Dilema, Need some help

krisboats

krisboats

krisboats

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Joined
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Location
Loughborough
Hi

I got a new graphics card for christmas and oh i do love it, however.... there is the occasional time when the pc stutters during gameplay and is almost stuck in a loop (say i suddenly shoot at an enemy the screen freezes and the shooting sound can be heard several times until the game continues).

Now i'm guessing the graphics card isn't the problem but i figured now i'm running games at higher quality the RAM might be the cause as its similar to when say auto-saving a checkpoint mid game.

I'm currently using Kingston value PC3200 ram, not overclocked as i don't know how. Again, with the latencies... let me know how to find them and i can tell you them if it helps. I have 1GB but i was wondering, would it be worthwhile picking up another stick of the same RAM for around £30 or should i look at doing something else?

I have a socket 754 CPU though so no need to ask about dual channel and rubbish like that.

My MOBO's limit is 2GB and has 3 slots (2x512mb already fitted).
 
When you've played a game thats caused stuttering, come out into windows, press ctrl+alt+del, go to the perfomance tab and note down the peak value in the commit charge box, if this is higher than the total physical memory then you're using all your RAM and paging to disk.

For latencies, download a little app called CPU-Z and got to the memory tab, post up a screenshot of that and we'll take it from there.
 
Minstadave said:
When you've played a game thats caused stuttering, come out into windows, press ctrl+alt+del, go to the perfomance tab and note down the peak value in the commit charge box, if this is higher than the total physical memory then you're using all your RAM and paging to disk.

For latencies, download a little app called CPU-Z and got to the memory tab, post up a screenshot of that and we'll take it from there.
Click to expand...

pcdetailsam6.jpg


Here we go, not very tight on the latencies is it :(
 
Rather than get another stick of RAM, I'd sell what you've got and try and get hold of 2 x 1GB sticks.

I used to run 3 sticks of RAM when I first started to use a 754 setup, but I had to run my memory timings looser because of it and performance suffered a little because of it.
 
Yeah 2.5-3-3-7 is a good place to start, use Prime95 or Windows Memtest to try out stability :)

Had to do your sig, it was a line too long.
 
Minstadave said:
Yeah 2.5-3-3-7 is a good place to start, use Prime95 or Windows Memtest to try out stability :)
Click to expand...

Okay, i'll go find the programs off the internet and have a look... just some fans in my pc system now :D Didn't have any before (except GFX card, PSU and CPU fans).

Minstadave said:
Had to do your sig, it was a line too long.
Click to expand...

:eek: Took me ages to do that :( I'm sure it was smaller than yours :confused:
 
Okay well i went in the bios and changed the CAS latency to 2.5, although that cPU-Z thing still sees it as being 3.

Selling this and getting a pair of 1gb isn't an option as i don't want to throw too much money into this pc when i'm just going to get a new one in a short time, only the random stutters in games is quite irritating.... so i figured £30 on more RAM would be a good solution.

I'm not interested in overclocking it really so corsair and all that lot isn't neccessary, all i want is to get rid of the stutters and have levels load a bit quicker.... which i'm under the impression will happen if i get another 512mb of ram.

Not seen any improvement whatsoever with changing my latency and i can't find where i need to change that 2T down to 1T.

Shall i just get another £25 512 and stick it in and be happy?
 
changing to 1T will give you more of a performance boost than tweaking the other latencies, but overall you are still only looking at a few % of boost.... compare synthetic (SuperPi, SiSoft Sandra) and gaming benchmarks to see how much difference it makes, but you are probably looking at a few FPS worth of benefit. Good if you are a hardcore overclocker looking for every gain you can, but probably not worth that much to you unless your frame rates were REALLY low to start with.

You might see some small boost from increasing your RAM size, but you my find that the real bottleneck is elsewhere, CPU or possibly even your hard drive.... without a full hardware spec it is hard to tell.

Hell, it may even be a hardware conflict in the system, or a software problem in the drivers or in the game.... less likely given the description of the error but still possible. Does it happen in multiple games? Did you remove the old gfx card drivers from the system before installing the new ones?

You may find you dont have to spend any money at all to rectify the problem
 
simonnance said:
changing to 1T will give you more of a performance boost than tweaking the other latencies, but overall you are still only looking at a few % of boost.... compare synthetic (SuperPi, SiSoft Sandra) and gaming benchmarks to see how much difference it makes, but you are probably looking at a few FPS worth of benefit. Good if you are a hardcore overclocker looking for every gain you can, but probably not worth that much to you unless your frame rates were REALLY low to start with.

You might see some small boost from increasing your RAM size, but you my find that the real bottleneck is elsewhere, CPU or possibly even your hard drive.... without a full hardware spec it is hard to tell.

Hell, it may even be a hardware conflict in the system, or a software problem in the drivers or in the game.... less likely given the description of the error but still possible. Does it happen in multiple games? Did you remove the old gfx card drivers from the system before installing the new ones?

You may find you dont have to spend any money at all to rectify the problem
Click to expand...

Right okay.

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (754)
Msi K8T Neo Mobo
2 x 512mb Kingston value pc3200 RAM
Geforce 7600gt (agp)
PCI Firewire card
PCI Modem Card
Hitachi deskstar 160GB Hard drive (8mb buffer/cache thing)
ColoursIT 550w PSU
Pioneer Dual layer +/- DVD RW
DVD ROM Drive
Floppy Drive
ColoursIT Case (now has 3 glowing blue fans :D )
Unbranded 17" TFT monitor running 1280x1024
Altec Lansing FX-4021 Gaming speakers (very nice indeed)
Saitek eclipse keyboard
£2.50 mouse

Yes i uninstalled the graphics drivers before fitting the new card, it doesnt happen in old games like unreal 2004, happens in far cry with full settings despite an otherwise 30-40fps, happens a little bit in CS:S at full settings and happens a lot in company of heroes so i had to turn lots of graphics options down to try and rectify it.

It Does seem to be when only happening in games with the high commit charge, company of heroes being the biggest of them all.
 
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