What is hitching?

[Therk]

I know its related to video card overclocking.. is it when the image seems to go smoothly then kind of stop and repeat again at times or is it something completeley differenmnt.

 

[Therk]

bump

 

[dug777]

It's kinda what you said, the fps average is fine, but the game will 'hitch' or stutter every now and again...usually due to a driver problem (not overclocking) in my experience, or merely trying to play a game that requires more texture memory than your card has (hence the 'hitching; as it swaps through the AGP/PCI-E bus which is much slower).

I got it with d3 when it first came out, moving into a new room with my 128mb 9800 pro playing on 'High'...but interestingly when i tried it before i got rid of the card about 4 months ago (overheating) with the latest drivers the 'hitching' was gone on high...

 

[Ackmed]

To expand on what dug777 said, it can also happen when a system doesnt have enough memory. Its not always video. BF2 is a good example of this. With just one gig, and settings up on high, the system will "hitch" for the first few minutes, then it will smoothen out. It will still hitch from time to time, but not as bad. F.E.A.R. is the same way, but not as bad. Generally it does it when you enter a room, or go from inside, to outside. When you dont have enough memory, it has to swap.