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Jerky Games...new computer

L

letsgetsilly

Senior member
New system:
DFI Ultra Infinity NF4
Opteron 144 not OC
ATI 850XT
1gb Corsair VS Ram

When I play games, there is some very noticable lag when I come around a corner. It would seem that the game is taking a long time to load them up. Once the scene is loaded, it runs really smooth.

Also in Doom 3 timedemo, it is the same things...the game will literally stand still when I first ran it when turning corners. Now after I've run it once, i'll run it again, and i'll get nearly double the frame rates because the screens seem to be pre loaded, or cached. I don't know.

Suggestions on how to improve this?

thanks,
Adam
 
What settings do you have it set at?
Mine would do that when I had it on "ULTRA" with Doom3 and Quake4, so I turned it down to High.
 
Originally posted by: Luckyboy1
Online or offline?

Which games? Be specific!

What hard drive setup and again, be specific?
Click to expand...

Doom3 Timedemo he said... that's not online, and it is atleast a specific game. 😉
 
Originally posted by: letsgetsilly
New system:
DFI Ultra Infinity NF4
Opteron 144 not OC
ATI 850XT
1gb Corsair VS Ram

When I play games, there is some very noticable lag when I come around a corner. It would seem that the game is taking a long time to load them up. Once the scene is loaded, it runs really smooth.

Also in Doom 3 timedemo, it is the same things...the game will literally stand still when I first ran it when turning corners. Now after I've run it once, i'll run it again, and i'll get nearly double the frame rates because the screens seem to be pre loaded, or cached. I don't know.

Suggestions on how to improve this?

thanks,
Adam
Click to expand...

Either you don't have enough system RAM, or you have the settings too high for your video card.

If you don't have enough system RAM, you'll see your hard drive going crazy when the slowdowns occur, as some data is paged out to make room for whatever the game is now trying to access. Take a look at your 'commit charge' numbers on the Performance pane of Task Manager. If the 'Peak' commit charge is bigger than the amount of physical RAM you have, you are swapping to disk. Get more RAM or run less crap at once.

If you try to force settings that are too high for your video card, it will be forced to swap data in and out of system RAM instead of keeping it onboard. This will also cause choppy gameplay, though not as badly. Your OS may also have to swap some data out of RAM if the video card needs more RAM than you have free. Try running lower detail settings (especially texture detail). "Ultra" settings in Doom3/Quake4 use uncompressed textures and are designed for 512MB cards; it will NOT run well on a 256MB card like your X850XT.
 
I'm no expert but I think I read something about this happening sometimes with dual core cpu's w/ some games (q3, bf2).

The diagosis I read was not a gpu issue, but a problem with the cpu voltage control which was being controlled by XP. MS did issue a patch, as did AMD and apparently it's fixed with newer AMD cpus. Check AMD's forums for more info, there was a long thread in their gaming forum.

Sorry if this is way off base, just thought I'd add a possible scenario.
 
Originally posted by: chef24
I'm no expert but I think I read something about this happening sometimes with dual core cpu's w/ some games (q3, bf2).

The diagosis I read was not a gpu issue, but a problem with the cpu voltage control which was being controlled by XP. MS did issue a patch, as did AMD and apparently it's fixed with newer AMD cpus. Check AMD's forums for more info, there was a long thread in their gaming forum.

Sorry if this is way off base, just thought I'd add a possible scenario.
Click to expand...


isnt the 144 a single core?

i still think it is settings, or possibly what Matthias99 said - it's not enough ram. but either way turning down your setting will fix this problem.

make sure you have the latest drivers also.
 
Thanks for the updates, and sorry I haven't responded immediately.

I am running the 850XT w/ 256mb. When I run Doom 3 timedemo, the second time it goes through it works much much better. I assume this is on par with your diagnosis, and it has the timedemo loaded into the ram/virtual ram already pre-fetched and therefore it runs better second time around.

I have a second paritiion setup with 2 gigabytes of space just for virtual memory, with 1 gigabyte of physical ram. Is it possible that games like FEAR and Doom 3 (these are the specific games) just require more than the ~3 gigabytes that I'm providing?

Thanks for all of your help.
-Adam
 
It doesn't matter that you have 2GB of virtual memory, because harddrives are too slow to stream game data. Thats why game data is loaded into RAM for Rapid access.

So, You will need to upgrade to 2gb of RAM and the choppiness will go away. Games like FEAR, BF2, DOOM3, will use more than 1GB of ram. you can, as mentioned, view this usage in the task manager.

I recomend buying TWO 1GB sticks so they will run 1T command rate. because more than 2sticks run in 2T and is much slower. RAM is cheap, the smooth gameplay will be worth it.

 
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