Please help me stop the stutter

iDunnoiDunno Dallas, Tejas
edited December 2003 in Hardware
I dont know what is wrong with my computer but i get a stutter in everything i do on the computer, when i watch a quicktime movie there is a stutter like every 4 seconds, when i play need for speed underground, i get the same stutter, when i move the internet explorer window around.

i dunno what is causing this problem, i dont think its my video card.
i had the same problem with my radeon 7200, now with the latest drivers and a radeon 9600, i still get the stutter.

what could be causing this problem?
thanks

Comments

  • AuthorityActionAuthorityAction Missouri Member
    edited December 2003
    system specs?

    i think prime may want you to run memtest also
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    UM, amount of RAM, possibly. Faster video cards eat more, and also settign in BIOS of frame aperture. Teh real fast cards can use 128 MB of RAM on mobo per aperture frame, and if you get a fast enough card, and have a small frmae aperture or limited free RAM, this is likely to happen. If RAM were actually hardware faulty, I woudl expect more violent things like system crashes or program aborts, given what has happend so far, hardware RAM fault is less likely than either free RAM amount or aperture size in BIOS Setup program. THAT is when I get stutter, other is old monitor and new video card, monitors more than 2-3 years old cannot keep up. Also look and see if you installed DirectX 9.0 on a Windows, the command to do so is dxdiag entered in Start|Run, and you can run diagnostics from directx that way also.

    This is most likely driver, directx, amount of free RAM, or graphics frame aperture SIZE setting in Setup (computer's Setup program, which is you talking to BIOS in part, not Windows). Check to see, in Device Manager, if you have a duplicate display adapter or monitor driver running, this can and does cause this in every windows I have ever worked with, and I have seen spontaneous reboots on some boxes due to just and only that also.

    Tell us what video card, and how long ago the drivers were installed, ok??? AND, if you have the CD, tell us the driver pack verison also.

    For a 128 MB card, on a fast box, a 256 MB frame buffer setting woudl maximize card, but many folks do not like seeing all theri RAM being taken up and set to 64 MB. this will cramp a 128 MB card and a 256 MB card will majorly act up. Given that you have had this with an older Radeon, you might want to get the newest RAdeon drivers for your new card, they have improved some. Also, any of the ATI convenience software can be mostly uninstalled, it takes up RAM. Sop, next question is how much RAM do you have in box???

    John.
  • iDunnoiDunno Dallas, Tejas
    edited December 2003
    i got a athlon 1000mhz thunderbird
    384mb ddr 1600
    radeon 9600 with lastest catalyst 3.9 drivers.

    i hope this helps.
    thanks
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    I had stutter problems for a while on my main rig. I went from 256 MB of RAM to 512 and the stuttering stopped.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited December 2003
    ...of sound card do you have? :wave:
  • Al_CapownAl_Capown Indiana
    edited December 2003
    What hard drive do you have? Do you have Ultra DMA turned on?
  • iDunnoiDunno Dallas, Tejas
    edited December 2003
    ok i checked my agp aperture size and its 128.
    agp fast write is on
    and agp something is at 4x. (i dunno if i can switch to 8x, should i?)

    my sound card is game theater xp.
    my main hard drive is a samsung 40gig 5400rpm
    my slave is a maxtor 120gig 7200rpm
    both running at ata100
  • Al_CapownAl_Capown Indiana
    edited December 2003
    Right click my computer, select properties, then click hardware, then device manage, then click the + sign for IDE ATA / ATAPI Controllers, right click your controller and select properties, select now make sure DMA mode is enabled on your pc.
  • iDunnoiDunno Dallas, Tejas
    edited December 2003
    yes DMA mode is enabled on both hard drives
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Ok, set graphics aperture to 128 and that will limit the card's main RAM use to 128 of main RAM,or 1\3 of RAM upper max. If you then get RAM limits making things slow, what O\S you have determines how much RAM you cna use on a more modern box like yours. IF you get hangs in programs this way, you can take RAM to 768 MB, and 5X the RAM aperture is more than enough to get the stutter stopped while letting other things run right and will work even in 98 SE. XP Pro can handle 2-4 GIG of real mainboard RAM and use it, but you will need a recent board (motherboard made and designed in last 2.5-3.5 years depending on chipset) to support 2 GIG or more.

    Slow boxes got along with 3X aperture well, but I am talking boxes running at 750 MHZ or less. Big fast boxes and fast cards eat a lot of RAM for graphics, real fast. So, how much more depends on OS in part. XP likes 512 for itself with apps running, so with 768 you allow for one 512 MB stick and 1 256 MB stick and that minimizes RAM cost whiel makign an XP box useable with your video card grade. 98 SE does NOT like exactly 512 MB, will run with RAM between 512 and 1 GIG, barfs massively at 1 GIG or above (in theory, parts of it can handle 1 GB RAM, but not all of it I found out by trying), and hates being low on RAM. ME acts pretty much like 98 SE in this respect, win2K pro can run 1 GIG ok, nevr tried it with more to know how much it will actually use, but typically widnows threoreticals and actuals differ some from box to box, so I say 3\4 OS max for safety and stick number and cost balance.

    John.
  • Al_CapownAl_Capown Indiana
    edited December 2003
    The 5400 rpm is suspect, but it might be perfectly fine. It's also possible that your memory is all being used up (system memory). So because all the system memory is being used it will go directly to the hd.
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