Upgraded to a new 4770; CODMW2 "pause"

[CuriousMike]

Last night I purchased a Sapphire 4770 512MB to replace my 9600GSuckO.

I was hoping it would be enough to run COD MW2 at my monitors native res of 1650x1050.

Apparently, it "almost" is.

In the past, when I've run games with features too high, I notice a chunky framerate, or constant stutters.

With the new card, what I get is... weird.
Most of the time in most scenes, the framerate feels great.
But during certain camera changes, my machine will just freeze for 1/2 second, then go back to a good framerate. It is not constant.

It was annoying enough that I lowered the games resolution back to 1280x800, which is what I ran the 9600GSuckO at. (From web reviews, it sure seemed like the 4770 is one step ahead of the 9600GSO.)

What is causing this 1/2 freeze? It doesn't "feel" like a driver or hardware issue per se... more like ... I dunno.. the 512MB of VRAM ain't enough, and it needs to spool a boatload of textures from system ram to VRAM or vice-versa.

(I had previously read that the 4770 was a reasonable pick for a $100 card; after reading more threads here, I have thoughts of OC'ing it and possibly flashing the BIOS. )

My PC is an E2200 @ 2.8ghz with 4GB of RAM.

 

[error8]

I believe it's hardly an upgrade, going from 9600 GSO to 4670. Sure, 4670 might be a bit faster overall, but not enough that you can say Wow, over what you had.
As far as the lock downs, I believe you've nailed it with the vram maybe being insufficient to process the ultra high quality textures. Although, the engine itself, is just a further tuned engine of the previous COD. Put the textures and AA lower and see what you get.

 

[Rafael]

I agree with error8...
I think you are in a very complex situation, because if you go to a 4850 or a better vga, I think the CPU might be a bottleneck, and maybe you will need to upgrade the CPU if you get a better vga than the 4770.
I got a 4890 and a E6400, and I think it is still a bottleneck for my VGA, because when I OC my CPU it gets way better scores in bench, but this OC is not a safe level for 24/7 operations, so I need to always go back. So my next upgrade will be either a Quad CPU or a P55 platform with i7. Waiting for 2010 to take the step.

 

[Schmide]

Check, or report back, your processor (CPU) temps. My experience with the COD series is most stuttering comes from processor throttling.

 

[Josh123]

I believe it's something with the game and not your card. A lot of people have been having the same problem. Try checking out the Modern Warfare forum in Steam.

 

[nemesismk2]

I believe it's hardly an upgrade, going from 9600 GSO to 4670. Sure, 4670 might be a bit faster overall, but not enough that you can say Wow, over what you had.
As far as the lock downs, I believe you've nailed it with the vram maybe being insufficient to process the ultra high quality textures. Although, the engine itself, is just a further tuned engine of the previous COD. Put the textures and AA lower and see what you get.

Have I missed something because I saw CuriousMike has Sapphire 4770 which is much faster than a 4670 and the GeForce 9600 GSO.

 

[onza]

I wonder... since you went from Nvidia to ATI.. were all the drivers cleaned out before installing the new card?

 

[error8]

Have I missed something because I saw CuriousMike has Sapphire 4770 which is much faster than a 4670 and the GeForce 9600 GSO.

I'm probably retarded and seen 4670 instead of 4770. That so sad, I'm loosing my mind...
My above post still stands...sort of...

 

[CuriousMike]

Windows 7 64Bit --- when I went to device manager, I said "uinstall".

There was a dialog that said "Remove all driver files" (or something to that), and I said no.
I "ass"umed uinstalling the device from Windows would be sufficient.

I have not checked CPU temps; I had been playing MW2 on the GSO for a day before the (sideways?) upgrade to the 4770.

Thanks for the suggestion Josh... I'll check over there.

Error8 - all the bechmarks I saw indicated the 4770 should be a full step above a 9600GT... and the 9600GT is faster than the GSO I have(had).
Futzing with texture quality (to lower VRAM use) might be a useful test if the steam forums don't net a more concrete answer.

 

[duragezic]

I'm not familiar with the 4770 but I have a 4870 512mb RAM and a AMD Opteron @ 2.7ghz. That might put our CPU performance near (yours having an edge) and our graphics performance near (mine having an edge).

And I seen the same issues in MW2. When I first bought it, I went to 1680x1050, 4x AA, max all details, Texture on Extra. I seen quite a bit of the slowdowns you describe.

I thought this was to do with lack of VRAM causing the hitching. VRAM is generally used mostly by Texture settings, resolution, and AA. I wasn't going to lower from native resolution, but I did set texture down and AA to 2x. This helped significantly. I still get a few hiccups but not enough for me to care.

Either MW2 has some issues, perhaps with ATI cards, or I believe it just requires a lot stronger machine than MW1. So yes I agree with your assessment; it may be running out of VRAM at the settings and resolution we're at. BTW, I'm running XP 32-bit and have 2 GB ram.

Also, when it asked you "remove all" I would have selected yes. I doubt this is causing any problems but next time I would just remove all.

 

[CuriousMike]

And I seen the same issues in MW2. When I first bought it, I went to 1680x1050, 4x AA, max all details, Texture on Extra. I seen quite a bit of the slowdowns you describe.

duragezic,
I went over to the steam forums, and some people are having issues with their ATI 3/4/5xxx cards.
The typical problem is just poor ( chugging ) framerate.
I saw only two posts that sounded like *my* problem: the framerate is great ... it just "randomly" has that 1/2 second pause... then resumes as if nothing was wrong.

Inconclusive if it's a hardware of software(driver) issue.

If I discover anything, I'll post back.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I had the same problem with a 9600GT and an E4500, both at stock.
Normally, the framerate was in the 40 to 60 range with everything set to max at 1440x900. However, in one level, I would get momentary freezing of the screen for a short period of time. Not just a slow down, but a total freezing of the screen. I turned the textures to High instead of ultra and this solved the problem. I did not try turning the textures back to ultra because I could see very little difference between high and ultra settings. I think the problem occured sometimes when the game was doing an autosave, but it happened just in the middle of gameplay too.

 

[lopri]

What is your motherboard, and have you by any chance tested its DPC latency?

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

If the game allows windowed mode, try playing the game in a window with the DPC latency checker open on the side. See if there is any spike as you experience hiccups.

 

[nemesismk2]

I'm probably retarded and seen 4670 instead of 4770. That so sad, I'm loosing my mind...
My above post still stands...sort of...

It's okay it's an easy mistake to make. I kept calling the 4770 the 4870 when it first came out which must of been confusing