hours without issue. If it starts with that stutter, I have not found anything which can fix it, at least in-game. A reboot always works, but am trying to avoid that. Would prefer to restart a service, or take any other action to relieve the condition short of having to reboot.

When the problem occurs, I have ALT-TABbed out to Task Manager, but seen nothing but the game consuming CPU, and even that, a very low amount. The game itself is often listed as taking more memory than what is available on my vid card (1.7 GB for TLAD whereas my card as 1.2, or 1.3 for Skyrim), but I have verified the same amount of memory is accorded even when the game is performing flawlessly. It's as if the GPU gets stuck in some bottleneck it can't recover from without a Windows reboot.

Are there any suggestions as to what I could try to relieve the symptoms without a reboot? It's not a heat issue either, this can happen when my GPU has barely been in use, and to be sure, I have installed GPU temp monitoring software which reports a pretty consistent temp. I would guess it occurs on 1 out of 10 game sessions.

6420 Core2Duo OC'ed to 3 GHz
4 GB DDR2 RAM
Asus P5N-E SLI mobo
Galaxy GTX 570
Win7 64-bit Ultimate installed on SSD (game runs from 7200 HD) Swap is on SSD.

Thanks,
BM.

 

[toyota]

why on earth did you put a gtx570 in that system? you are not even getting but around half of what that gpu is capable of.

 

[Jaydip]

Pretty much what T said, your system is cpu bottlenecked.

 

[Bat123Man]

Because I have 4 kids and can't afford to upgrade every aspect of my system every year, no matter how much I would like to. Next upgrade will be CPU, but it's a big one; CPU + DDR3 RAM + mobo. My kids hockey fees take precedence.

So, when my old 8800 GTS SLI rig wasn't cutting it any longer (TLAD FPS was brutal, even at 640*480), it was time to go as high up the GPU chart as I could get. 580 and the coming 680 were out of my league, but 570 had performance/price point which seemed ideal. I jumped at the first "680's are coming out, lets clean out the old inventory" 570 sale.

As I said, it works really well. Skyrim is absolutely fluid at 1920*1080 with everything set to high. TLAD has a very configurable graphics menu, so I picked and chose until I got to roughly 1GB committed, and that worked very well too.

But I do have this problem which I can't overcome. I have always assumed that a mobo +CPU + RAM upgrade would fix it, but was looking for a short-term solution since it works perfectly 90% of the time.

 

[MichaelD]

I also waited a very long time before upgrading to an "i-CPU/DDR3" rig. At the time, DDR3 was stupid expensive and I couldn't afford a new MB/RAM/CPU. I just kept buying a faster Socket 775 CPU and reusing my DDR2 and GTX470.

But things have changed a lot, price-wise.

DDR3 is dirt cheap right now (and Win7x64 really needs more than 4GB for optimal performance) and nobody says you have to get a $300 motherboard. I bought my current rig roughly a year ago and went with a last-gen P67 chipset based MB as it was a lot cheaper than whatever the "flagship" chipset was at the time. I can tell you that you'll see a huge difference b/t what you have now and a newer rig, even if you reuse your (excellent) GTX570.

I get a lot of happiness from playing my favorite games at 19x12 with all the eye candy turned on, as I'm sure you do too. Invest in your own happiness and consider it an investment towards the happiness of your family as a whole. :whiste:

My MB $140: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157265&Tpk=asrock%20p67%20extreme4

8GB of good RAM ($31): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220705

Core i5, 3.1GHz CPU ($195) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116506

Reuse your GPU, Operating System and everything else and that's an overclockable, smokin' fast system for under $400.

 

[Bat123Man]

Hahahaha, thanks for the vote of confidence, now you have given me the upgrade bug. The whistling smiley was priceless.

You've made me have to think of reasons to convince my wife that I need an upgrade, after successfully pulling off the 570 coup. I can't even imagine what I'll say. The current system with the OS installed on the SSD boots in seconds, I don't even bother with sleep or hibernation as I used to on older systems. Even on a completely cold boot, you can start using Win7 in 30 seconds or less.

There are reasons I have been compiling which will fall on deaf ears; my mobo does not support TRIM, losing some of the performance capable from the SSD. Obviously, I am bottlenecking the 570, causing these occasional hiccups. I don't have native USB 3, nor do I have the power saving features of the Z68-series of mobos.

At any rate, if there is nothing I can do to relieve the bottleneck when it occurs other than a reboot, I guess until I upgrade I'll have to reboot. I did read that some people had relieved GPU stress by restarting certain services, but I am unable to find those comments again. Does anyone have an opinion on this possibility, or am I grasping at straws?

Thanks,
BM.

 

[MichaelD]

I've never heard of relieving GPU stress by restarting service. Possibly you meant CPU? But honestly, it sure looks like you know what you're doing so it's unlikely you have some CPU-hogging service chugging away in the background that's eating 10%+ of your CPU resources. IOW, messing with Services isn't going to help your CPU bottleneck.

Your maritial situation seems to mirror mine. In my wife's eyes, if the computer turns on without fire spewing from the case, I don't need a new computer or parts for it. No amount of Geek Speak will convince her otherwise. "Your game plays fine. I see it on the screen. Why do you need new computer parts?"

Let the topic die for a week or so. Then use woman logic. A partially new system (you're not replacing EVERYTHING, now are you?) would really make you happy, bring joy to your life, enable you to enjoy your favorite game in all it's glory, blah, blah and you know how much she wants you to share your feelings and oh c'mon honey.... And then you rub her feet or whatever. She'll cave.

 

[NickelPlate]

I get stuttering as well on my GTX 670 on a couple of titles: Diablo 3 and a rather obscure title called Farming Simulator 2011 (I know go ahead and laugh). Everything will be humming along buttery smooth and then the game just starts stuttering. Sometimes it corrects itself but sometimes not. In almost every case though if I pause the action, save or alt tab out of the game and back in, the stuttering disappears, for awhile.

It got a whole lot worse when I recently installed 306.23 drivers. I've since uninstalled those and gone back to 301.42. I guess some time gaming will tell if it makes a difference. My GPU usage is only about 50% and I can't believe my CPU would be a bottleneck for anything yet.

I know my hard drive isn't helping as I've noticed that when game data loads while playing I'll get hiccups. I'm hoping an SSD solves that problem. A little research turns up loads of discussions on forums all over about Nvidia having stuttering issues with their drivers in the past. Nothing really conclusive though as to whether they actually fixed the problem or not. I've read other discussions about it being related to Vsync (both adaptive and non), triple buffering, forced AA, you name it. Again it's tough to wade through all the opinions and threads for real answers.

 

[Bat123Man]

NickelPlate,

Oh man, I just looked at your specs. I was coming back to this forum to post what I had settled on before I actually ordered it, in case I had made any errors or picked something which wasn't good value.

I picked this :
Intel Core i5 3570K 219.99
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H 139.99
16GB Kingston KHX1600C10D3B1K2 2*8GB 240pin CL10 1.5v 72.99

Those prices are in Canadian dollars, generally hardware is slightly more expensive here than in the States. Recognize anything????? You have virtually the identical specs! I picked these based on reading a number of reviews, and the whole reason I am considering this upgrade is to resolve my in-game stutters! I am coupling the above to my 570 GTX, so now given your problem, I no longer know what to do.

<sigh>
BM.

 

[Arkaign]

Without Trim support, I think you actually put yourself at greater risk of data loss. Don't quote me on that, but I'm reasonably sure that's the truth.

As for advice, I have the following :

Download CCleaner, it's the easiest tool imho to do what I advise.

After installing it and running the usual basic cleanup and registry optimization, go to the left side and click 'tools'.

Click the 'startup' section. Basically everything in here autostarts with the system, taking up memory, cpu time, and just loading the OS and hardware resources with quite often useless or unwanted crap. Go through it item by item and uncheck anything you don't want autoloading. If you don't recognize something, google it to find out what it is. This is not the same thing as uninstalling. Disabling 'Quicktime Helper' won't make your quicktime videos not work Similarly, disabling a realtek audio exe just gets rid of the icon in the taskbar and that .exe from always running. You can always make a note of the location of the exe and run it manually as needed.

Similarly in that section, you can remove unwanted things from the other sections like scheduled tasks, internet explorer, and the context menu.

It may or may not help your direct issue, but in general one can take a bogged down computer and tune it up a bit with that tool. You can also look at lighter AV products if the one you have is resource intensive.

 

[SolMiester]

I've never heard of relieving GPU stress by restarting service. Possibly you meant CPU? But honestly, it sure looks like you know what you're doing so it's unlikely you have some CPU-hogging service chugging away in the background that's eating 10%+ of your CPU resources. IOW, messing with Services isn't going to help your CPU bottleneck.

Your maritial situation seems to mirror mine. In my wife's eyes, if the computer turns on without fire spewing from the case, I don't need a new computer or parts for it. No amount of Geek Speak will convince her otherwise. "Your game plays fine. I see it on the screen. Why do you need new computer parts?"

Let the topic die for a week or so. Then use woman logic. A partially new system (you're not replacing EVERYTHING, now are you?) would really make you happy, bring joy to your life, enable you to enjoy your favorite game in all it's glory, blah, blah and you know how much she wants you to share your feelings and oh c'mon honey.... And then you rub her feet or whatever. She'll cave.

LMAO, I can so relate to this thread......My wife commandeers my PC most of the time for her silly facebook games, and has ruined the mouse with the constant clicking of buttons!...Im like waiting to get a new GPU, but have to balance Golf subs too....
I was wondering if the OP doesnt have some scanning going on in the background, especially if a reboot resolves his issues, but anyway OP, good luck with the upgrade...

 

[Bat123Man]

I was wondering if the OP doesnt have some scanning going on in the background, especially if a reboot resolves his issues, but anyway OP, good luck with the upgrade...

It's possible, I keep checking for stuff like that. Task Manager says zero CPU is in use when it stutters, even the game EXE is not taking much (of course I am ALT-Tabbing out of the game to check Task Manager, so game isn't doing much at the time).

To Arkaign : Yes, know CCleaner, have been using it for years. Also, I generally use MSconfig from the Win7 Start menu's search bar, and then go to the Startup tab to check for annoying startup stuff (such as anytime I accept an iTunes update). But I will check out CCleaner's version of that tool because MSconfig only shows 2 items in my startup tab (internet advisor required by my ISP, and my Razor KB utility).

What I was hoping for was some way to prove that the bottleneck is my older CPU when using my modern GPU. I believe that is the case, but the CPU is simply not busy when I am having the stuttering problem.

 

[NickelPlate]

NickelPlate,

Oh man, I just looked at your specs. I was coming back to this forum to post what I had settled on before I actually ordered it, in case I had made any errors or picked something which wasn't good value.

I picked this :
Intel Core i5 3570K 219.99
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H 139.99
16GB Kingston KHX1600C10D3B1K2 2*8GB 240pin CL10 1.5v 72.99

Those prices are in Canadian dollars, generally hardware is slightly more expensive here than in the States. Recognize anything????? You have virtually the identical specs! I picked these based on reading a number of reviews, and the whole reason I am considering this upgrade is to resolve my in-game stutters! I am coupling the above to my 570 GTX, so now given your problem, I no longer know what to do.

<sigh>
BM.

I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. To be honest I'm not sure what's causing the stuttering. It's really difficult to tell but as time goes on I'm more inclined to believe it's game specific. I've only had it with the two aforementioned titles, and they don't do it all the time which leads me to believe it's either the game engine or some combination of driver or gpu settings/game engine. I've played plenty of other titles both new and old that run without a hitch.

The obscure Farming Simulator title I play is a poorly optimized pig, low budget, small dev title out of Germany with known game engine issues (but it's surprisingly fun). I'm more concerned about Diablo 3 which certainly isn't small or low budget. But it does have a history stuttering issues so there you go. There are also plenty of people complaining of stuttering on other titles as well. I've researched it to death and can't come up with any solid answers as to the cause. There are numerous possibilities and theories.

Other than those two titles, my system has been rock solid and I think you'll be very pleased. When you start OC'ing let me know how that goes. I'm still trying to inch up to 4.5Ghz, had a Prime95 stable with that at 1.195Vcore but one game I play was crashing pretty regularly so my chip probably needs more voltage.

 

[Bat123Man]

Nickelplate,

Thanks for the reply, glad to hear it is likely title-specific. Also, I did see that you had your 3570K running at 4.3 GHz in your sig, but didn't want to say anything because I thought you had just accidentally reversed the digits (default speed is 3.4 GHz). Now I see that I was wrong! hahahaha

My current 6420 Core2Duo has been humming along nicely for years at 3.0 GHz (up from 2.1).

Thanks,
BM.

 

[NickelPlate]

Nickelplate,

Thanks for the reply, glad to hear it is likely title-specific. Also, I did see that you had your 3570K running at 4.3 GHz in your sig, but didn't want to say anything because I thought you had just accidentally reversed the digits (default speed is 3.4 GHz). Now I see that I was wrong! hahahaha

My current 6420 Core2Duo has been humming along nicely for years at 3.0 GHz (up from 2.1).

Thanks,
BM.

My old CPU was a Core2Quad Q9550 at 3.4Ghz. I ran my GTX670 with it, and it was okay. I didn't want to admit my C2Q was becoming insufficient but when I got the new Ivy Bridge build put together there was just no comparison even at the stock speeds on the 3570K. The 3570K absolutely destroyed my Q9550 even when I had it overclocked and was clearly holding back GPU as I'm sure your C2D is on your 570 even more so. It's a nice combination. I'm not sure it's even necessary to OC an IB processor that high right now but that's why you buy the "K" series, and better to do it early on than later when components start getting old. I feel pretty confident 4.5Ghz is going to be achievable without too much effort.

 

[Bat123Man]

Things I changed :

Intel Core i5 3570K
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H
16GB Kingston KHX1600C10D3B1K2 2*8GB 240pin CL10 1.5v

Used to be this :
Core2Duo 6420 2.13 OC'ed to 3.0
Asus P5N-E SLI
4GB PC6400 RAM

Coupled that with a GTX 570 1.25 GB from Galaxy
Win7 on an SSD


Futuremark benchmarking
Old system :
10328 3D Marks
16075 Graphics
4983 CPU

New system :
21049 3D Marks
21582 Graphics
19598 CPU


Quite an improvement I have to say. Am going to play around with the Gigabyte included OC'ing application, see what I can safely bump it to.

Edit - Things I didn't plan well for ....
- New mobo had exactly zero IDE headers. Had no idea, had to pull a 100 GB HD which I'll transfer to an old enclosure I have to copy files off of.
- New mobo also has no floppy header. My comp now has zero ribbon cables for the first time since 1993.
- No 1394 header either. It's not like I used FireWire that often, but will have to figure out how to connect it to the new comp.


Thanks,
BM.

 

[qliveur]

Asus P5N-E SLI

Nvidia chipset. *shudder*

We aught not shed a tear at its demise.

 

[Bat123Man]

Nvidia chipset. *shudder*

We aught not shed a tear at its demise.

Hahahahahahahaha! I know EXACTLY what you mean. At first, when I bought this mobo when it was new 5-6 years ago, I was very excited to get the 650i Nvidia chipset. It supported everything I needed, (SLI, 1394, LGA775, SATA, IDE, etc.) I did loads of research before purchasing. But then, over the years, every single annoying little problem was traced back to a Nvidia chipset. Endless apparently benign errors in Event Viewer, disappearing NIC in Network Connections, SSD performance-related issues, it was driving me crazy. For this upgrade, other than buying the latest chipset I could, the one must-have was NO NVIDIA chipset.

BM.