Need help with games "stuttering"

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rasputeena

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HI, I am new to the forum. I've been having a problem for awhile now, and ive been racking my brain trying to figure it out. Whenever I try to run almost any game (mostly newer games, i can play older games such as Diablo 2) Once it loads to where i should be able to move around, it will freeze for approx 10-30 seconds, and then unfreeze for approx 2-10 seconds. Which renders the game completely unplayable. And sometimes while this is happening the sound is skipping. I thought at first that it was because i was using onboard sound, so i bought a Sound Blaster Live! card, and it still does the exact same thing. Here are a few games that do this to me:

Unreal Tournament 2004
Rome: Total War
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Here are system specs:

HP Pavilion 304w (FIC AM37 motherboard)
Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53 Ghz
256mb PC2100 DDR RAM
PNY GeForce4 ti4200 64mb
Creative Sound Blaster Live! LS
Windows XP Home
Direct X 9.0c

One thing i should mention is that I took out my Geforce card and plugged my monitor into my onboard video, and the games stopped "stuttering" and we're playable. Of course, the graphics we're very poor playing this way, but the stuttering stopped.

Here is everything i have tried to do to fix this:

Latest video drivers
Latest sound drivers
3rd party video drivers
3rd party sound drivers
Latest BIOS update
Latest motherboard drivers
ran a memory test
switched RAM slots
Latest mouse drivers
Formatted HDD and did fresh WINxp install
Overclocked GeForce card
Used 3rd party software to decrease PCI bus latency
Turned down graphics settings all the way
Turned down audio settings all the way
Turned off all background applications
Used windows update and got all updates
Opened Case and used box fan for extra cooling

I'm sure there are a few more things i've tried, but that's all i can remember right now. If anyone has any information or advice that would help, i would really appreciate it. Thanks
 
This exact same thing happened with me too. What I found the problem to be was that the fan on my videocard was intermittenly stopping between revolutions. I had to play with the fan a bit and blew the dust out so that it would not keep stopping on me. That could be one of the reasons its pausing gameplay on you. If the fan stops then the card will most likely overheat and "hang up" on some 3d intensive games. Another thing that I have heard might cause the problem is your sound card. I was told that the soundblaster cards sometimes go into a loop error and loops the sound, then also causes the game to freeze up for a bit.



Its probably time to replace your video card if its not the fan on the videocard.
 
Well, i think it is my video card. I just ran a 3D Mark test on it, and the graphics we're all messed up and i was getting the "stuttering" thing again, and then i got a windows error that kicked me out of the 3D mark app, and then there we're little lines all over my display. I rebooted and the lines went away, but i think it is my video card. Maybe it's just gone bad.
 
yeah, vid card... maybe you'll be lucky and the artifacts are nothing more than over heating. Here's a big thing to look at. Look under the vid card to the PCI slot. The PCI slot directly below the AGP card should ALWAYS be blank to avoid heat problems. Guess if you're desperate enough you could check the aperture in bios, but I doubt that'll do you any good at all. So hope its heat issue and check the PCI slot below the AGP, run with the case open and fan blowing in it, if not then the card just pegged its turd-ometer.
 
If its not the video card. Maybe its the power supply. You didnt get the stuttering when you took out your video card, thus you there is more power, because you were not using the agp slot. An onboard video card uses less power than a agp video card. Try unplugging everything that is not esential to run your system with the apg video card. If that does not fix it than it probably is the video card, and a new one will fix it. But what is your psu?
 
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