Constant gaming stutter

[Mot Wakorb]

When I'm playing some games, I notice there is a stutter in the background, every second or two, but it's constant. I've taken the advice to set the PC to High Performance mode, but can't seem to figure out for the life of me as to what would be causing this. Suggestions/help?

Update: Here's an example video.

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[LiquidRain]

Hm, that shouldn't be happening. Have you updated drivers recently? Changed any driver settings related to vsync or triple buffering? Changing performance mode shouldn't do it.

[Adam Blue]

If you haven't yet, try playing these games without access to the internet. There could be some program communicating with something. I've had this happen a few years ago, and it ended up being AVG.

[nabokovfan87]

looks like vsync when vsync boggs down the card so bad. try turning something down?

[TrackZero]

Actually, that happens a bit on the 360 game room too Mot...or is it everywhere?

[Mot Wakorb]

It's everywhere. Actually - I just got it fixed. Turns out, if I go into my ATI Catalyst Control Center and set "Wait for Vertical Refresh" to "Always On", the problem disappears. Why would that be, though?

[nabokovfan87]

It's everywhere. Actually - I just got it fixed. Turns out, if I go into my ATI Catalyst Control Center and set "Wait for Vertical Refresh" to "Always On", the problem disappears. Why would that be, though?

It's kind of just the way vertical refresh works. It makes the fps match your monitor in case things aren't showing up propery or if they are a little bit wonky.

Basically, it runs that check to make sure things are synched up, and if the video card is right at that point where the check itself effect performance, then you get the stuttering. Moral of the story, turn all of the ATI stuff off and just let the game set it. In cases like this, and mass effect, batman: AA, other games that have "nvidia specific" "features" it will actually make things worse.

So here is how wikipedia explains it:

In computer graphics, double buffering is a technique for drawing graphics that shows no (or less) flicker, tearing, and other artifacts.

It is difficult for a program to draw a display so that pixels do not change more than once. For instance to update a page of text it is much easier to clear the entire page and then draw the letters than to somehow erase all the pixels that are not in both the old and new letters. However, this intermediate image is seen by the user as flickering. In addition computer monitors constantly redraw the visible video page (at around 60 times a second), so even a perfect update may be visible momentarily as a horizontal divider between the "new" image and the un-redrawn "old" image, known as tearing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_buffering

EDIT: FOUND IT... lol, what I was looking for originally, THIS is what it tries to fix:

http://www.tweakguides.com/images/GGDSG_19s.jpg

My theory, if you have something running at 60 instead of 30 fps or better yet 100 instead of 30 or 60, then you can avoid this because the screen is refreshing so fast that you wont notice it.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vsync

[Mot Wakorb]

Okay, perhaps it's not the vertical sync thing - I have it set to always on now, and it worked great last night, now it's acting stupid again. I'm really getting frustrated with this one.

And... I figured it out. One thing I never thought of - another application acting stupid. Digsby. If Digsby is open, it stutters. If Digsby is closed - no problems at all. Hmmmm.

Edit: CONFIRMED! http://forum.digsby.com/viewtopic.php?id=5680

[Farsight]

And... I figured it out. One thing I never thought of - another application acting stupid. Digsby. If Digsby is open, it stutters. If Digsby is closed - no problems at all. Hmmmm.

That makes more sense. All the v-sync was doing was giving your system more time between frames to work around the slowdowns. Basically a faked slowdown to match your real slowdown. :)

[TrackZero]

And... I figured it out. One thing I never thought of - another application acting stupid. Digsby. If Digsby is open, it stutters. If Digsby is closed - no problems at all. Hmmmm.

Edit: CONFIRMED! http://forum.digsby.com/viewtopic.php?id=5680

Did I not rant to you NOT to use Digsby? *facepalm*

[Mot Wakorb]

Did I not rant to you NOT to use Digsby? *facepalm*

You've ranted at me about a lot of things, but never about digsby.

[Jackel]

He's getting old. HE ranted at me about Digsby...not at you.

[nabokovfan87]

That makes more sense. All the v-sync was doing was giving your system more time between frames to work around the slowdowns. Basically a faked slowdown to match your real slowdown. :)

Maybe I will find out how to user the PowerDVD video editing stuff and make a video of vsync on/off to show how much it effect performance, but it isn't about giving the system more time. It takes the video card and does a pixel by pixel sweep to make sure pixel a with color a is lined up with pixel b and color b and so on and so on. So when you get something like the picture I showed before, it would be lined up as a vertical lined instead of wacked out. Its kind of like AA, but a little different. It does have to do with the monitor synching but is more about making sure things are displayed properly. Some sort of example, its like taking a huge line of people at a door, instead of just opening the door and let the people through you have a guard sitting there with a stopwatch making sure people dont rush what is on the other side of the door.