Ram or just overhaul?

[tomster2300]

Hey,

For Christmas I bought a evga 6800 GT and put it in my current pc. (See specs below). It came with Doom 3 (which is the only next generation game I have to test the card out on). The problem is it stutters when I open doors and when I look at visually impressive spots -- it is also kind of jerky. This all occurs at 1280x1024 with 4x AA on and 8x AA (kind of unplayable with the 8x).

1280x1024 is my monitor's maximum resolution with a 60 (mhz?) refresh rate.

My question is could I just get another 512 mb stick of pc2700 ram to boost me to a gig and solve this problem? Should I go to pc3200 and get a gig of it? Or is it time to upgrade to a 64 bit processor and higher speed ram?

I'm kind of short on money now and are looking for the cheapest solution. I also thought my pc was still fairly powerful. Shouldn't it not have a problem running Doom 3 at these settings?

My score in 3dMark 05 was a 3718 (or around that, maybe off by a few tenths -- it's posted in the 3dMark 05 thread).

Thank you and hopefully I can go back to killing the spawns of hell really soon

[tomster2300]

Does anybody know what I should do?

[DragonNOA1]

Your system looks good. Another 512MB would help but as to how much is uncertain. I run D3 at 1600x1200 with 8AF & 2AA. Which very rarely stutters, if at all. Does it stutter with no AA? If so, time to do the driver check and update your chipset and video drivers to the latest. Latest games need the latest drivers to support them. HTH

Edit* Also, make sure settings in the nvidia control panel aren't over-riding the games. The game may be set to 4aa but the panel says 16aa or somethin like that. Just something to double-check. Good Luck.

[tomster2300]

Alright, I'm running on the newest motherboard drivers -- the ones from nvidia, and the newest video card drivers -- 66.93 ones from the website.

The mobo drivers I have installed are the newest nforce unified driver, version 5.10. Is this the only mobo driver I need?

[DragonNOA1]

Right, nvidia makes it quick and simple with one file to download.

Looked around a bit and Doom3 does like as much RAM as possible.

If it stutters at one point, when you go back does it stutter again? If not, it could be textures trying to load from the HD into memory and swapping going on. If you do get more memory I would recommend the 2 PC3200 512's in dual-channel mode. I think your board supports it.

Play around with resolutions and check your fps to see if you are CPU limited and if stuttering occurs at the lower resolutions. GL

Edit* Oh, and defragging never hurts

Edit2* Speaking of defragging, what kind of HD's you runnin'?

[tomster2300]

I'm running a western digital 40 gig hard drive. 7200 rpm with 8 mb cache I think. It's not a sata, it's the other kind (the word's slipped my mind).

The thing is I just reformatted my hard drive a week or so ago when I had all that trouble with things not working -- windows would take forever to boot up then would initiate a countdown for rebooting. I was told it was the blaster worm but I could never find a trace of it so I was forced to just reformat using the Windows cd -- I never went through the command prompt and formatted it using the command "format c:" like I should have. That could be my problem. I went through many forums and a few people had my same problem yet could not find any relation to the blaster worm as well -- those people never posted back and no help was provided so I was kind of stuck in the water. The weird part was that my computer was working then I went to open firefox and it said it had a performed an illegal operation. I tried opening IE and got the same thing. I rebooted and it just got worse.

The thing I'm finding frustrating now is that it's doing it in Call of Duty United Offensive -- I installed the game and played through right after Christmas and it never stuttered a second -- now it's slowing down in spots. I had everything maxed out with a resolution of 1280x1024 both times.

The disk should be clean since I just reformatted, although do you think there could still be something on it? I went out and bought Norton Anti-Virus 2005 last night and updated it and ran it and it found nothing but one spyware thing -- nothing important.

With Doom it just freezes for half a second when I go to open some doors (I guess it's trying to load the next room's textures, but once I'm inside it's fine -- everything moves very smoothly, but now and then when I turn sharply it'll kind of stutter for a second. I haven't tried playing it since I found this problem with Call of Duty. It doesn't do it as bad with the AA off and its pretty good at 1024x768.

Thanks for the help.

[DragonNOA1]

Originally Posted by tomster2300 I never went through the command prompt and formatted it using the command "format c:" like I should have. That could be my problem.

I was thinking about spyware and a virus but decided against it. What do you mean here? How did you do the reinstall? Over-the-top install is a bad idea.

[tomster2300]

Yeah I know it is -- but my computer was in such bad shape I had to get it working again somehow. Windows took five minutes to boot up then after awhile would begin a countdown to reboot itself. (Plus nothing would open nor run in the beginning -- if I tried then it would say explorer.exe failed and would try to refresh itself, which just made the computer essentially freeze). So what I finally did in desperation was to reboot with the Windows cd in, deleted the parition (I only have one main partition) and then it went ahead and formatted the drive and then installed windows on it.

Before I did this though I found out that everything would open until the countdown began, then it would make everything freeze. I found out how to shut the countdown off and was able to keep the pc on while I worked on it. I scanned the drive with housecall -- the online scan from trendmicro (I finally got that working somehow), spybot, adaware, (both were on my pc to begin with) and they found nothing. I checked the registry in the spots I was told to but found nothing that resembled what they said should be there if it were indeed the blaster worm. I ran out of options basically, so I did the reformatting through the Windows cd, which I believe was a mistake.

What do you think?

EDIT: Could that cause my games to stutter? In Call of Duty UO, I lowered the sound quality and the game ran better, yet I never had to do that before -- I actually was able to keep it on the best sound quality and never saw a slowdown in framerate -- even with my old video card (ti 4800se) and the original Call of Duty. With the old card I was able to run everything maxed out and nothing stuttered.

[DragonNOA1]

Deleting the partition and reformatting in NTFS sounds like the correct way to me.

What kind of sound card are you running? Really any Creative Labs card should only impact a few frames but nothing drastic.

You have a clean power line going to your GT card? I heard they need one directly from the PSU and not connected to anything else.

I'm running out of ideas. Virus is not an issue, heat doesn't seem to be an issue, no background processes. Um, it stutters in both games, so your swap file is big enough right? PSU is powerful enough, right? You don't have a 10 drive RAID on there do you?

I don't know apart from sitting there myself and messing with/seeing what you see.

[tomster2300]

Well I went into the bios and changed the AGP aperature from 128 to 256 and that seemed to help the stuttering on Doom. I also downloaded a new beta version of the nvidia drivers 67.03 and they seem to help as well -- everything is a little bit nicer looking and the game doesn't stutter so much when I open doors at 1280x1024 with 4x AA turned on. (It's actually pretty smooth overall).

I havent tried running Call of Duty yet -- I kind of got sucked into Doom but I'll try it in a bit.

You dont think if I did have the virus before, that it could still be on there?

Should I reformat the pc again, but this time using the command "format C:" in the command prompt instead of doing what I did before -- reformatting through the windows cd screen?

I use the a7n8x-x's onboard sound. It isnt wonderful, but it's fairly decent and its never hampered framerate in the past.

Why is this just happening to me now?

[DragonNOA1]

Doom3 is very CPU and GPU dependant, those little updates must have helped relieve some of the bottleneck.

Sound shouldn't be an issue since D3 uses a sound engine that runs on the CPU (oh no!) that makes the sound pretty much the same for all. That's why faster CPU's help run the game faster, it can calculate AI and sound faster. Wait, so maybe it is an issue b/c you turned it down, thereby relieving the processor and allowing it to do other work. Still, it can't be the source of all problems.

Because you deleted the partition, the CD automatically repartitioned and formated the drive in the same manner as "format c:". Format C: was just from the DOS/9x era when the CD didn't do it for you. Confirm (in your mind) that you did delete the right partition and that it took a few minutes to actually reformat the drive. You did okay and I think the virus is gone, unless you had it in some downloaded software and inadvertantly reinstalled it (I've done that before, stupid kazaa).

Another thought, do you have fast writes enabled in the BIOS? Many ppl say to disable but I think I still have mine enabled. Anyways, try diabling yours and see if it helps.

Edit* Hopefully you saw my edit above but just wanted to add that all this D3 talk is making me want to pick it up again and go shoot some demons.

[tomster2300]

Lol, it does that to you if you go too long without playing it. I was thinking about trying to reformat my stuff again -- do you think if I did that it might solve my problem? I have nothing on the drive (when I reformatted a week or so ago -- when all this happened -- I only put on the games, instant messaging, and windows updates) so it's ready to be wiped clean. I was looking through some old posts on this site (I searched for reformatting) and found something about diagnostics programs that would write zeros on the drive in order to "truely" delete everything off of it. I would like to do this, so I found one off western digital's website, and but when I run the it the program says this partition contains windows so it can't/won't delete it.

I dont know whether I have fast write enabled in the bios or not. I dont think it would be that because I never changed the bios, I just reistalled Windows and reformatted. I dont think that would have changed my bios, would it?

I really like the idea of writing zeros to the hard drive cause I read that it is the closest alternative to returning your hard drive back to new.

[DragonNOA1]

If you want to, go ahead. To me, a repartition is just as good b/c I think it rebuilds the MFT (Master File/FAT Table), thereby making everything on there invisible to the OS anyway. Writing zeros is just if you are going to give your HD to the government, lol. So I really don't think it will help since you just reformated a week ago.

Edit* And we are talking about a few second delay every so often? How is CoD working with the lower resolution. I think you just have to find a good resolution and quality level. I mean if I up my resolution more and max everything out then there will be slowness. I just have to find that nice middleground where everything is on that I want and performance isn't too bad.

Edit2* I think Fast Writes is enabled by default. Disabling it I heard helps.

[tomster2300]

Well the thing is that it didnt used to do this at all until I reformatted. I'm afraid something didnt work right when I did it.

So if I were to reformat again I should just go through the cd options again?

EDIT: How do I make this diagnostics program work? It says it wont do it since windows is on the drive I'm trying to delete.

[DragonNOA1]

Must be an option in the game or driver somewhere. DX9.0c, latest chipset, and graphics drivers. Maybe a monitor or refresh setting? Processes in background. Disable everything and it still stutters for you? If you are done tinkering with settings then go for the reformat and let us know how it goes. You seem so close now but go ahead and try it. Let us know how it goes. GL

Edit* Don't know about the diagnostic program, let me look around and check for ya. YOu have a link to the program for WD HD's?

[tomster2300]

I'll definately repost when I reformat. I'm used to reinstalling Windows -- I had to do it a LOT with my old emachines...but that was always with the recovery disk it came with. Once I get started it shouldnt take too long. I have reformatted this hard drive a couple of times and I think it would be good to see if I can return it to new condition. I have nothing to lose right now since there's hardly anything on the drive -- I've already uninstalled everything in preparation. Hopefully that'll shorten the reformatting time. (It's kind of exciting thinking I can return my hard drive to near new condition )

[DragonNOA1]

Oh, and did I mention to get the latest patches for all your games? Link to the WD program if you can, thanks.

[tomster2300]

I dont have the update for Call of Duty UO, could that be affecting frame rate? I dont think I got it the first time I played though and it didnt do this.

[DragonNOA1]

Oh, I was referring more to the latest D3 patch. v1.1 or something.

[tomster2300]

Lol, I have that patch I believe. You still want that link for the diagnostic tool? I'm trying to find it.

[tomster2300]

Alright, this is the list in which I found the program

http://support.wdc.com/download/downloadxml.asp

This is the one that I chose. It is the last one in that first group of links.

http://support.wdc.com/download/downloadxml.asp#3

[DragonNOA1]

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....cGFnZT0x&p_li=

Goto the AnswerID11


Did you go to the FAQ/ common questions. Says you have to boot to a disk and run the utilities.

[tomster2300]

Well I got a problem now...I dont have a floppy drive in this computer. LOL. Do you know of any way to write it onto a cd?

It comes down to lacking a floppy drive -- this is sad.

[DragonNOA1]

Funny thing is we just installed over 100 floppy's in about 100 pc's at work for that very reason, just in case. LoL

Sorry, don't know too much about making a bootable CD.

[tomster2300]

So it looks like I'm going to have to go through with reformatting with the Windows cd? How do I make it work if I type "format c:" in the command prompt? It tells me

"Format canot run because the volume is in use by another process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first. ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOUD THEN BE INVALID. Woud you like to force a dismount on this volume?"

I click yes and then get this.

"Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use."

I've tried doing this in Windows and in safe mode and I get the same thing both ways. I've even gone cd c:\ to get it directly to the c drive and it still doesn't work. It also doesn't work when I go boot into control panel / safe mode --- it's an option when you press F8.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[DragonNOA1]

Boot off the CD and go into the recovery console to format. You can't delete the OS while running the OS! LoL

[tomster2300]

Thank you. Here goes, I'll post back when it's done. Shouldnt be too long. Thanks for all the help so far.

[tomster2300]

Alright, well I reformatted twice then installed Windows. I installed the 67.03 drivers and the nforce ones and got the same stuttering on Call of Duty UO. I guess I can rule out formating problems now. I just dont understand how it used to work and now it doesn't. I installed the newest patch for Call of Duty, but the patch for UO is 115 mb and would take me forever to download -- I have slow download speeds on my cable ~ 60 kb/s (I know I never spent the time to download it before so it shouldnt matter).

Anything else you can think of? Could it be the corpse count in the game? I turned it up to insane -- maybe I had it turned down before -- could that be that be taking up memory?

[DragonNOA1]

Good try with the reformat, at least we can rule it out. But still with the game, start with the basics. If it stutters at low resolutions (with everything off) than it shouldn't be the game. It will be a driver or some other setting somewhere. What that setting or driver is could be anything, so it hard for me to point out apart from the suggestions I mentioned earlier. Definately turn down the corpse count tho, that should help.

What really makes me think it is a driver/patch/setting issue is that it happens in both games. All I can say is tune your Windows settings to turn everything off, classic style with 20 or so processes running. Get it lean. Once your OS is fully updated and trimmed of fat, play with your games. Maybe even a known older good game. Check that memory and cpu is running at correct speeds. Reset your SWAP file and defrag since you just installed. Are your games & main drive on different partitions/drives? Just wondering, mine are and that may help my read/write times and congestion in my system so it may work for you.

It seems your so close, it's just one little thing that if everything is tuned right will help make your games perform up to expectation. Every little bit helps, especially when trying to improve those read.write times when loading and swapping is going on in the memory/video card and hard drives.

P.S.: Call someone about those cable d/l speeds.

[tomster2300]

Alright, I wrote that last post at 3 in the morning last night, so let me go back and explain exactly what's on my computer right now. Maybe this'll give you an idea of what to tweak. I formatted twice then installed Windows. In preparation I had burned the 67.03 drivers and the unified driver from nvidia (5.10) -- so I popped in the disk and added them. I've updated MSN messenger, installed Norton Antivirus 2005 -- and updated, installed AIM messenger, and put on the free version of zonealarm. I also have COD with its latest 1.5 patch along with COD UO without any patches installed.

I have not updated Windows yet. Before last nights reformat I had told Windows Update to just continuously update itself -- it downloaded and installed the first gazillion files, then finally went straight to service pack 2. I remember that when it did work I did have service pack 2, but it had been downloaded / installed on top of service pack 1. Could that have any significance?

The 67.03 drivers were just recommended to me yesterday by a friend of mine -- I had ben using the 66.93 ones. The game wont run well with either of them. In Call of Duty UO it is a loss of fps when I look at something burning, a lot of action occurs, and when I get really close to someone. I have AA and AF turned to application controlled in the little nview control panel -- perhaps Call of Duty UO is overiding that and turning them on thus causing the slowdown? I have not played the original Call of Duty so I dont know if it's happening there either, but I would assume it would be since they use the same graphics engine.

I'm going to force the card to turn AA and AF off, run COD UO, then post back to tell you if it works.