Slight stutter in some games, GPU or PC?

[Spike]

After upgrading to a 6970 all my games run wonderfully now at maxed out details (1920x1200) but I still notice some stuttering in some games. This has happened during Bad Company 2, more noticably right after a level loads, as well as Fallout: New Vegas and Just Cause 2. The stutters are few and far between and may simply be more noticable now due to how smoothly the games are running compared to my old 4870 512.

This is on my main PC in my sig running the e8400. I know that the cpu is getting rather old and all these games are running from a moderate/slow seagate 500GB drive. Are the stutters more likely caused by the HDD/CPU slowness or the GPU? Or is there any way to tell? Anyone else seeing small, occasional stutters with a 6970 or 6950 card?

It's not a huge deal and when I build a new SB PC I will be able to answer the question but until then I'm wondering.

Thanks.

 

[Jacky60]

I suspect its HD related. Think an SSD might solve it as some games with big textures feed from HD but can't be sure. Also Bad Company 2 really likes 4 cores so I'd expect it to pause a bit to think. Can you get the E8400 to 4ghz I'm pretty sure almost all of them can do it.

 

[Dankk]

I think with some of these it just might be inherent to the game. For example, Fallout: New Vegas, regardless of what you do, will always run like shit. It's a Bethesda game. (Well, an Obsidian game I guess, but it uses the same shitty engine.) Stuff like this you just have to make the best of.

Bad Company 2 is a somewhat legitimately-hefty game (Disclaimer: I only play multiplayer), not just on the GPU side, but on the CPU side as well. It loves quad-cores, and will happily eat up two additional cores if given to them.

Just Cause 2... I guess that's the one to be the most concerned about considering it's one of the most graphically-optimized games I've seen recently. Do you use Steam? If so, you can go into the game properties within Steam and do a file defrag as well as an integrity check to see if any files are missing or corrupted. Honestly though, if the stutters are really that few and far between though, you probably don't have much to worry about. I would check to see what other programs you have running in the background while playing games (i.e. antivirus), and see if that has anything to do with it. Make sure your drivers are updated too.

That's all I can help you with though. I sympathize with you completely; I consider myself very OCD in regards to my computers performance. Admittedly, I'm a little bit of an amateur, but nonetheless I'm always paranoid whenever I get a slight stutter that runs otherwise smoothly. I defrag religiously and I keep verifying the integrity of my Steam games when I feel like there might be something wrong, even though most of the time there isn't.

Here's to hoping you can get any answers you're looking for.

Edit: Jacky60 above me is correct. Because the hard drive is considered the slowest part of a computer system, and therefore the biggest bottleneck, it can create noticeable stutters when a game is trying to load new areas, textures, or auto-save.

 

[Avalon]

I don't think it's your CPU, since I've got the same one and BC2 runs like a dream for me @ 1680x1050 on a Radeon 4850. I'm suspecting it's your HDD. I've got a WD Black Edition as my primary drive. Highly recommend if you can't go SSD.

 

[Dankk]

I've got a WD Black Edition as my primary drive. Highly recommend if you can't go SSD.

OR get a Samsung Spinpoint F3, which is much cheaper, but almost just as fast.

 

[Spike]

Thanks for the input. I know BC 2 loves a quad though the improvement from my 4870 512 to the 6970 at 1920x1200 is beyond amazing. I can turn everything up and it runs soooo smooth... except near level start with some of those stutters.

I will be getting an SSD for my boot drive but will stick with a conventional drive for games... for now. I'm eyeing the 1TB F3 as it recieves such rave reviews, especially for the price.

The stutters in Just Cause 2 are the fewest and only occasionaly show up. I may have even been imagining them as I noticed the stutters in my other most recently played games (New Vegas, BC2, and even 1 or 2 in L4D2) so I could have just lumped JC 2 in with them. I will check it closer tonight to be sure.

Thanks again!

EDIT* I can't really go to 4ghz on my e8400. I'm running with some cooler master HSF that uses 92mm (Hyper TX2 or something like that) and it's terrible. Besides sounding like a screaming banshee (compared to my otherwise very quiet case and room) my cpu idles in the mid 40's and gets into the mid 60's on load... freaking annoying. For my new build I have a Corsair A70 just sitting around waiting. I know they are still not top end but it should be much better than what I'm using.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

BC2 always stutters badly at the start of the round for me. After a few seconds it gets better and never drops as low as it does at the beginning of the round.

 

[Termie]

BC2 always stutters badly at the start of the round for me. After a few seconds it gets better and never drops as low as it does at the beginning of the round.

Yup, I get stutters too, on my i7/HD5850/SSD system. I've been messing around with driver installs and uninstalls to figure it out, but it seems hit or miss. For now it's improved (used to be during game, now only at beginning of round).

The frustrating thing is that I never notice it on my e8400/GTX460 system. So it's not a dual-core vs. quad-core thing.

By the way: It's also NOT related to the hard drive. I run it off an SSD on my gaming rig, and a hard drive on my e8400 system. Don't buy an SSD (and definitely don't buy a "faster" hard drive) just to cure this problem - it won't fix it.

Early in the release of BC2, there was a glitch where Ati cards would take much, much longer to load into the game than nVidia cards. Something to do with the loading of DX11 textures, I believe (DX9 didn't have the problem). This was fixed in drivers by Ati, but I'm wondering if the causes weren't totally ironed out, and now we get these glitches during game.

 

[brandonb]

Most of the time the stutters are due to resources being used by the game not being precached. In other words:

You enter a new area, and a new character or monster is there. It's hasn't been loaded, so the game decides to load it. The computer needs to load the resources from the disk (this can be done in a thread or another CPU so it doesn't halt the game), however, when the geometry is created in DirectX, it has to be sent from computer's CPU/Memory to the GPU's CPU/Memory. So it could be that a few megabyte model + associated textures are then uploaded to the video card. That takes alot of resources over the PCIe bus, and technically halts video processing. (The stutters)

So. In games where the loading is not done in a thread, the stutter could be caused by the hard disk and/or the size of the model + textures being uploaded to the graphics card. Threading games would be the model + textures being uploaded. Some games will have more or less stutter. The other method would be like a first person shooter engine which loads all necessary resources before the battle begins (like Quake games) so there are no stutters at all during game, but you can't have any dynamic scenes or big worlds. Which is why FPS engines don't scale well to other types of apps, like MMORPGS.

DirectX11 has resource management handled in threads (that is one of the major changes for DX11 over DX10), so if the app is written correctly, the application should be working fine. However, I've heard that ATI drivers are not handling the threading correctly at this time. So even if the app is handling correctly, everything gets single threaded in the ATI driver, which is why the apps are stuttering slightly. The good news, a driver update can fix the problem.

That only applies to DX11, any older game, such as a DX9 game will have stutters and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, as DirectX9 is single threaded. There is progress being made in this area, and has been the focus of the DirectX team. In a few years, I believe stutter will be a thing of the past in most games.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

snip

Well when I run the game in DX10 the framerate drops horribly low at the beginning of each round, right after the map loads. This lasts for 20-50 seconds, and then everything is good. I assume the game is hitting my processor really hard at this point. The hard drive access LED isn't going crazy and GPU usage is really low.

However when I run the game in DX9 it doesn't do this.

 

[Mars999]

What drivers are you running? Make sure you are running the latest.

I know BC2 had issues with older drivers and 10.12 is the latest and runs way faster than 10.8 IIRC....

 

[darkdiablo]

I think its a hard drive problem. You said you have a pretty old one. Get a SSD, put your most often played games on there (BFBC2..etc).

 

[Spike]

I ended up ordering a Samsung F3 1TB as my gaming drive for the new build so that should help... I was pretty much looking for an excuse anyway. I will still get an SSD but just for my boot drive, I want a 200gb+ SSD for my gaming drive and they are still waaaay too expensive for my tastes.

I was wrong on JC 2. I played for several hours last night and there was not the slightest stutter so I had just lumped that in with my previous games.

I also remember the level load issues that my 4870 had initially and that it was fixed fairly soon. Your probably right that the issues are still driver related. It's not a huge deal, after the first few seconds I'm almost complely smooth with the occasional stutter, though they are few and far between.