Enough is enough - Stuttering issues :(

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15 May 2011
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After months of chopping and changing my system around as much as my frame rate, I finally need to ask for help to fix the root of the problem!!

My monitor is a VX2260WM 22inch Viewsonic running at 1920x1080 60hz. My graphics card is an ASUS Geforce 460 GTX 768mb, and I have been plagued with stuttering. When I was on Windows XP, it got so annoying I bought an ATI 5850 but the stuttering remained, so I took it back. Upon reinstalling the 460, the stuttering was GONE! I forgot about it and moved on to windows 7... and now its back. Not quite so severe I admit, but its back. Here are the bullet points:

- I'm running 275.33 which are the latest drivers at the moment that I can find on Nvidias site. When I installed the card I used the installation disk which came with the card and have only ever selected the x64 Windows 7 versions.

- The stuttering ranges from being hard to see to annoyingly obvious. In DiRT2 as you drive around you can plainly see the scenery skipping slightly every second or so. YouTube videos are juddery. This is with Vsync on or off. Triple buffering seems to have no effect. On XP I could get DiRT2 running as smooth as butter, it was glorious. Even on lowest details it doesnt seem to reach the same level of silky smoothness and I want to know why!!

- My processor cores run cool, never idling over 30c and I've yet to see them reach into the 50s when under load. the graphics card reaches 60c under load.

- I have not overclocked anything, everything is running at stock clock speeds.

I hope i haven't made this an unreadable wall of text. I ask for anyone who has experienced this themselves or anyone who has any suggests to please give me a glimmer of hope. I've had a few issues as of late but they have come and gone, this is the one constant that I really want to sort out.
 
going by the hiper explosive thread it would probably be wise to replace with another make even if it isnt the problem :P

If the cpu/gpu are not stressed when the stuttering is happening then it might be worth looking at the hard drive as a possible issue. I don't mean the drive itself, but the chipset/ata drivers and the write cache settings. The write cache especially causes a lot of stutter when disabled since the computer hangs everytime the drive is accessed.
 
going by the hiper explosive thread it would probably be wise to replace with another make even if it isnt the problem :P

If the cpu/gpu are not stressed when the stuttering is happening then it might be worth looking at the hard drive as a possible issue. I don't mean the drive itself, but the chipset/ata drivers and the write cache settings. The write cache especially causes a lot of stutter when disabled since the computer hangs everytime the drive is accessed.

Haha wow that thread was eye opening! I've had this PSU for years... I guess I've been lucky.. Well, so far..

Yea neither the CPU or graphics card are maxed out. I've just got a spinpoint f3, write caching is on. I see S.M.A.R.T is enabled in the bios, keep on or turn off?
 
I don't think smart makes any impact on performance

It's not usually an issue with modern pcs but you could try downloading process monitor and leave it running in the background while running a game. See if the interrupts/DPCs are higher than ~2% when the stuttering occurs. Also, do you have many extra bits not mentioned in your sig? i mean stuff like wireless network cards/usb dongles or sound cards.
 
I'll look into a process monitor, that sounds like a good idea.

In terms of extras, I dont really have much stuff. PS/2 Logitech keyboard, USB Logitech mx510 mouse, built in LAN connected to belkin router, erm... speakers.. thats literally it.. All USBs free other than the mouse.

Ive noticed my graphics card shares IRQ 18 with all USB slots and the on board LAN. Is there any way I could change that so the graphics card gets an IRQ of its own with no conflicts?
 
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I'm leaning towards this being a sync issue between the video card and the monitor, even with vsync on there is a slight stutter.. using something as ancient as WoW its still detectable. To best describe what I'm experiencing I'd have to say its like a hiccup in the fluidity of the frame rate. Its not like a flat out PAUSE, but its not.. fluid. every second or half a second or so there is a hiccup.
 
-Update: I've tried another monitor and I'm getting the same stuttering, so its not a monitor or DVI cable issue... This is really annoying me to the point where I'm tempted to go back to XP (at the loss of 4gb of memory) just to go back to silky smooth movement on screen. Totally peed off!
 
is this only in Dirt 2 you get the stuttering ? or all games ?

Could easily be another process in the background causing the stuttering.
 
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Have you tried to set Energy Management Method to Maximum Performance instead of Adaptive (or similar, I've got non English system) in nVidia drivers ?
What if you turn off completely power management in BIOS (I know, in WinXP is good, but I want to know if it helps or not under your Win7) ?
Have you got all DX libraries installed under Win7 ? What about game profiles in nVidia drivers settings - are they all default, or changed by user ?
 
is this only in Dirt 2 you get the stuttering ? or all games ?

Could easily be another process in the background causing the stuttering.

It stutters in all things, I've ran out of processes to shut down lol theres nothing left..

have you changed the psu. i dint thinkthe hyper giving you 480w

I agree that my PSU isn't great and could be a problem.. But on the other hand I have had this exact hardware working stutter free before... With this PSU.. Thats why I dont understand why I cant sort it now..

Have you tried to set Energy Management Method to Maximum Performance instead of Adaptive (or similar, I've got non English system) in nVidia drivers ?
What if you turn off completely power management in BIOS (I know, in WinXP is good, but I want to know if it helps or not under your Win7) ?
Have you got all DX libraries installed under Win7 ? What about game profiles in nVidia drivers settings - are they all default, or changed by user ?

DX libraries all up to date as far as I can tell, power management in bios (cool n quiet) is off, and nvidia power management is on "Prefer maximum performance" I have tried all combinations in terms of vsync, triple buffering, etc, no change in the stuttering/fluidity. Its as if the frame rate is just not matched up with the sync, even though every option I have control over is set to do just that. So strange. I'm convinced its a refresh related problem, Ive tried making custom resolution profiles with 60hz.. 59hz.. Even changing the nvidia profiles to match up to the exact Khz frequencys shown in the monitor display..
 
is there any chance of trying yr gpu in a machine similar...
this would rule out gpu
also is anything overclocked
yr psu seems fine unless things overclocked might stress it..
also if u sure its monitor related can u try a diff 1?
if none of this is applicable..
only thing i can put it down to is windows 7 takes more resources to run meaning less for gaming
i run xp on 1 hard drive and win 7 on another they used to be raid
but made no performance diffrence for me
so use 1 as win7 boot up
and aslong as the games use direct x9 only

or can do direct x10 on the xp patch

win7 is a bunch of bs for gaming...

so thats prob why runs xp fine
 
I tried having a 5850 in here and there was still a stuttering problem, I tried a monitor from another pc (at a different aspect ration and resolution) and the stuttering was still there.. My gpu was fine in XP, but like you said - things which were ok in XP obviously arent in 7. Its annoying because I have 8gb of ram so if I went back to XP I'd lose half of that which is pretty ridiculous really. Just to add, the stuttering is in EVERYTHING, not just apps but even on the desktop. YOUTUBE VIDEOS have this constant stutter, its so frustrating!
 
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When you say that it was working fine before that maybe the case, but things degrade, ill put money on it being your psu.

Change it before you have to buy a new pc.

Check voltages on it, if its 5%-/+ its fine but any lower and eeekkk!
 
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