PC Stuttering

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Joined
6 Jan 2009
Posts
216
Location
Norwich - UK
Hi, I am wondering if anyone could help. I have a problem with my PC. It started out of the blue about 2/3 weeks ago. I had made absolutely no changes to my system, save for installing a game or two a few days before, but for some reason whenever I do anything graphically intensive, I get little stutters and micro freezes, were it would stutter and get that eerrrr aarrr oorrrr, sort of noise (its kind of hard to explain).

I have my system set back at defaults, and checked all connections and it all seems good. As this only happens when I watch movies or play games, something that uses the GPU, I thought this could be the problem. From what I have read on this so far, im guessing it could be the GPU, PSU, RAM, or one guy even said a dodgy cable.

Im pretty sure my cables and PSU are fine. I dont think it is RAM, but im going to run MemTest tomorrow just to check. I have a feeling it could be the GPU as it only happens when it is in major use, plus I have a GTX460 and I have heard a lot of people have the '460 stutter' problem, but it just doesnt sound too much like my problem, and it was working fine before.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is getting annoying now.

Specs:
Intel i3 530 2.93GHz stock
MSI P55 GD80
Patriot Sector 5 Viper II 4Gb 1600Mhz @1066 stock.
Silverstone 8500W ST85
OCZ Vertex 2 60Gb SSD
WD Caviar Black 640Gb
Gigabyte GTX 460 1Gb OC
Windows 7 Professional x64

I think thats all the important stuff, but let me know if you need to know more.

Thanks in advance!
 
Ha ha, yes, nice name indeed :P It was just an alias I came up with years ago, and used it ever since.

Yeah I have used different drivers, and I still have the same problem. I have only tried the current WHQL ones and the new Beta though, so I might go back an try some older ones, but for some reason im not holding my breath.

If it is a GPU problem (which would be a shame as the Gigabyte motherboard I had was the most solid board I have ever used, and I hold them in high regard) then it is going to be an annoyance sending it back for RMA as I would need to buy another cheap GPU to replace it, as I wouldnt have any video output.

I was really hoping it was a driver or cable problem, but im not so sure now. It just happened totally out of the blue :(
 
I havent yet, I did fear it was a SSD problem, but that is only a few months old. I do have windows installed on my caviar 750Gb, so I could try loading into that and see if I get the same problem. The problem only seems to happen when either playing a game, or watching a movie or BluRay. The more graphically intensive the game the more it stutters as well, which is what made me think it was a GPU problem.

I'll check my win installation on the other drive though and report back.
 
Well, I just installed my copy of Win 7 Pro x86 on my WD Caviar hard drive, installed relevant drivers, installed a game, played for a bout 10 mins and the stuttering returned. So I think we can rule out the SSD, Drivers and Win 7 installation issues.

Would this suggest that there is a problem with the GPU then?
 
have you installed your mobo chipset drivers, performance can suffer quite badly using the windows generic ones.
 
Yeah im pretty sure I have, as I needed to update BIOS to use the i3 CPU I think I did the whole works, BIOS and chipset drivers. It has only started over these last few weeks though, and I have had the mobo and CPU for way longer than that. The latest hardware change I made was installing the 460 a few months back, and it has been working fine since.

Like I said in the original post, I had made no changes to my system when this problem occured, also as it seems to happen with anything graphically intensive, this lead me to believe there is a problem with GPU.
 
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