for me anyways! read on..
Like a lot of people I have had a stuttering and/or freeze screens while playing HL2 and CS Source, the problem has occurred whether I’ve been in either game for 5 minutes or 5 hours.
Now because I have a Via chipset motherboard and Geforce card and SB live value, I thought it was associated with the incompatibilities that I have seen with these 3 pieces of hardware, In the past.
I discounted heat as an issue since my Lian Li PC75 and 6 x 80mm case fans keep my cpu well below 40*c even after 10 hours of playing games.
And my video card is not clocked above that which I know to be stable, Also 2 of the case fans draw cool air over the card.
The problem I’ve described, the stutter or freeze, is basically just that, the screen freezes and the sound stutters for anything from 3-10 seconds, and in CS source, that frozen period usually results in my death, Which is really annoying to say the least.
So after discounting hardware, software, drivers, heat, overclocking etc, I started to think about the AMD 64 m/board Bios settings, since this particular problem never occurred back when I had my Athlon XP board, Although HL2 was’nt out when I had the XP board and cpu.
Now I will list below my Relevant specs and the current settings I’m using both in the Bios and in the Geforce settings in the display properties page.
Then people can try these settings and see if that solves their “stuttering” problem.
AMD 64 – 3200 (Newcastle) @2.2Ghz (40*c under load).
Asus K8VSE Deluxe (bios version 1003)
2 x 512mb Corsair XMS Pc3200C2 Pro @ CAS 2.0 , 1 CMD, (Bank Interleaving-disabled).
128mb Geforce FX5900XT @450/750 (forceware 66.93)
SB Live Value ( driver version 5.12.0001.3300).
The Geforce card is assigned to IRQ 16, not sharing its IRQ with anything.
If you have a PCI card that is sharing an IRQ with your video card, move it to any PCI slot APART from the furthest one from the AGP slot.
If you have 5 (or less or more) PCI slots, slot 5 will share its IRQ with the AGP slot.
These are my Bios settings, Maybe you won’t find all the settings I have here in your boards Bios, But change as many as you can see.
1, Hyper Transport configuration
HT Tristate enable – set to disable.
CRC Flood enable—set to disable.
HT frequency – (in my case) -- 800mhz (set it to its highest value)
HT Data width (upstream) –16 bit
HT Data width (down stream) –16 bit.
2, Via AGP chipset configuration
Search for MDA resources – (NO)
AGP mode –8X
Fast writes—disabled.
Graphics aperture size –64mb
3, Via south chipset configuration
MPS Revision -- (1.1)
PCI delay transaction - Disabled.
4, Bios setup utility (may also be in “advanced chipset features”)
Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA – (NO)
Next in my Geforce properties page, I have set my “performance and quality settings”
To 8X AF, “Quality” (in image settings), FSAA disabled.
All other settings on default, Vsync is Off.
Also due to the DEP in SP2 (data execution protection) conflicting with a certain instruction in AMD 64 cpu’s I have set this to “turn on DEP for essential windows programs and services only”.
See this link for more info… data execution protection & amd 64 Apparently a fix is there, to stop the DEP continually rebooting your PC, when you experience the conflict above,
Since this DEP instruction is hard coded in amd 64 cpu's.
Finally I’m running XP home, SP2.
Via 4 in 1 drivers version 4.55
DirectX 9.0C
The driver versions for my video card and SB live are in my specs.
Finally, I must say I’ve been Plagued by this stuttering since buying HL2 in November, And I’ve read thousands of posts discussing the matter, in an attempt to find a solution, But to no avail.
If one person who reads this post, has a setup similar to mine and I cure the stuttering/ freezing for them, then this (very) long and possibly boring to read post has been worthwhile.
Thx! For reading!
Like a lot of people I have had a stuttering and/or freeze screens while playing HL2 and CS Source, the problem has occurred whether I’ve been in either game for 5 minutes or 5 hours.
Now because I have a Via chipset motherboard and Geforce card and SB live value, I thought it was associated with the incompatibilities that I have seen with these 3 pieces of hardware, In the past.
I discounted heat as an issue since my Lian Li PC75 and 6 x 80mm case fans keep my cpu well below 40*c even after 10 hours of playing games.
And my video card is not clocked above that which I know to be stable, Also 2 of the case fans draw cool air over the card.
The problem I’ve described, the stutter or freeze, is basically just that, the screen freezes and the sound stutters for anything from 3-10 seconds, and in CS source, that frozen period usually results in my death, Which is really annoying to say the least.
So after discounting hardware, software, drivers, heat, overclocking etc, I started to think about the AMD 64 m/board Bios settings, since this particular problem never occurred back when I had my Athlon XP board, Although HL2 was’nt out when I had the XP board and cpu.
Now I will list below my Relevant specs and the current settings I’m using both in the Bios and in the Geforce settings in the display properties page.
Then people can try these settings and see if that solves their “stuttering” problem.
AMD 64 – 3200 (Newcastle) @2.2Ghz (40*c under load).
Asus K8VSE Deluxe (bios version 1003)
2 x 512mb Corsair XMS Pc3200C2 Pro @ CAS 2.0 , 1 CMD, (Bank Interleaving-disabled).
128mb Geforce FX5900XT @450/750 (forceware 66.93)
SB Live Value ( driver version 5.12.0001.3300).
The Geforce card is assigned to IRQ 16, not sharing its IRQ with anything.
If you have a PCI card that is sharing an IRQ with your video card, move it to any PCI slot APART from the furthest one from the AGP slot.
If you have 5 (or less or more) PCI slots, slot 5 will share its IRQ with the AGP slot.
These are my Bios settings, Maybe you won’t find all the settings I have here in your boards Bios, But change as many as you can see.
1, Hyper Transport configuration
HT Tristate enable – set to disable.
CRC Flood enable—set to disable.
HT frequency – (in my case) -- 800mhz (set it to its highest value)
HT Data width (upstream) –16 bit
HT Data width (down stream) –16 bit.
2, Via AGP chipset configuration
Search for MDA resources – (NO)
AGP mode –8X
Fast writes—disabled.
Graphics aperture size –64mb
3, Via south chipset configuration
MPS Revision -- (1.1)
PCI delay transaction - Disabled.
4, Bios setup utility (may also be in “advanced chipset features”)
Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA – (NO)
Next in my Geforce properties page, I have set my “performance and quality settings”
To 8X AF, “Quality” (in image settings), FSAA disabled.
All other settings on default, Vsync is Off.
Also due to the DEP in SP2 (data execution protection) conflicting with a certain instruction in AMD 64 cpu’s I have set this to “turn on DEP for essential windows programs and services only”.
See this link for more info… data execution protection & amd 64 Apparently a fix is there, to stop the DEP continually rebooting your PC, when you experience the conflict above,
Since this DEP instruction is hard coded in amd 64 cpu's.
Finally I’m running XP home, SP2.
Via 4 in 1 drivers version 4.55
DirectX 9.0C
The driver versions for my video card and SB live are in my specs.
Finally, I must say I’ve been Plagued by this stuttering since buying HL2 in November, And I’ve read thousands of posts discussing the matter, in an attempt to find a solution, But to no avail.
If one person who reads this post, has a setup similar to mine and I cure the stuttering/ freezing for them, then this (very) long and possibly boring to read post has been worthwhile.
Thx! For reading!
