Please help me solve this stutter problem

[Vinster]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

what monitor are you using? i know it has nothing to do with your network issue...

Vin

[ibConners]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

what monitor are you using? i know it has nothing to do with your network issue...

Vin

Sometimes there are things just out of the control of our computers hardware, software, and drivers. Our IPS's can and should be blamed for what your experianceing. I'd look at your ihops to any known site just to see how your connection is routed. You might be supprised.

[Stutter]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

A couple of thoughts - troublehooting logic:

If the stuttering only happens when you are on the internet, its internet (or your NIC / NIC drivers).
If stuttering happens when you are disconnected from the internet, its machine.
If stuttering occurs both on and off the internet, its machine.

The X58 is known for southbridge heat issues. I have seen a few posts where people solved weird issues on X58's by replacing the thermal paste on the southbridge with a good quality paste and /or adding a small fan that blows directly on the southbridge. I would do both in your case - the board has been used for awhile and new paste is probably warranted. If video cards permit, you might even add a custom heatsink. Benchmarks are usually a pretty good way to cook the southbridge, BTW.


Next, I googled Creative sound card stuttering and came up with a thread on GURU3D that said CThelper.exe was causing stuttering, so I would remove the card and uninstall the drivers. Use Gigabytes onboard sound for awhile and see if it helps.


I don't think it's your problem, but I will mention it anyway - your ISP's DNS can be an issue. After I switched to Centurylink (Qwest), I started having lag issues with product photos (Newegg, Tigerdirect) taking 2 to 5 seconds to download on a 12mb/s connection. While the DNS record lookup was very fast using Qwest DNS, I used traceroute on a couple of Usenet sites and saw that all my internet connections were first routed through Qwests servers, which were causing the lag. There are quite a few things ISP's can do to DNS - so I suggest trying a third party DNS as a comparison.

You can try the following:

1. Flush the DNS cache.
2. Turn off DNS client in services.
3. Change your DNS servers on your NIC to OpenDNS at 208.67.222 and 208.67.220.220.

This may get you faster internet response time.

Hope those are some new ideas!

The southbridge heatsink doesn't feel hot at all during load so I don't think that is my problem. I think the fan on my video card is keeping it cool. My board doesn't seem to have a sensor there though so I don't have an exact number. This is what hardware monitor shows for the rest of the PC after letting the temps stabilize in prime 95. Temp 1 is definitely "system temperature" whatever that means, it matches the bios. I think Temp 2 is "CPU temperature" and Temp 3 should be "MCH temperature". Left is minimum, right is maximum:



About the DNS, I went through that when I had my ISP come out and test the lines at my address. Google turned out to be the fastest DNS but it wasn't much of a difference from my ISP's DNS and it certainly didn't help my problem.

About the sound card, I mentioned that I had tried pulling it out and having no sound device or drivers installed and the problem remained.

what monitor are you using? i know it has nothing to do with your network issue...

Vin

I have tried two monitors and two new dual DVI cables. My current monitor is the Asus VG278H 1920x1080 120Hz monitor. The other monitor that I tested is an older Asus vw224u 1680x1050 60Hz.

[wazza300]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

I would rma the board for testing/repair,then take it from there,could be cpu or board seeing you've tested everything else

[profJim]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

The problem might be related to your 120GB Samsung 840 model with TLC Nand.
Check out HARDOCP - Samsung 840 120GB SSD Review
HardOCP really likes the Samsung 840 PRO and standard models except for the 120GB TLC, non PRO model.
From their conclusion:

This 120GB TLC SSD simply doesn't live up to the reputation that we have come to expect from the Samsung 840 series.
falls far short of delivering performance that would be suitable for a normal consumer.

We run a wide gamut of tests here at [H]ardOCP simply because some tests can reveal certain characteristics of an SSD that others will not. Interpreting and considering all results helps us to draw the most well-rounded opinion of the storage device in question.

The results of our latency testing initially raised the red flag. We knew that we were going to encounter slow write speeds with this SSD, but what we did not expect was to receive abysmal maximum read and write latency. Latency spikes of this nature are undoubtedly going to lead to interruptions in the flow of computing for users. SSDs with appreciably lower maximum latency can still experience the occasional hiccup, but with ranges of up to 67ms (three times higher than the nearest competing SSD) there is guaranteed to be laggy performance in many scenarios. Users will become accustomed to staring at the little blue spinning circle with this SSD in their system.

The slow sequential speed of the SSD will make simple procedures, such as copying pictures and videos, long drawn out affairs. Bear in mind that some 5400rpm HDDs can write at initial speeds of 140MB/s, and sustain a speed of 80-90MB/s. The fact that the 130MB/s that this SSD provides is even in the range of a 5400rpm HDD speaks volumes.

Other web sites have reported similar results with the 120GB Samsung 840 TLC model.
All other Samsung 840 models are very highly rated.

[Stutter]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

I would rma the board for testing/repair,then take it from there,could be cpu or board seeing you've tested everything else

I can't RMA the board, its from the Nehalem release back in 2008 so the warranty is long gone. Replacing the board and CPU would be $500 minimum because of having to buy another copy of windows.... It just doesn't make any sense to spend that money when the PC can pass all stress tests but be "broken" and stutter in games.

Is there any other voltages that you can recommend increasing that might help this? All of the voltages below are at their defaults:

PCIE
QPI PLL
IOH Core
ICH I/O
ICH Core
DRAM Termination

The problem might be related to your 120GB Samsung 840 model with TLC Nand.
Check out HARDOCP - Samsung 840 120GB SSD Review
HardOCP really likes the Samsung 840 PRO and standard models except for the 120GB TLC, non PRO model.
From their conclusion:

Other web sites have reported similar results with the 120GB Samsung 840 TLC model.
All other Samsung 840 models are very highly rated.

The problem was there before I purchased the SSD.

[dewot]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

Sorry, somehow I missed your sound card stuff.

There are two other things I would probably try if it were my machine:

First, I would go into the bios and disable everything the board does not require for running a stutter test. Disable your 2 Sata ports run by the Gigabyte controller chip ( use Intel ports only), your firewire, your PCI slots if possible, and even the onboard sound. Disable the NIC if you will be testing for stutter locally on the machine, and won't need internet. The idea here is to eliminate chip firmware / low level drivers as a source of the problem.

Disable speedstep and EIST if they are enabled, and with the board as brain dead as possible, run a test for stutter. If you get lucky and stutter disappears, you re-enable one by one until stutter returns. (I get firmware updates at station drivers website most of the time in case you need them).

Last, I must ask if this board ever stuttered under Win 7 / XP? I would find a digitalriver direct download of win 7 Professional (just google it - they will show up) and install and test for stutter (you get 30 days before you have to activate). The idea here is to return to a known good configuration, and see if you have stutter where you did not before. Or at least test in Windows 7 for stutter. I don't think you can rule out Windows 8 as an issue.

[profJim]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

Even if you have an OEM version of windows, you wouldn't need to buy a new copy.
The worst that would happen is that you might need to reactivate windows via a toll free call.

I'm pretty sure that Gigabyte will repair your motherboard where you would pay for shipping (both ways?) and and a service charge.
This sounds a bit iffy unless you know that your mobo needs to be repaired.

Try under-clocking your cpu and/or video card and see if this makes a difference.
This might help in diagnosing where the problem is.

Is there any way that you can borrow a different cpu for testing?
Do you know anyone who has an unused, retired X58 mobo that you can test with?

[KayossZero]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

Wow stutter, you've basically tried everything I would have recommended you to do. (Turning HPET off, checking DPC latency, eliminating hardware + software one at a time to get rid of variables)

I'm assuming your system used to work fine in the past so at this point all I can say is either you have an issue with your CPU/Mobo degrading or perhaps something of yours really hates Windows 8, although you stated it's happening in Vista too? Heh perhaps the middle of the family (7) would work.

Stuttering (next to V-Sync causing me input lag in most games) is the absolute worst thing on earth to deal with. A game I really wanted to play badly Divinity II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I can't because the engine they used seems to cause stutter no matter what I do to try and eliminate it. Really sucks when the stutter is so slight (like V-Sync mouse lag) that it's plain as day to you but others think you're crazy because they aren't as well tuned to seeing slight differences.

[Stutter]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

Sorry, somehow I missed your sound card stuff.

There are two other things I would probably try if it were my machine:

First, I would go into the bios and disable everything the board does not require for running a stutter test. Disable your 2 Sata ports run by the Gigabyte controller chip ( use Intel ports only), your firewire, your PCI slots if possible, and even the onboard sound. Disable the NIC if you will be testing for stutter locally on the machine, and won't need internet. The idea here is to eliminate chip firmware / low level drivers as a source of the problem.

Disable speedstep and EIST if they are enabled, and with the board as brain dead as possible, run a test for stutter. If you get lucky and stutter disappears, you re-enable one by one until stutter returns. (I get firmware updates at station drivers website most of the time in case you need them).

Last, I must ask if this board ever stuttered under Win 7 / XP? I would find a digitalriver direct download of win 7 Professional (just google it - they will show up) and install and test for stutter (you get 30 days before you have to activate). The idea here is to return to a known good configuration, and see if you have stutter where you did not before. Or at least test in Windows 7 for stutter. I don't think you can rule out Windows 8 as an issue.

I followed your directions and disabled everything that I could, Turbo, Hyperthreading, all power saving features, excess ports, everything. The only thing this managed to do is improve my boot time, the stutter is still trolling me when I got back into windows to test. I tried vista 64 bit home premium and the problem is the same so I don't think it's Windows 8 at fault.

Even if you have an OEM version of windows, you wouldn't need to buy a new copy.
The worst that would happen is that you might need to reactivate windows via a toll free call.

I'm pretty sure that Gigabyte will repair your motherboard where you would pay for shipping (both ways?) and and a service charge.
This sounds a bit iffy unless you know that your mobo needs to be repaired.

Try under-clocking your cpu and/or video card and see if this makes a difference.
This might help in diagnosing where the problem is.

Is there any way that you can borrow a different cpu for testing?
Do you know anyone who has an unused, retired X58 mobo that you can test with?

I have already tried running the processor at stock and the ram at 1066 while throwing excess voltage at the VTT, Vcore and Dram. The GTX 460 was also tested with severely underclocked core/shader and memory. I already asked around for any old motherboards but most people have moved on to newer chipsets and sold the old stuff. For me, this CPU was and still is more than enough performance for my needs so I haven't upgraded since late 2008. I won't bother sending Gigabyte my board because I have a feeling they would throw it in their test rig and pass it as working leaving me with two bills for shipping and the same board. I would have purchased a new (refurbished) board from them if they allowed it (they said no).

This problem seems to only be in 3d applications, moving windows around on the desktop and watching Youtube or Netflix everything is perfectly fine (show video info -> zero frames dropped), just another clue. I am about done with this thing though. I want to thank everyone for offering their advice.

[dewot]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

You can try bumping the voltages - southbridge, pcie, qpi, maybe northbridge - as a last resort, altho you said you tested at stock speeds, so I think that indicates voltages are not the issue.

Time to think 3570k and z77. Best CPU prices are at microcenter if you have one in your area.

[wazza300]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

you can still rma the board for them to test and repair it if need be,i had a faulty ram slot on my old ud5,i sent it in even when it was out of warranty and they repaired the slot for me free of charge

it can only be the board or the cpu,cpu's tend to be tough old birds so i would try the board first,if you still get stuttering then try and grab a cheap 920/930 or borrow one to test with

[harleyman]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

well, I'm no pro, but you have the horsepower , but still the lag... If it were me, i would disconnect that SSD drive and try a HDD of at least 32Mb cache and see how it benchmarks then... I have had good and bad experiences with SSD's



You said this... This problem seems to only be in 3d applications, moving windows around on the desktop and watching Youtube or Netflix everything is perfectly fine

have a look into your DirecX .. You running 11 ? is it completely updated ?

i have also in the past deleted Nvidia's PhysX stuff, as on some rigs it seemed to cause problems...

[Stutter]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

well, I'm no pro, but you have the horsepower , but still the lag... If it were me, i would disconnect that SSD drive and try a HDD of at least 32Mb cache and see how it benchmarks then... I have had good and bad experiences with SSD's



You said this... This problem seems to only be in 3d applications, moving windows around on the desktop and watching Youtube or Netflix everything is perfectly fine

have a look into your DirecX .. You running 11 ? is it completely updated ?

i have also in the past deleted Nvidia's PhysX stuff, as on some rigs it seemed to cause problems...

My old hard drive that passes all tests has 32MB of cache and the system stuttered in the same way. It's this old thing: Western Digital WD Black WD6401AALS Internal Hard Drive - Newegg.com

DirectX is patched as far as I know. Windows is up to date and running the dxwebsetup says that there's nothing to update. Is there a different way to update your DirectX?

I will reinstall the Nvidia drivers later without anything except the actual display driver installed and test the stutter later. I don't think I have tried this yet.

[KayossZero]

Re: Please help me solve this stutter problem

My old hard drive that passes all tests has 32MB of cache and the system stuttered in the same way. It's this old thing: Western Digital WD Black WD6401AALS Internal Hard Drive - Newegg.com

DirectX is patched as far as I know. Windows is up to date and running the dxwebsetup says that there's nothing to update. Is there a different way to update your DirectX?

I will reinstall the Nvidia drivers later without anything except the actual display driver installed and test the stutter later. I don't think I have tried this yet.

No, there's no other way to update Direct X and the updater you're using is simply for DX9 runtimes that aren't included with newer Windows by default for some stupid reason. Neither that nor what type of HD you're using would be causing this type of stuttering.

I want to make it quite clear that while hard drives/SSDs can malfunction and screw up that typically when this happens either A: you've got a dead drive 100% or B: you've got a failing mechanical HD that has limited time left on it for you to save/recover data using any number of programs, SpinRite SpinRite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia would be a famous high end example.

When you play most linear, static loading (aka all/or most of the games assets for X level load at the start of said level) type of game (think like Unreal Tournament99) what happens is most everything (if not 100% everything) for that level is loaded into the GPU Ram and System Ram at the start, what this means is that at that point your HD ceases to be involved in any way that would cause performance issues let alone stuttering like the way you're showing.

Now when you play a dynamically loading game (think Grand Theft Auto 3+/World of Warcraft etc.) where data is constantly being loaded and unloaded (Or Streamed) by your GPU Ram and System Ram now your HD does indeed play a role in the performance. However, that still doesn't account for the *type* of stuttering you're getting.

Unfortunately, unless we're talking about some incredibly ridiculous combination of hardware and/or software issues here I think we're left with the most likely issue being the CPU or Mobo physically them selves. Now this really sucks for you because as you said you can't RMA and it would be a price premium to switch to equal or greater hardware, all you could try is finding a friend with similar hardware and trying to eliminate those last two variables off the plate.

I swear, because you've tried every single thing I can think of that would fix this it's almost as though your CPU's internal clock is frakked and isn't counting time right any more or something, something is out of sync badly and again, barring a software fluke I think it's hardware between your last two unchanged/replaced pieces.