HDD causing game stutter?

Caporegime
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
27,644
Location
Lancs/London
Hi guys,

I've been having stuttering problems for a while in games, more often than not without huge FPS drops.

My setup is;

[email protected]
HD6970
Kingston SSD+ 96GB (OS and Origin)
Seagate Barracuda Sata 3 7200 1TB (Steam)

Origin games run fine, BF3 etc is smooth as butter, the main issue appears to be Steam games run from the secondary hard drive.

An example of this would be Batman Arkham City. I installed it in 2 locations, one on the SSD and one on the HDD. Even the opening scenes with the Nvidia logo etc had sound stuttering when run from the HDD.

Ran the same from the SSD, smooth as butter. FPS rock solid at 62 constantly, no sound stuttering or anything.

So basically i've managed to isolate it to the HDD. I've run various benchmarks and everything seems fine based on what you'd expect from that particular drive model, no errors reported through chkdisk or HD tune pro, 0% de fragmentation.

Which leaves me stumped, is there anything anyone can recommend that might help me out here please? Naturally my SSD isn't big enough to handle my Steam folder, and am reluctant to only have a couple of games installed at a time so really need to fix this if possible. I was considering trying a different mechanical drive but the prices have gone crazy over the last couple of weeks :eek:

Thanks
Aaron
 
Sounds like HDD access latency. I get that in some games - the engine tries to fetch new resources that aren't in RAM, and everything stops for a split second while it loads. Annoying as hell, and one of the main reasons I'll be getting an SSD rather soon. Like you though, my Steam folder's bloody huge. :D
 
It is indeed annoying.

How often would you say it happens for you? For me, with Batman in particular it's every time you glide somewhere :(

Not just isolated to that game however, the TOR BETA was bad for it also, as is Skyrim, and most other games I run off the Steam HDD.
 
No problems here

Using 11.11 drivers on a older 5970 and similiar ssd/HDD set up?!!

You could always try these 11.11a drivers that have a update for HD6970 - Batman Arkam City + Skyrim etc?

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst1111aperformance.aspx

:)

Yeah i'm using the 11.11a drivers.

Pretty sure it's related to the HDD and not GPU/CPU etc as it runs perfectly from my SSD. It's only from the mechanical drive that I notice these problems, very irritating :(
 
in that case I would carry out a full diag on the HDD then...

I'm running a 750Gb version of the 7200.12 here with my Steam client on.. as stated with none of your symptoms... so it might be worth digging a bit deeper into your HDD health ?
 
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in that case I would carry out a full diag on the HDD then...

I'm running a 750Gb version of the 7200.12 here with my Steam client on.. as stated with none of your symptoms... so it might be worth digging a bit deeper into your HDD health ?

Sure thing. I completed a full format last night, and have re-installed Steam and a single game. Will give it a blast when I get home and see how I get on.

Failing that I have a spare HDD that I can try Steam from there on. Hopefully that will help narrow it down.

Was just wondering if I had missed anything glaringly obvious that could be causing it like a dodgy Sata cable or something :p
 
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