I7 Stutter FIX - Disable 2 cores in BIOS

[Minardi-DK]

I Just wanna draw some attention to this solution, for the constant stuttering problems i had in GTA IV,

 

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/show...d.php?t=1199376 :

 

For all those who are experiencing stuttering / lag spikes in GTA IV for no apparent reason, try the following :

 

Go into your BIOS and change your CPU settings, from "All" or "4 cores", to "2 cores".

Please rapport back if the abobe solution worked.

 

Like i said in the topic on the Steam forums :

 

"Ive been trying everything to get GTA running good, but no matter what, it was stuttering like mad. First i though it was my harddrive, then i thought it was bad ATI drivers, then virtual memory, yada yada yada...

 

My system is an I7 920 OC @ 4.2 Ghz, 5870 Ati gfx card, 6GB ram, and two 300GB WD VelociRaptor 10000RPM running raid0, wich should be more then enough to run this game.

 

After choosing only 2 cores in the BIOS my game now runs smooth. The question now is if this is Intels job to fix, or Rockstar's. I remember AMD put out an optimization pacth to thier dual core CPUs back when GTA SA was released, due to the game "running too fast".

 

All i know now is im not disabling 2 cores, for this 1 game..."

 

This problem needs some serious attention, so we can hope for a possible fix soon!

 

Props to chrishathaway for finding this solution.

Edited March 28, 2010 by Minardi-DK

[Evolon]

Well .. I have the same problem as noted in the steam forums.

 

Just want to add here, that replacing my ATI 5770 with my old NVIDIA 8800GT solved the 'frame-skipping" problem :s

I 've played gta 4 fine with my old system (E8400 @ 4GHz and the SAME GFX card ATI 5770)

 

So there seems to be some problem with some ATI cards in conjunciton with I5/I7 core processors

 

 

[luceberg]

Depending on what resolution screen you use, a single graphics card may not be enough with a 4Ghz plus quad. My 4890 worked fine at 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz with 3.4Ghz quad, but when I increased to 3.9GHz, I needed to reduce to 1920 x 1080 @ 30Hz for it to work smoothly. If you increase rendering fps by increasing the cpu power, then it puts more strain on the graphics card to display them.

 

So your choice is: reduce cpu power by turning off a core or two.

or: increase graphics power ie. crossfire/sli

[WTFX]

increase graphics power ie. crossfire/sli

iv's sli & crossfire support is horrid. period.

[viometrix]

why on earth are you going to disable two cores for this game? that is not a solution my friend, but stupidity. something in your system or drivers is causing a problem. and if you say you switch it on and off back and forth, thats absurdity, especially when you can simply set the processor affinity in properties and acheive the exact same result, without losing cores for other programs and games.

 

please dont offer "fixes" that arent real or may cause another user to damage their systems.

[WTFX]

obviously it sounds stupid as the game is multi core optimized. u might wanna look into i7's HT instead, altho i doubt that either would cause probs, can't see why IV wouldn't like an octacore

[Lodis]

The OP in that Steam thread claims that GTA IV may not have been designed to use all 4 Cores properly or i7's. If that was the case then surely my frame rate wouldn't drop by 40-50% when ever I disabled 2 Cores on my mobile i7. It has long been proven that GTA IV makes use of as many Cores as it can.

 

I think something else is wrong with the persons computer setup and I wonder how many of them check the temperatures of each Core and the clock rates in relation to that during gameplay.

[viometrix]

well i moved my sons 5870 over to build im doing with an i7-920 and 12 gb ram and it runs butter smooth. so dude dont tell people to disable anything till you are 100% positive it is something wrong with your own hardware or system misconfiguration / driver issue. this is obviously the case with your system, and personally i think your bios is misconfigured. tell me what motherboard you have and ill give you the proper settings in a couple days.

[Minardi-DK]

Depending on what resolution screen you use, a single graphics card may not be enough with a 4Ghz plus quad. My 4890 worked fine at 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz with 3.4Ghz quad, but when I increased to 3.9GHz, I needed to reduce to 1920 x 1080 @ 30Hz for it to work smoothly. If you increase rendering fps by increasing the cpu power, then it puts more strain on the graphics card to display them.

 

So your choice is: reduce cpu power by turning off a core or two.

or: increase graphics power ie. crossfire/sli

So an 5870 Is not enough to run GTA IV smooth without stutters? Ive seen systems with weaker hardware running smooth.

 

Ill try to lock it down on 30 fps to see how it runs, thanks.

[Minardi-DK]

obviously it sounds stupid as the game is multi core optimized. u might wanna look into i7's HT instead, altho i doubt that either would cause probs, can't see why IV wouldn't like an octacore

It stutters with and without HT.

[Minardi-DK]

 

why on earth are you going to disable two cores for this game? that is not a solution my friend, but stupidity. something in your system or drivers is causing a problem. and if you say you switch it on and off back and forth, thats absurdity, especially when you can simply set the processor affinity in properties and acheive the exact same result, without losing cores for other programs and games.

 

please dont offer "fixes" that arent real or may cause another user to damage their systems.

"All i know now is im not disabling 2 cores, for this 1 game..." You didnt read that?

 

Setting processor affinity DOESNT help anything (Wich you would of known if you read the topic i was linking to).

 

Im not denying its a driver issue, but if so, isnt it strange that disabling two cores in the bios MAKES the game run butter smooth?...

 

Heres a benchmark of when the game stutters :

 

I7 3.8Ghz with 4 cores, HT on

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Statistics

Average FPS: 50.59

Duration: 37.42 sec

CPU Usage: 23%

System memory usage: 51%

Video memory usage: 96%

 

Graphics Settings

Video Mode: 1920 x 1080 (60 Hz)

Texture Quality: High

Texture Filter Quality: Very High

View Distance: 40

Detail Distance: 100

 

Hardware

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series

Video Driver version: 8.14.1.6099

Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)

Intel® Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz

 

No Stutter :

I7 3.8Ghz with 2 Cores, HT Off

----------------------------------------

Statistics

Average FPS: 49.58

Duration: 37.43 sec

CPU Usage: 86%

System memory usage: 49%

Video memory usage: 96%

 

Graphics Settings

Video Mode: 1920 x 1080 (60 Hz)

Texture Quality: High

Texture Filter Quality: Very High

View Distance: 40

Detail Distance: 100

 

Hardware

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series

Video Driver version: 8.14.1.6099

Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)

Intel® Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz

 

 

My GFX card doesnt exceed 70 degrees,

CPU doesnt exceed 60 degrees on all cores.

My system is rock solid, and passes 50+ passes in linx,

3dMark Vantage score : GPU 11319, CPU 23584.

Edited March 28, 2010 by Minardi-DK

[viometrix]

ummm disabling cores frees up irq's that the faulty driver or problem are trying to address.

[Minardi-DK]

ummm disabling cores frees up irq's that the faulty driver or problem are trying to address.

Cores doesnt take up IRQs...

[Minardi-DK]

I put this into my commandline :

-norestrictions -refreshrate 30 -frameLimit 1 -fullspecaudio

 

The stuttering have now stopped, wich confirms that you have to limit your resources for the game, to make it perform good.

 

[heat84]

IRQ's? GTAIV runs on Windows 9X? I know there's still IRQ's, But nobody messes them anymore except maybe on rare occasions.

 

 

Hasn't it been established that GTAIV uses 3 cores? So wouldn't only allowing it to use 2 make things worse? Besides that, why disable them in the BIOS? Can't you just set the affinity to 2 cores in Task Manager?

[xxCrowTechxx]

-refreshrate 30 -frameLimit 1

 

This is a much more reasonable option and works very well.

[WTFX]

however.. that benchmark 2 cores w/o ht = 4 cores w/ ht, WTF?! if i were u i'd hunt down toronto devs after buying such a rig to get such performance.

i can suggest you to try catalyst 10.3a: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtop...st&p=1059831058 (newer than 10.3 whql even)

they bring very nice improvements to 5xxx users and u can also see one user's huge diff in a benchmark.

 

if that won't help, i'd try IV with different patches as they've all been different. i myself am sticking with patch 3 to have the additional lights on the bridge + clocktower, but at the same time avoid the awful glitches in patch 5. patch 3 vs 4, can't notice any difference.

[Minardi-DK]

however.. that benchmark 2 cores w/o ht = 4 cores w/ ht, WTF?! if i were u i'd hunt down toronto devs after buying such a rig to get such performance.

i can suggest you to try catalyst 10.3a: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtop...st&p=1059831058 (newer than 10.3 whql even)

they bring very nice improvements to 5xxx users and u can also see one user's huge diff in a benchmark.

 

if that won't help, i'd try IV with different patches as they've all been different. i myself am sticking with patch 3 to have the additional lights on the bridge + clocktower, but at the same time avoid the awful glitches in patch 5. patch 3 vs 4, can't notice any difference.

 

however.. that benchmark 2 cores w/o ht = 4 cores w/ ht, WTF?! if i were u i'd hunt down toronto devs after buying such a rig to get such performance.

I didnt get what you meant by this ?

 

 

i can suggest you to try catalyst 10.3a: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtop...st&p=1059831058 (newer than 10.3 whql even)

they bring very nice improvements to 5xxx users and u can also see one user's huge diff in a benchmark.

 

I ran with 10.3a when i started this topic, however a new driver 10.3b has been released, wich seems way better framerate wise, i havent benchmarked yet with those drivers though.

 

 

if that won't help, i'd try IV with different patches as they've all been different. i myself am sticking with patch 3 to have the additional lights on the bridge + clocktower, but at the same time avoid the awful glitches in patch 5. patch 3 vs 4, can't notice any difference.

 

I would if i knew how to, i bought the game over steam, so the updates are put on by default.

[Astrixone]

It actually made wonders to my AMD X4 955 3.2ghz

It used only two cores and not four

[viometrix]

my bad on the irq thing... what i meant was you have an irq conflict that puts the processor in a temporary halt state.... read this article http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/irq1.html

 

it will better explain what i meant.

[luceberg]

 

increase graphics power ie. crossfire/sli

iv's sli & crossfire support is horrid. period.

Yes, I tried crossfire and it didnt run smooth enough for me.

 

Has anyone got crossfire or sli working well with this game?

[Lodis]

Next we are going to hear how someones car became faster after removing 2 tyres

[truehighroller]

 

Next we are going to hear how someones car became faster after removing 2 tyres

Dude, it does work I said this awhile ago. I never, had this issue with my 4870 before patch 1.0.0.4 so.. I put in my 5870 here and the issue went away... They did something with the last patch that screwed some systems or some configurations, up.

Edited March 31, 2010 by truehighroller

[Minardi-DK]

 

Next we are going to hear how someones car became faster after removing 2 tyres

Dude, it does work I said this awhile ago. I never, had this issue with my 4870 before patch 1.0.0.4 so.. I put in my 5870 here and the issue went away... They did something with the last patch that screwed some systems or some configurations, up.

Thanks, Patch 1.0.0.3 (Or is it 1.0.3.0?) fixed it for me! The stuttering is gone, and the game runs buttersmooth!

 

I bought it over steam, so i i just installed it over the 1.0.0.4 version, but it doesnt seem to cause any problems, and the .exe file says version 1.0.0.3

[Philote]

Just want to add that manually reverting to 1.0.0.3 did solve the problems for me too. I'm running the steam version on my new i5 750 (with a 4870), and had frameskipping issues before.

 

But I also found out that manually reinstalling 1.0.0.4 after installing 1.0.0.3 did not bring the issue back for me! So now I'm finally running lastest patch with buttersmooth gameplay.

 

Thanks to Evolon for the downgrading tip!

 

/Philote

[Evolon]

I 'm happy for you that it helped . I defenitely agree that is the best singlepalyer gaming experience one can Imagine .. But it would be perfect if rockstar decided to put some more effort in optimizing this game.

 

Anyways.. I tried reinstalling 1.0.0.4 again , but I had no luck there, still the same problem. I even got it in 1.0.0.3 after 1-2 hours playing.. but the "-memrestrict xxxxxx" command line solved that problem as well for me .

 

Tried installing the patch 1.002 as well. but the framerate wasn't great and even the graphics looked much worse (no matter what vidoe setting I used) .. but the stuttering didnt appear.

 

So now I only can't use the alternative controls settings wich were included in 1.0.0.4 patch, but I can live with that.. Lets just hope R* comes up with another patch someday that actually does work for EVERYONE ^^

Some questions Philote ?

 

Did you start patching from 1.0 or did you just patched over the 1.03 version ?

Did you use any commandlines ?

[viometrix]

DAMN if i have to do all that to play this game im glad i didnt invest in the i-7 yet, i dont have to downgrade my core 2 quad.... being sarcastic here, guys if you have to downgrade your hardware to make a game work something is wrong with your system, plain and simple.

[truehighroller]

 

DAMN if i have to do all that to play this game im glad i didnt invest in the i-7 yet, i dont have to downgrade my core 2 quad.... being sarcastic here, guys if you have to downgrade your hardware to make a game work something is wrong with your system, plain and simple.

It's not the system come on man really?? You obviously have no tech knowledge at all. I just said up there that I had this issue and resolved it and yes the disabling cores trick fixes it and no my video card had no issues and still doesn't. My friend has it in his system and it works perfect for him. I have a 775 setup and had the issue so , this obviously has nothing to do with I7 or in other words the 1366 architecture.

[viometrix]

 

DAMN if i have to do all that to play this game im glad i didnt invest in the i-7 yet, i dont have to downgrade my core 2 quad.... being sarcastic here, guys if you have to downgrade your hardware to make a game work something is wrong with your system, plain and simple.

It's not the system come on man really?? You obviously have no tech knowledge at all. I just said up there that I had this issue and resolved it and yes the disabling cores trick fixes it and no my video card had no issues and still doesn't. My friend has it in his system and it works perfect for him. I have a 775 setup and had the issue so , this obviously has nothing to do with I7 or in other words the 1366 architecture.

ok again my system is a quad core like yours. i never had to disable anything. in the last 6 months i have built maybe 40 i-7 systems, some 1156 but most 1366. for my gamers i preinstall their games and configure them. on about 15 gta iv installs they ran butter smooth, no disable anything or script or command line fixes etc. so if your system had it on a core2quad and he had it on an i-7 then your right, its not the i-7, but the way the end user uses or configures the system.

 

so since i have heard of very few isolated people having this issue out of many, and it isnt just one processor type, then again it is user settings. and the post you replied to was pure sarcasm. but think of it this way and be objective, an i-7 is far superior to any processor recommended for this game, this game loves quad cores, so doesnt it seem stupid to disable a fast processor? that would be like dumbing down a race car engine cause it stutters..... it means it isnt tuned right or something wrong. But i know you are the god of end users and could never make a configuration mistake, get real, i own a company and make them all the time (i am human).

 

 

and dont you insult my tech knowledge, you offer no explanation of what the issue is, yet if you and a few randoms others have had this issue, yet millions of others with close or the same configurations dont have or never will have this issue, tell me bright boy...HOW IS IT NOT THE SYSTEM? guess you guys have been attacked by the magic computer problem fairy?

 

by the way... www.askchip.com thats my company for the last 22 years, so for no tech knowledge i am sure successful in the industry.

Edited April 2, 2010 by viometrix

[truehighroller]

 

DAMN if i have to do all that to play this game im glad i didnt invest in the i-7 yet, i dont have to downgrade my core 2 quad.... being sarcastic here, guys if you have to downgrade your hardware to make a game work something is wrong with your system, plain and simple.

It's not the system come on man really?? You obviously have no tech knowledge at all. I just said up there that I had this issue and resolved it and yes the disabling cores trick fixes it and no my video card had no issues and still doesn't. My friend has it in his system and it works perfect for him. I have a 775 setup and had the issue so , this obviously has nothing to do with I7 or in other words the 1366 architecture.

ok again my system is a quad core like yours. i never had to disable anything. in the last 6 months i have built maybe 40 i-7 systems, some 1156 but most 1366. for my gamers i preinstall their games and configure them. on about 15 gta iv installs they ran butter smooth, no disable anything or script or command line fixes etc. so if your system had it on a core2quad and he had it on an i-7 then your right, its not the i-7, but the way the end user uses or configures the system.

 

so since i have heard of very few isolated people having this issue out of many, and it isnt just one processor type, then again it is user settings. and the post you replied to was pure sarcasm. but think of it this way and be objective, an i-7 is far superior to any processor recommended for this game, this game loves quad cores, so doesnt it seem stupid to disable a fast processor? that would be like dumbing down a race car engine cause it stutters..... it means it isnt tuned right or something wrong. But i know you are the god of end users and could never make a configuration mistake, get real, i own a company and make them all the time (i am human).

 

 

and dont you insult my tech knowledge, you offer no explanation of what the issue is, yet if you and a few randoms others have had this issue, yet millions of others with close or the same configurations dont have or never will have this issue, tell me bright boy...HOW IS IT NOT THE SYSTEM? guess you guys have been attacked by the magic computer problem fairy?

 

by the way... www.askchip.com thats my company for the last 22 years, so for no tech knowledge i am sure successful in the industry.

 

 

Your right man, I have no clue what I'm talking about and your a genius. I apologize for thinking I know anything about this game or computers at all... Your welcome towards the guy that rolled back to a previous patch and it resolved his issue.. Honestly man, I've been here from the get go and have tried every single f*cking thing possible before switching video cards "just for epeen purposes by the way not to fix these issues".

 

 

I worked directly with R* on this issue for months and months after their last patch. From what I heard from them yes, they know this is an issue and they are working on resolving it. Trust me they had me try everything they could think of which wasn't much I'll add because everything I tried and informed them about they were like wow I didn't think of that one... Again sorry for my stupidity and yes your a genius with a business.

Edited April 2, 2010 by truehighroller