Weird 'frame skipping' feeling issue in some games

Omaeka

Omaeka

Omaeka

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10 Apr 2012
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In a few games I have I get this really weird thing when moving forward. The character skips forward slightly when moving. In Skyrim for example, I'll be moving forward, it'll be smooth but then my character will skip forward a few steps out of nowhere, like it's juttering forward but it isn't stuttering or dropping frames, it's almost as if it's skipping ahead a few frames, it was the same on the 6850 and I have no idea what could be causing it. It happens in these games:

Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, GTA IV, Dead Rising 2.

It's happened on a FX4100 with a 6850, then it continued with a 3570k and a 6850 and now it's carrying on with my current rig. The only components I have that haven't been changed are my RAM, HDD and monitor. Has anyone else ever had this or heard of it before? It's really hard to explain but is getting on my nerves completely, I just want to fix it. :/

Can a crap monitor cause something like this? In game performance doesn't at all change when these frame skips or whatever they are happen.

My monitor is a ViewSonic va1703wb 16:10 1440x900 60hz 17".

Harddrive is a Hitachi Deskstar 1TB.

Ram is 2x Kingston HyperX Genesis 4GB

At my wits end with this. :/ Cheers.
 
All of those games thrash the hard drive for textures/geometry during gameplay do they not? When you get stutter is your hard drive access LED flashing?
 
d_brennen said:
All of those games thrash the hard drive for textures/geometry during gameplay do they not? When you get stutter is your hard drive access LED flashing?
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I've had this also! For me, the spindle speed of the mechanical drive was too slow, 5400rpm. Switching to SSD solved it.
 
SSD isn't really necessary. I bet even a secondary HDD with only games on it would be fine. OS and games on the same mechanical drive is never a good idea.

You could try the usual fixes for HD performance, defrag, turn off disk indexing, close all unnecessary background programs, disable your AV for testing.
 
The issue isn't a drop in performance or a stutter, it's just the player character shooting ahead a few steps, like the last 2 or 3 steps of movement were instantly covered, an FPS counter never shows a drop in frames. Could it be HDD then? Skyrim for example really doesn't have a lot going on when your just running forward through a field. :/

Could it be my monitor? SSD is next on the upgrade list but I'm really not overly sure, you may have had the different issues. The HDD is completely silent some of the time, although I'll go check.

EDIT: Disabling Windows Search hasn't improved it, it still feels extremely sluggish and the camera feels as though I'm stoned/very tired at high speeds on GTA IV.

Very frustrating.

I read this on Google:

But generally when a game has frame skip, It means that when on, if your computer has too high a workload, it will reduce your FPS and skip frames you would normally see.
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This is exactly what I'm experiencing but the games don't have a frame skip option, the part 'skip frames you would normally see' is EXACTLY my issue. Anyone who can help me get to the bottom of this will have my eternal gratitude! :p
 
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If you're getting an SSD anyway then I'd just not worry about it until then. If it's still going on after that then there are some weird issues going on. By your OP you've only got 3 components in common through all of your upgrading. It isn't the monitor, I highly doubt it's the ram as you would have more serious problems than this which leaves the HD.
 
I'm just gonna avoid playing Skyrim and the other poorly optimized open worlders till I get an SSD yeah.

Although, and this is quite interesting; I enabled OpenGL Triple Buffering in the Catalyst Control Panel and turned Vsync on in GTA IV and performance has shot up in terms of the games performance when at high vehicle speeds, still a lot of frames seem to be getting ignored though. You know somethings weird when turning on Vsync improves framerate and makes the game feel less sluggish. :p


Cheers!
 
AMD are supposed to be releasing a new driver that sorts out latency problems they're having with their GPU's, I don't know if it's related to your problem but it involved frames being skipped and Skyrim was one of the games affected.
 
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There's a free memory testing program called "Memtest 86" which could be used to test your RAM to see if it has any serious errors. This could eliminate 1 more item from your list!
 
mmj_uk said:
Here is an article:
http://www.techpowerup.com/178129/AMD-to-Fix-GCN-Latency-Issues-with-Driver-Updates.html

More in depth:
http://techreport.com/news/24136/dr...ame-latency-troubles-to-be-fixed-with-updates
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Absolutely fantastic read, this does sound a lot like the issue I'm having, especially the second link, with the videos. So it is something that is an issue with all Radeon HD cards? They'd better bloody fix it! I might seriously jump over to Nvidia as much as I hate them, because I get nothing but issue and issue in games due to AMD being rubbish at drivers.

jwink86 said:
There's a free memory testing program called "Memtest 86" which could be used to test your RAM to see if it has any serious errors. This could eliminate 1 more item from your list!
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All my components have been benchmarked recently, all performing well. :) Cheers though.

BuToNz said:
Sounds weird but try this:
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_turn_off_keyboard_repeat.html

I know Skyrim had this bug where you would get stutter with key repeat on. This is assuming everything seems fine on your system.

A good way otherwise to test would be to run a benchmark of sorts and see if it stutters without keyboard/mouse input.
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Definitely gonna try that mate, cheers! How would I benchmark Skyrim though? It doesn't have a benchmark ingame. :(
 
Omaeka said:
Definitely gonna try that mate, cheers! How would I benchmark Skyrim though? It doesn't have a benchmark ingame. :(
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I was thinking something along the lines of 3DMark11/Heaven to see if the stuttering is visible there.
 
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