SURVEY: Possible fix for Half-Life 2 stuttering (PSU related)

[Talonz]

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Originally Posted by mattpwill I'm beginning to believe that it isn't the type of PFC your power supply has, but either one of 2 things: the people that never get any problem choose a certain setting in HL2, that doesn't cause stuttering the voltages that their motherboard supplies to either memory or the core chipset (most likely memory) are incompatible. To change the voltages you need to go to the BIOS, look at the real-time output voltage of memory, then try and match it with the rating of your memory

You're right in the fact that the power supply has nothing to do with the stuttering. The voltages are not to blame either. Anything to do with power will not result in stuttering, only instabilities.

You are looking at a hardware/software conflict. Either in the drivers, the HL2 engine, or software settings. I would try turning fast writes off as previously suggested, it still causes problems with many 3d applications.

 

[mattpwill]

Could memory incompatibility with the motherboard cause stuttering?

I think it is isn't solely due to the engine as general, but with its incompatibility with certain hardware configurations. As the exact cause hasn't been discovered yet, but some people can reinstall and it works perfectly every time, I think that it must be something more cryptic like memory type, hard drive type, possibly DVD-ROM type that can be found to cause the most problems

 

[maarek99]

A fragmented hard drive will cause stuttering. Defragmenting is one solution.

 

[mattpwill]

I don't think that it's always the case that a fragmented drive will cause stuttering. It's strange that it reduces it - a sign of maybe too much dependence on the hard drive cache in some systems.

Try using something like MemCache and see if it changes the stuttering with different settings

I'd advise against changing the page file size

 

[Imyourzero]

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Originally Posted by NeilPeart Antec Sonata w/Panaflo 120L1A @ 7v Antec Phantom 350 PSU (Passive PFC) Asus A7N8X Deluxe rev. 2.00 BIOS 1008 AMD AthlonXP Mobile 2500+ @ 2.5GHz (200MHz FSB * 12.5 Multiplier) Thermalright SKL-800A w/Panaflo 80L1A & Arctic Silver 5 2x 512MB Crucial Ballstix @ 2-2-2-11 in dual channel mode (1GB total) Sapphire Radeon Ultimate (fanless) Radeon 9800Pro BIOS flashed to 9800XT @ 418 Core/365 Mem Adaptec 29160 SCSI Controller RME DIGI 96/8 PAD Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 2x Seagate Cheetah 15.3 36GB (1 for OS/Apps/Games & 1 for swap file & Ghost images) 2x Hitachi 250GB SATA (RAID1) NEC ND-3500A DVD+RW Plextor Premium 52/32/52 CD-RW Asus CD-S520/A5 CD-ROM I've never experienced any stuttering at all (and I've played through HL2 twice).

Wait, you forgot to list your monitor, keyboard, and mouse! And don't forget to list your resolution and color depth, as well as the dpi of your mouse. C'mon...I doubt the HL2 stuttering issue is related to what type of optical drives you happen to have installed in your system.

 

[NeilPeart]

I was lazy and grabbed the PC profile from my Anandtech account. Also, the post says that even a stacked & OC'd PC like this one is powered well by the fanless Antec Phantom (regardless that it's a passive PFC). Efficiancy > Watts

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And don't forget to list your resolution and color depth, as well as the dpi of your mouse.

I knew I forgot something!

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

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Originally Posted by Jasper994 Antec SmartPower 380 (or maybe it was 350... can't remember at the moment) active cooling no stuttering

Actually it's an SL350