source engine stuttering

[thoomaso]

Intel P4 3.0 ghz 1024x768
768 mb ram all details high
ati radeon 9800 pro 4x anti aliasing
windows xp
all the latest drivers

Ok so this problem occured about two months ago. i think it was somewhere when i installed vampire:bloodlines i noticed movement stuttering. i thought it was that particular game at the movement, but i was wrong half life 2 does excaktly the same thing. i even tried to reinstall the game but no results. the stutterin mostly occurs when walking in tunnels and other small spaces etc where there should be no lag at all. then i tried the video stress test in cs: source. 32 fps! when i tried it the first time it was way more.
it seems the only games that does this is those powered by the source engine, i also tried cold fear with the same results. though i dont know which engine that is based on yet.
its very annoying anyway and i appreciate some help in this matter.

 

[furiousV]

have you defragged lately?
also, games that demand alot of power, such as HL2 will run alot better if you come fresh from a reboot than if u already played other games that demand power.

i notice severe performance hit when playing Brothers in Arms then HL2 or vice versa. maybe its a bug in BiA, but after i quit the game, the PF usage is always stuck at 500MB which is half my RAM. maybe a patch will fix that.

give this nice program a try
http://www.driverheaven.net/dforce/default.php
TuneXP its a pretty decent Windows XP tweaker, you might see some improvements. The help file that comes with it is quite helpful.

 

[thoomaso]

yes i have defragged my harddrive and i also tried to start the game directly from bootup. when this problem occurs the harddrive dosent load att all. i can walk around in the same space a long time and its still stuttering

 

[furiousV]

disable AA and see, it used to get me down to 5 FPS.
go to your Catalyst control panel and tweak some of the settings in there.