Gaming Framerate hiccuping when playing games

[Feels Good Man]

Hello,

I seem to have a problem when playing games on my laptop. When I play games, the framerate suddenly drops for a split second then goes back to up to normal. Why is this? It runs smoothly then bam! stutter. It happens when I play Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4 and probably some other ones. I forgot if it happens when I play Crysis or Bioshock. And yeah, this gets really annoying after a while especially when I play shooters and get in a frantic firefight.

I ran a a full virus scan with Avast, scanned with Windows Defender, defragged with Auslogics defragger, reinstalled the video drivers, closed all programs when playing with no success.

My system specs are:

------------------
System Information
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Time of this report: 10/18/2009, 19:16:38
ÂÂÂÂÂÂ Machine name: -----
ÂÂ Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_ldr.090302-1506)
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
ÂÂÂÂÂÂ System Model: HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook PC
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ BIOS: Default System BIOS
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂProcessor: AMD Turion(tm) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-82 (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ Memory: 4092MB RAM
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂPage File: 2482MB used, 5925MB available
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂWindows Dir: C:\Windows
ÂÂÂÂDirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
ÂÂÂÂ DxDiag Version: 6.00.6001.18000 32bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂCard name: ATI MOBILITY Radeon HD 4650
ÂÂÂÂ Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂChip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9480)
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
ÂÂÂÂÂÂ Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9480&SUBSYS_3061103C&REV_00
ÂÂ Display Memory: 2809 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1018 MB
ÂÂÂÂShared Memory: 1790 MB
ÂÂÂÂ Current Mode: 1366 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

I also run the games on highest (except Crysis). I tried it on lower settings and it still does it.

Help?

EDIT - I also updated Direct X, updated the BIOS, reinstalled the sound drivers and yeah, it still happens >__

 

[da_head]

laptop? my guess is that it is overheating. is the fan on the bottom? if so, prop it up against a book so it has space to breathe. i have a laptop and the same thing happens to me.

edit: hp? lmfao same thing as me. yeah the fan's at the bottom. pretty gay isn't it? >_>

 

[Feels Good Man]

laptop? my guess is that it is overheating. is the fan on the bottom? if so, prop it up against a book so it has space to breathe. i have a laptop and the same thing happens to me.

edit: hp? lmfao same thing as me. yeah the fan's at the bottom. pretty gay isn't it? >_>

Yeah, I raise it with a binder making sure im not cover where the fans are. I usually hover around 80C when playing. Is that too hot? It doesnt seem to be that hot when I feel the bottom of it and I heard that this laptop can withstand such heat. I even undervolted to reduce the heat.

 

[da_head]

80c is kinda hot...
but if you have it raised, then there's nothing you can do about it.

hmm....are your graphics drivers the latest version? (you said you reinstalled em so iunno)

this is a strange issue.

 

[Cermage]

set yourself up with dh mobility drivers. pretty simple to install and you dont have to be stuck with manufacturer's outdated drivers. otherwise go omega drivers.

either way, 4650 should be able to handle those games fine.

 

[Feels Good Man]

set yourself up with dh mobility drivers. pretty simple to install and you dont have to be stuck with manufacturer's outdated drivers. otherwise go omega drivers.

either way, 4650 should be able to handle those games fine.

Yeah, I reinstalled it when the dh drivers. I havnt tried the omega drivers though. I'll try that.

Perhaps something is wrong with the CPU?

EDIT - There doesnt seem to be omega drivers for Vista 64-bit systems on their site unless im in the wrong place

EDIT 2 - What about these drivers: http://downloads.guru3d.com/DNA-ATi-8.6B-f...nload-1986.html

 

[CannonFoddr]

I think I know

Windows Vista™ Home Premium

but seriously - you say it happens when you 'get in a frantic firefight' - could it be that there's too much happening 'on screen' that causing the graphic card to struggle ?? - I know you said you've tried 'lower settings' - but does that include Antialiasing / Resolutions / Vertical Sync etc (note: being a laptop - it's usually best to keep to the standard resolution)

Perhaps you have too much 'running in the background' that's causing memory swap to happen

Have you got any programs that scheduled to do 'routine maintenance' @ certain times ?? (A disk defragger or Spyware scanner perhaps ?) - or is it Vista itself that's doing 'stuff' in the background (System restore perhaps ??)

Perhaps you could call up Task Manager & see what programs are doing what when it stutters - it might give a clue

 

[Maz7006]

80c is kinda hot...
but if you have it raised, then there's nothing you can do about it.

hmm....are your graphics drivers the latest version? (you said you reinstalled em so iunno)

this is a strange issue.

80c is hot, but not for a laptop.

 

[KevInChester]

Have you tried using the AMD Dual Core optimizer?

http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dynamicDet...&ItemID=153

 

[Feels Good Man]

Have you tried using the AMD Dual Core optimizer?

http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dynamicDet...&ItemID=153

I'll try that right now

EDIT - Does this show in the system bar because I cant seem to see it there.

 

[Strider]

I'm quite sure it's your hard disk.

Have you had a look at http://www.hdtune.com/ ?

Give us your read speed. I've had major stutters in all types of games with a very slow raid-1 (EDIT: corrected to raid-1/mirror. yes, in a notebook / avg read 50MB/s). Ever since I changed that it's all good.

You might also try playing off a esata disk (through esata expresscard) and see if that's better.

 

[Feels Good Man]

It says:

Minimum: 10.0 MB/sec
Maximum 80.7 MS/sec
Average: 60.6 MB/sec

Access Time: 19.1 ms
Burst Rate: 47.2 MB/sec

 

[Strider]

The average is pretty bad. I'd expect frequent sudden hiccups, then. A normal average would be about 80-90MB/s.

It's your choice now how to fix this. Buying a faster harddrive and cloning your system over or using an esata external drive.

This is where I had massive issues:

This works well:

As did the external drive (esata via expresscard):

 

[playallday]

Turn off "Sync Every Frame" and set the max FPS to 60.

Before I did that I was getting hiccups on Portal with my 4830/4850 CrossFire setup.

 

[Raki]

Well it could be the HDD, but those rates are average for 2,5" 5400 rpm drives...I would search for other things first...

btw this dual core optimization driver seems to work good...my laptop seems to run cooler...

 

[Mangofett]

Mess with vertical sync options, that often can cause hiccups

 

[Feels Good Man]

Turn off "Sync Every Frame" and set the max FPS to 60.

Before I did that I was getting hiccups on Portal with my 4830/4850 CrossFire setup.

"Sync Every Fram" is vsync, right?

 

[moose3]

Since everyone seems to be targeting the HD, have you defragmented the HD yet?

 

[playallday]

Turn off "Sync Every Frame" and set the max FPS to 60.

Before I did that I was getting hiccups on Portal with my 4830/4850 CrossFire setup.

"Sync Every Fram" is vsync, right?

Yep.

Let us know.

 

[Strider]

Well it could be the HDD, but those rates are average for 2,5" 5400 rpm drives...I would search for other things first...

btw this dual core optimization driver seems to work good...my laptop seems to run cooler...

I'm not saying everyone has to believe me, only that I have debugged such symptoms (on a notebook) for over a year, with current games.

The symptoms are very specific. Everything runs fine but sudden and periodic everything stutters, then runs fine again. NOT being related to your graphics prowess. He was describing exactly this, and the system specs all seem fine too.

Just sayin'.

So here I prophesize: he'll not get this fixed. It'd be easy (and cheap!) to try out a speedy desktop drive via esata. But have lots of fun poking around in other things...