All games on my computer suffer from hitching. Why?

neilthecellist · Mar 2, 2008

OK, I'll be honest, I didn't know hitching was a problem until today. And I've played video games since I was 5. I'm an adult now, and--

-- All of my video games suffer from hitching.

Take a look at any of the examples below, and to see what/how hitching affects my games:

UT2004:

Every time I enter a vehicle I've never entered before, the game freezes for 1 full second, and then the game unfreezes.
When I'm playing a map, the instant I enter a new area (e.g. invisible antiportal dividing an area), I get about a 1/2 second of hitching

S.W.A.T. 4:

Ideally, when encountering a suspect (i.e. person with a gun), you give them a chance to surrender. If the suspect points his/her gun at you or at someone else, then you have the right to shoot.
However, the instant they point their guns at me, (gives me 1-2 seconds to shoot, depending on difficulty), I press left-click.... and nothing happens. Hitching. The suspect shoots me. I'm down.

UT3:

This is really bad. Every time I pick up a new gun, I get 1/2 a second of hitching.
Every time I'm playing a game (even offline), the instant I see an enemy, my game hitches for 1/2 a second. Sure, I can still kill them, but usually they shoot me first, because of the hitching.

Crysis:

The worst of all hitching.
The instant I press the "shoot" button, my computer hitches/freezes, and I can hear my gun fire repeatedly (although nothing on my screen appears to be moving). When the game unhitches, I am sometimes dead, or usually, down to 0 shields and 25/100 health.

I've had this problem for years, and despite upgrading/getting new computers, I've still had the problem.

Let me just say this: THERE IS NO SPYWARE/ADWARE/VIRUSES ON MY COMPUTER. There, stop giving me stupid computer advice, you wanna-have-10000-posts-so-you-can-be-cool people.

Current Specs:
PC Chips A11G Motherboard, FSB 1000MHZ
2048 megabytes DDR2 RAM 800mhz
AMD 64 3700+ <-- this can't be the culprit, S.W.A.T. 4 and UT2004 were made when 64 bit processors were JUST born
nVidia GeForce 7900gs <-- this can't be the culprit either, SEE BELOW
ANTIVIRUS/ANTISPYWARE/ANTI-ADWARE IS TURNED OFF WHEN I'M PLAYING VIDEO GAMES

Why it can't be my video card or CPU:
My brother has a worser computer than I do. Honestly. He has a GeForce 6600, a 6-year-old-motherboard, and only one gig of DDR 1 ram. Also, he has only an AMD 64 3000+. His computer doesn't hitch in ANY games.

Ok, now you can give me advice.

SleepyHe4d · Mar 2, 2008

Open your computer case and check if your graphics card is there.

neilthecellist · Mar 2, 2008

Uh... My graphics card is there. What was the point of that comment? I said that I've had this problem for years now, which implies that I've had this problem with previous video cards.

SleepyHe4d · Mar 2, 2008

+2

Okay, okay, I was just making sure you had your bases covered... is your monitor there?

neilthecellist · Mar 2, 2008

What the f--

I'm not playing around here. YES, my monitor is there. -___-

SleepyHe4d · Mar 2, 2008

Post in offtopic and expect an offtopic answer.

Seriously though it must be something you're doing or installing on your comp if it has done it with all of your comps but not on your bros. :con:

Can you think of anything you always install or do that wouldn't be on other comps? Have you tried a reformatting and a fresh windows install?

Other than that my wanna-be computer advice skillz are of no use.

Firefly · Mar 2, 2008

hahaaaa lol

is there a wooshing sound coming from inside?

just checking the fans are working

it sounds like a harddrive prob. preloading stuff. for stuff like crysis and ut3 a 3gig transfer HDD (7200rpm at least and with a generous swap file) really helps. a lot of these are set to 1.5 as defualt so you might want to check that.
Make sure that your HDDs are setup correctly master/slave wise.

Thats what I would check

Airmoran · Mar 2, 2008

2 gigs of ram should be plenty, but insufficient ram is often a source of jittery performance. Monitor your in-game ram usage. While you're at it, check your temperatures. Maybe your CPU is throttling?

I figure that if the problem persists across multiple computers, than the only real constant between the systems is the software you run in the background. I dunno, maybe one of them is a real resource hog.

Thrash123 · Mar 2, 2008

Well, that's odd. With the zone loading problem I would say it is RAM (video or otherwise), but I'm not totally sure about everything else.

What I would try at this point is to - first off - get some compressed air and clean the sucker out, ensuring you've got plenty of airflow. Then, if that doesn't fix it, swap out the video card for your bro's (make sure to uninstall drivers and whatnot). See if you encounter the same issues. If that isn't it, try swapping RAM.

You sure you've got all your drivers installed properly for everything? Also, check your BIOS and make sure the slot your video card is plugged into is operating/configured properly (dunno about your BIOS software, so I can't really verify much on that). It could be a bus issue on the mobo.

Man, been a while since college

Typically don't have to troubleshoot gaming machines anymore. The most likely culprit, in my mind, would be something wrong with the video ram. Then again, like I said - been out of the loop for a while, so don't take this as gospel.

T2A` · Mar 2, 2008

Make sure your drivers aren't crapped up. Certain drivers degrade performance. If you've updated recently and just gotten the problem, roll them back to a point in time where you know they worked. If you haven't updated them in awhile, do it.

theabyss · Mar 2, 2008

I once had a broken Corsair Ram that caused these glitches.
That was surprising because these kind of Ram hardly ever fail.
I wouldn´t have noticed until I had some problems installing programs.
I checked it out with some sort of ramcheck tool and it said it was broken.
I sent it back got a new one - no problems anymore.

neilthecellist · Mar 2, 2008

1. All drivers have been updated to their latest. And just for kicks, I decided to roll back all of them. Same problem.
2. Cleaned everything with compressed air already. I do this once a month.
3. Crysis says it's only using 900 megabytes of my RAM (at least, that's what it says when I type r_displayinfo 1 into the game's console)
4. Which program do you guys use to check your RAM?
5. CPU is not overheating, the temperature is around 35-39 degrees, same temperature as my brother's.

Airmoran · Mar 2, 2008

I use my G15's LCD display to track ram usage, but I'd hold off on run out and grabbing a new keyboard.

Task Manager lists available physical memory under its "Performance" pane. Run a game in windowed mode and check how much available memory you have left.

T2A` · Mar 2, 2008

Don't run it windowed. That reduces the resolution and may give false information.

Just make sure the "Peak Mem Usage" column is enabled. Run the game for awhile at its normal resolution, then check that column before quitting.

TomWithTheWeather · Mar 2, 2008

- Disable any active virus software if you run it.
- After a reboot and quick trip to task manager to kill everything that autoloads but isn't crucial, defragment your HD.
- Make sure your swap file is large enough and set at a non-changing size. Make it double your amount of RAM.
- If you can, move the swap file to a partition on a second HD.
- Are you BIOS setting for memory and CPU set to the correct values? Maybe something is locked at a slower speed than usual.

ZenPirate · Mar 2, 2008

Off the top of my head, I'd say it's a sound issue. Try turing off all in game sounds, music, sound options, etc.. and see if it goes away.

What sound hardware are you using?

dragonfliet · Mar 2, 2008

run memtest86 to see if you have a problem with your RAM. Also, what TomWTW said is pretty great advice.

I'm guessing that this is because of your video RAM. While yes, your computer is better than your brother's, he's probably running it on much lower settings. Try bumping down your quality settings (particularly texture) all the way and see if that helps. If it does, then slowly bring things back up and see where it is too much for your system.

But yeah, memtest first (let it run overnight) defrag and whatnot THEN try to run the programs. Good luck, hitching is a bitch.

~Jason

Thrash123 · Mar 2, 2008

Another vote for memtest86.

MoogleRancha · Mar 2, 2008

...

You're still alive?

B · Mar 3, 2008

- Defrag your harddrive(s)

Like ZenPirate said it might be a sound problem, try disabling your audio devices in device manager and test the games again.

Also how 'old' is your windows install? and did you clean up Windows (tempfiles, cookies etc)

All games on my computer suffer from hitching. Why?

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