HL2, EQ2, and WoW stuttering, what is it?

[Medellon]

I'm playing these 3 latest games and I notice that I get a ton of hard drive activity and stuttering whenever I get to a new area or whenever a new area is loading. Once the area has loaded up my framerate seems pretty good as I can mouselook all around very quickly. I have an Athlon XP mobile 2600+ overclocked to 2.5 ghz so it's really equivalent to a 3800+, 512 GB of RAM that I will be changing to 1GB later on today, and a Radeon Pro 9800 overclocked a little higher than a 9800 XT. My system seems pretty solid and I'm playing at 1024x768 with AA and AF both turned on. What could be causing the choppiness?

 

[Modeps]

you've gotta stop downloading all that pr0n through kazaa.

 

[loafbred]

Doubling your RAM will probably stop most of that, since it's probably hitting the HDD a LOT. If you're short on HDD space and/or badly fragmented, virtual memory will perfom very poorly. Even when performing at its best, it will still cause slight stutters when you don't have enough RAM.

Try turning off AA and run it at 1280X960 or lower. Turn down shader and reflection quality. In video driver properties, set AF to 8X and check "performance". Turning down texture quality in the game will reduce texture swapping stutters, but do that as a last resort.

If you have stuff running in background of Windows (anti-virus, QuickTime, hardware monitor, etc. etc.), turn it all off before starting the game. That can make a big difference.

 

[Feneant2]

I would guess RAM myself, I play EQ and WoW on a gig of ram, PIV 3.2 and a Mobility 9700 and I have no problem whatsoever unless there are a lot of people in a small area.

Only other thing I can see is the harddrive, is it a 7200 RPM or higher? If its 5400, it might cause these problems.

 

[CHfan4ever]

Id say stop overclocking your stuff.Some game doesnt accept overclocking and some just simply crash if your system is overclocked.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: ifesfor
Id say stop overclocking your stuff.Some game doesnt accept overclocking and some just simply crash if your system is overclocked.

But his system isn't crashing, now is it!? :roll:

 

[gsaldivar]

You don't have enough RAM.

When your system resorts to using virtual memory, you get the "stuttering" you're experiencing.

 

[OMG1Penguin]

Originally posted by: ifesfor
Id say stop overclocking your stuff.Some game doesnt accept overclocking and some just simply crash if your system is overclocked.

Delete all the registry keys that let windows know your computer is overclocked, and you won't have these problems.

Actually.... delete all of your registry keys, it will make it run much faster since it doesn't have to run through it all the time.

 

[spamsk8r]

Originally posted by: OMG1Penguin

Originally posted by: ifesfor
Id say stop overclocking your stuff.Some game doesnt accept overclocking and some just simply crash if your system is overclocked.

Delete all the registry keys that let windows know your computer is overclocked, and you won't have these problems.

Actually.... delete all of your registry keys, it will make it run much faster since it doesn't have to run through it all the time.

I really hope you're joking.

 

[Medellon]

My hard drive spins at 7,200 RPM so it's not slow. I think the memory suggestion makes sense and I hope it will improve when I install the extra 512.

 

[ProppaT]

It's not that you don't have enough RAM, you have plenty. The problem is that there's a memory leak in the game.

My fix?

Pull out an old 2nd hard drive. Doesn't matter what the size is. Put it in your computer and format it. Now go into XP's setting and move your swap file to the new disk. Make it a fixed size of about 2gb. The difference is night and day...

Reason it works? EQII doesn't flush the memory right. When you give it 2gb of space to play with on seperate disc drive, it severely reduces thrashing and lets the game load textures quicker.

Hopefully the bug is fixed soon...this is really a stupid fix...

 

[UsandThem]

Originally posted by: spamsk8r

Originally posted by: OMG1Penguin

Originally posted by: ifesfor
Id say stop overclocking your stuff.Some game doesnt accept overclocking and some just simply crash if your system is overclocked.

Delete all the registry keys that let windows know your computer is overclocked, and you won't have these problems.

Actually.... delete all of your registry keys, it will make it run much faster since it doesn't have to run through it all the time.

I really hope you're joking.

I've now heard it all 😱

 

[Gurck]

512mb is pretty low for current games.. Upgrading to a gb will not only more than likely fix your stuttering problem in games, but it should also help your OS to be more responsive (especially if windows) and give you the overhead to keep various things like a browser window, BT client, mp3 player, etc. open while gaming.