Stuttering/hitching in games

**Natmeister** · April 04, 2012, 07:43 AM

Hey guys,

I have had hitching in my pc games for as long as I can remember on my current pc:

1090t @ 3.8ghz
Hyper 212 evo p/p
8gb corsair vengeance @ 1333mhz
m4a88td-m evo/usb3
5850 extreme
corsair hx 650
crucial 64gb ssd
2x samsung spinpoimt f3 1tb hdd
Haf 912 advanced

By the hitching I mean split second pauses and stuttering in nearly every game I have played (Every Total War game, source games, call of duty, bf3, crysis 2, far cry 1/2, even paradox games), the only game I have not noticed this in is just cause 2. I have reinstalled windows twice in the past 6 months and upgraded my ram, gpu, case, storage, cpu and psu.

Has anyone else in these forums ever experienced something like this?

**Totalheadache** · April 04, 2012, 12:02 PM

yeah it's called micro-stuttering. usually happens in sli/xfire or where it really first raised it's ugly head.

so you recently reinstalled os? did you format the hdds?

also can you run a res evil 5 benchmark and an avp smoothly (res evil 5 should be butter smooth really and avp is a lot tougher on the gpu..well is dx11).

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Aliens-v...load-2553.html

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Resident...load-2331.html

have you checked background apps running?

also if you are using software like msi afterburner or evga precision? try running your games without these and look for stutter...(use catalyst to increase your fan speed).

**Phier** · April 04, 2012, 12:33 PM

I had an issue like that years ago and it turned out it was a windows issue where it was indexing files while I was playing counter strike. Perhaps long outdated, but I'd also look to your system for other processes.

If you have another machine you can transfer the card to see if its hardware related.

**Totalheadache** · April 04, 2012, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by Phier

I had an issue like that years ago and it turned out it was a windows issue where it was indexing files while I was playing counter strike. Perhaps long outdated, but I'd also look to your system for other processes.

If you have another machine you can transfer the card to see if its hardware related.

yeah it's odd though if he has replaced parts though...

OP can you think of any part that you havent changed?

have heard it also argued that a cause could be psu related...(very remote though).

**Natmeister** · April 04, 2012, 06:01 PM

Originally Posted by Totalheadache

yeah it's odd though if he has replaced parts though...

OP can you think of any part that you havent changed?

have heard it also argued that a cause could be psu related...(very remote though).

Thanks for your help, the only part i haven't changed is the motherboard. I have upgraded the psu since the stuttering started and I have turned off any of the usual culprits for stuttering such as indexing and hardware monitoring software.

**Taiji** · April 05, 2012, 03:05 AM

Did you strip stuff in msconfig?

**Natmeister** · April 05, 2012, 04:25 AM

Originally Posted by Taiji

Did you strip stuff in msconfig?

Yea, anything not to important. I had a problem today with all my usb ports not functioning but it was fixed with a restart, could the problems be related?

**Taiji** · April 05, 2012, 04:53 AM

I'd strip everything. Just dot 'diagnostic startup' and apply it to check.

And yeah the problems could be related - Especially since the usb ports are attached to the thing not yet swap-tested, the mainboard.

Have you reset your bios since getting the problem?

Also, got anything unnecessary attached like printers etc.?

**Natmeister** · April 05, 2012, 08:41 AM

Originally Posted by Taiji

I'd strip everything. Just dot 'diagnostic startup' and apply it to check.

And yeah the problems could be related - Especially since the usb ports are attached to the thing not yet swap-tested, the mainboard.

Have you reset your bios since getting the problem?

Also, got anything unnecessary attached like printers etc.?

Wow, games are a lot smoother after diagnostic start up. I'm guessing it must have been a driver I kept installing after every reformat. Any ideas on how to narrow it down? I also flashed my motherboard to the latest bios a few weeks ago with no improvement, no printers only one external HDD.

**Totalheadache** · April 05, 2012, 04:56 AM

yeah a bios update is worth doing perhaps...

doing some testing with ibt/occt/memtest and a hard disk checker might be worth it.

i guess temps are all ok?

**Taiji** · April 06, 2012, 11:35 AM

Basically that just took a load of ticks out of stuff listed in the startup and services tabs, so you can go back into msconfig and start enabling things one by one...

But first go to the services tab and enable all services, then hide microsoft services and remove the ticks from anything left. So now the only services loading are MS ones, or in other words parts of windows. Worth checking to make sure it's still smooth in games at this stage.

Now you're set to reenable your non-MS services and the startup programs, one at a time, or in chunks if you prefer. If it's a long list then typically I'd enable half of them and test, if the problem appears then I assume the other half is fine and I disable half of the half with the problem, etc.