Anyone with a 4870 x2?

[13th_Disciple]

You know this game needs some optimizations when you buy one of the best graphics cards money can buy at present and you see these 'micro-stutters' in game play...

 

But maybe it could be bad drivers or a lagging system or a slow hard drive response etc etc...

I have been reading around various forums etc and i haven't had much luck as yet in solving my problem which is evident everywhere with similar cards/systems.

 

Nothing you can reasonably expect to do solves this problem i find, you can turn off all the bells & whistles of your operating system and it doesn't make a dent in the micro-stutter problem... so what do these stutters look like? - usually worse when starting a game, you leave the apartment upon load, all smooth until you go outside... ok i can expect some stutter there, but walk outside and look around... updates to screen are stutter filled and is very noticeable until you have panned around 360 degrees as if you have updated your memory and all textures are loaded... then you move or drive around and you see them, smooth then stutter...smooth...then stutter, i know it's updating visuals etc...

 

I have tried all textures to low, everything to low and it's still slightly there... almost gone, but its annoying...

I have used driver cleaner, re-installed my drivers, optimized my drives (GTA-IV runs on another sata drive i have installed, not on the same drive as my operating system)

I just installed Crysis-Wars, perfect, all the AA you can through at it...60FPS, but i think it might be drivers...or GTA-IV itself...

 

I have seen this before with other driving games, i remember "Test Drive Unlimited", same thing... stutter occasionally... Need for Speed Pro street on the other hand (and Grid come to think about it) were prefect! although that was on my 8800GTX, i must install them on my ATI to test...

 

It could be hardware... but where?, more investigations are needed... so if you have this card (see sig) and you have the same problem then please fess up all your details and we'll kill the stutter bug...hopefully

 

-13th

[Vicetopia]

If I were a 4870X2, and I was being bottlenecked by a Phenom X4 in games, I'd micro-stutter too.

[Pixelated]

 

You know this game needs some optimizations when you buy one of the best graphics cards money can buy at present and you see these 'micro-stutters' in game play...

 

But maybe it could be bad drivers or a lagging system or a slow hard drive response etc etc...

I have been reading around various forums etc and i haven't had much luck as yet in solving my problem which is evident everywhere with similar cards/systems.

 

Nothing you can reasonably expect to do solves this problem i find, you can turn off all the bells & whistles of your operating system and it doesn't make a dent in the micro-stutter problem... so what do these stutters look like? - usually worse when starting a game, you leave the apartment upon load, all smooth until you go outside... ok i can expect some stutter there, but walk outside and look around... updates to screen are stutter filled and is very noticeable until you have panned around 360 degrees as if you have updated your memory and all textures are loaded... then you move or drive around and you see them, smooth then stutter...smooth...then stutter, i know it's updating visuals etc...

 

I have tried all textures to low, everything to low and it's still slightly there... almost gone, but its annoying...

I have used driver cleaner, re-installed my drivers, optimized my drives (GTA-IV runs on another sata drive i have installed, not on the same drive as my operating system)

I just installed Crysis-Wars, perfect, all the AA you can through at it...60FPS, but i think it might be drivers...or GTA-IV itself...

 

I have seen this before with other driving games, i remember "Test Drive Unlimited", same thing... stutter occasionally... Need for Speed Pro street on the other hand (and Grid come to think about it) were prefect! although that was on my 8800GTX, i must install them on my ATI to test...

 

It could be hardware... but where?, more investigations are needed... so if you have this card (see sig) and you have the same problem then please fess up all your details and we'll kill the stutter bug...hopefully

 

-13th

I have a similar problem but I don't think it's the GPU, I think it's related to the CPU. Often when I'm driving or there is a lot going on the screen it will lock up and the audio will stutter for a few seconds. If say I'm driving and I hold down the gas button and it starts to stutter if I don't let off the button immediately it will freeze and the screen will go black and the game will crash to the desktop. Usually releasing any buttons will just allow it to stutter and then continue normally after a few seconds.

 

I know it's pretty irritating.

 

 

If I were a 4870X2, and I was being bottlenecked by a Phenom X4 in games, I'd micro-stutter too.

 

Yes it's true the Phenom X4 is no Q6600 but it should not be a bottleneck at all. Well any CPU will be the bottleneck with so much GPU power but it meets the recommended requirements. Nice attempt to try to stir sh*t up though. What a great suggestion you have there trying to help solve the problem or at least posting that you are having the same issue.

Edited December 18, 2008 by Pixelated

[kn00tcn]

no stutter here, very acceptable framerates

[13th_Disciple]

 

If I were a 4870X2, and I was being bottlenecked by a Phenom X4 in games, I'd micro-stutter too.

On that score i can understand what you mean, but i doubt it, my CPU isn't over clocked, i could get more out of that Black Edition but i haven't got the best mother board for that and if you were right then every game would be bad and it's not, the hard drive it's on is SATA 3G/sec 8MB cache... perhaps it's the smaller HDD cache ... my op-sys is using a 16meg cache, i should try a 32meg cache HDD perhaps.

 

My Corsair HX620 is more than enough and runs my system well at full load.

All in all i think it's an obvious data-transfer problem especially pushing all those high-resolution textures around.

 

I'm going to try demos of Grid and NFS-Pro Street on the GTA-IV drive and see how it runs, then I'll try them on my system drive.

 

@Pixelated, thanks, perhaps it's your PCI sound card taking power or sound card drivers etc, i run the Realtek HD internal from my motherboard and it's fine, obviously sounds can be loaded in to memory and called by the game so perhaps it could be drivers...

 

I'll report back with my results.

 

I must say though that at times the 4870x2 and my setup runs GTA-IV very well, high frame rates, nice...i can sit there in the middle of the star junction, everything maxed and look around and it's perfect, which is why the stutter is so perplexing... incidentally i had the Phenom running with my 8800GTX and also with an AMD64x2 6000+ the phenom upped my FPS by quite a bit, the 8800GTX handled everything else ok, and the CPU handled the physics etc... great improvement, but when you think of a bottleneck in terms of my CPU... well i don't think it fits the bill, it's a read problem, textures and updates into memory, once loaded it's all perfect... it's just identifying the problem thats the time consuming part

 

-13th

Edited December 18, 2008 by 13th_Disciple

[Pixelated]

If I were a 4870X2, and I was being bottlenecked by a Phenom X4 in games, I'd micro-stutter too.

On that score i can understand what you mean, but i doubt it, my CPU isn't over clocked, i could get more out of that Black Edition but i haven't got the best mother board for that and if you were right then every game would be bad and it's not, the hard drive it's on is SATA 3G/sec 8MB cache... perhaps it's the smaller HDD cache ... my op-sys is using a 16meg cache, i should try a 32meg cache HDD perhaps.

 

My Corsair HX620 is more than enough and runs my system well at full load.

All in all i think it's an obvious data-transfer problem especially pushing all those high-resolution textures around.

 

I'm going to try demos of Grid and NFS-Pro Street on the GTA-IV drive and see how it runs, then I'll try them on my system drive.

 

@Pixelated, thanks, perhaps it's your PCI sound card taking power or sound card drivers etc, i run the Realtek HD internal from my motherboard and it's fine, obviously sounds can be loaded in to memory and called by the game so perhaps it could be drivers...

 

I'll report back with my results.

 

I must say though that at times the 4870x2 and my setup runs GTA-IV very well, high frame rates, nice...i can sit there in the middle of the star junction, everything maxed and look around and it's perfect, which is why the stutter is so perplexing... incidentally i had the Phenom running with my 8800GTX and also with an AMD64x2 6000+ the phenom upped my FPS by quite a bit, the 8800GTX handled everything else ok, and the CPU handled the physics etc... great improvement, but when you think of a bottleneck in terms of my CPU... well i don't think it fits the bill, it's a read problem, textures and updates into memory, once loaded it's all perfect... it's just identifying the problem thats the time consuming part

 

-13th

What I'm saying is that the screen and the sound locks up at the same time and micro-stutters.

[Sub12]

You must understand that GTA IV rewrites the rules. Before this, even a dual core CPU at 2.6 GHz was rarely the bottleneck. However, for GTA IV, even an Intel Core 2 Extreme (Quad) 3.0 GHz is considered a bottleneck. It is a tremendous CPU hog.

 

BTW, the 9950 is actually faster than the Q6600, but it is still a definite bottleneck. Check out the CPU benchmark on PCGH.

[js01]

You know this game needs some optimizations when you buy one of the best graphics cards money can buy at present and you see these 'micro-stutters' in game play...

 

But maybe it could be bad drivers or a lagging system or a slow hard drive response etc etc...

I have been reading around various forums etc and i haven't had much luck as yet in solving my problem which is evident everywhere with similar cards/systems.

 

Nothing you can reasonably expect to do solves this problem i find, you can turn off all the bells & whistles of your operating system and it doesn't make a dent in the micro-stutter problem... so what do these stutters look like? - usually worse when starting a game, you leave the apartment upon load, all smooth until you go outside... ok i can expect some stutter there, but walk outside and look around... updates to screen are stutter filled and is very noticeable until you have panned around 360 degrees as if you have updated your memory and all textures are loaded... then you move or drive around and you see them, smooth then stutter...smooth...then stutter, i know it's updating visuals etc...

 

I have tried all textures to low, everything to low and it's still slightly there... almost gone, but its annoying...

I have used driver cleaner, re-installed my drivers, optimized my drives (GTA-IV runs on another sata drive i have installed, not on the same drive as my operating system)

I just installed Crysis-Wars, perfect, all the AA you can through at it...60FPS, but i think it might be drivers...or GTA-IV itself...

 

I have seen this before with other driving games, i remember "Test Drive Unlimited", same thing... stutter occasionally... Need for Speed Pro street on the other hand (and Grid come to think about it) were prefect! although that was on my 8800GTX, i must install them on my ATI to test...

 

It could be hardware... but where?, more investigations are needed... so if you have this card (see sig) and you have the same problem then please fess up all your details and we'll kill the stutter bug...hopefully

 

-13th

What you're describing isn't micro stutter, micro stutter is when the game looks like it's running in slow motion but your frame rate is showing otherwise. I have a crossfire system with hd 4850, I can't say I've experienced micro stutter in this game but I've seen it in crytek games enough.

[13th_Disciple]

I've just tried GRID and NFS-Pro-Street, NFS has some stuttering occasionally, not much but it's there, GRID runs perfectly, best I've ever seen it actually, everything to the max, now i could play with my CCC 3D settings etc but i doubt it'll make too much of a difference, i have benchmarked my SATA drives and there working as they should.

 

So as some one said GTA does re-write those rules - I'll keep trying experimentation, perhaps i have the phrase 'micro-stutter' wrong, the occasional jerk then micro-pause...

 

-13th

[js01]

I get stuttering in some games even if I disable crossfire, most games are optimized for nvidia so ati has to play catchup with drivers after games come out. There are some games that are optimized for crossfire like call of duty and devil may cry and pretty much anything that runs on unreal 3. If you haven't tried devil may cry 4 on the pc yet i'd suggest downloading the demo, that game scales so well it's just awesome.

[dr.whiz]

Nice attempt to try to stir sh*t up though. What a great suggestion you have there trying to help solve the problem or at least posting that you are having the same issue.

haha awesome.

[Wreckless]

Also 4870 X2 here, no micro-stuttering/lagging. Don't think my CPU is faster than yours (2 vs 4 cores), so that should rule out the CPU bottleneck... or not?

 

off-topic: Since the are some 4870 X2 owners on this topic, have you guys noticed this: ATI 4870X2 - Dynamic Shadow Questions, Should we have them??

[qwertz123]

 

What you're describing isn't micro stutter, micro stutter is when the game looks like it's running in slow motion but your frame rate is showing otherwise. I have a crossfire system with hd 4850, I can't say I've experienced micro stutter in this game but I've seen it in crytek games enough.

right. crysis is da MICROSTUTTER KILLAR! i hate it playing in sli mode but hey, the performance jump is quite appreciated, so it's a hate/love game here.

 

and microstutter is due to the fact that one gpu draws one picture and the other the next one. but the timing is sometimes out of control, so you will get the feeling it runs with 25 fps, not the shown 50+. and this fairy tale that microstutter is gone above 30fps is totally bullsh*t!