Trying to get rid of this peculiar st-s-t-u-st-utt-te-ute-r-tter. I suppose this goes in the Software board, but that board seems more for game reviews and such, and Hardware seems more fore technical settings and such, so...  Mods!  Do as you wish!

Anywho, Far Cry so far is the only thing to challenge my PC in the slightest, and therefore I am able to notice PC issues quickly using Far Cry.

Issues:

• Videos chop.  The video will run for 1 second, hang up for .25, and then continue where they would have been had it not hung up.
• This problem is evident in Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour videos as well.
• This can all be resolved, however, by pressing ALT+TAB and switching windows, and switching back.  This stuttery thing is fairly persistent.  It happens about 85% of the time, and only after a load.
• Overall FPS is slower too, pre-switch.

What can this be?  Obviously the hardware combo isn't the issue - the same combo had everything workin' good before.  XP was also a dirty install on that configuration (98-XP install; not fresh), and using older drivers and such.  The only thing I can think of is my drive partition.  I patitioned up my 250 into:

• 5  - XP
• 10  - Core Programs
• 100 - Games
• 10  - Design Programs
• 30  - Music
• 30  - Pictures
• 30  - Movies
• 20  - Archives
• ~3  - Auxiliary

Could this affect performance any?  I was under the impression partitioning would increase, not decrease performance.  I don't really think this is the issue, but I dunno.

Any settings that y'all know of that could cause a stutter after loading something gamewise?

???

Scorpion has a pretty good setup if I remember rightly.  I would say its definately the way he has his hardware setup looking at that!!

AA and AF aren't the problem here I dont think.

Well, for those that don't know:

• Athlon 64 3000+
• MSI somethin' somethin' Motherboard
• Corsair DDR 2 x 512MB
• Hitachi 250GB (as stated previously)
• 600w PSU amybe 700, I forget
• BFG NVidia Geforce6800 OC with latest drivers

The Skörpion (Name of the computer in question) is not connected the the internet, so no annoying taskbar programs Scania.  Besides, I've always been good about disabling those.  God praise Run>MSConfig.

I will try tinkering with AA settings, as it had a profound impact on how fast Codename: Panzers could run when things got a little hot and heavy.  Hehe...

Negative.  Onboard AC 97 sound.  I like not wasting $40.

I was slightly afraid of it being DirectX, as previously, I had 9.0B.  I'm running 9.0C now in order to play the NFS Underground 2 demo.

I'm hesitant to, because they begin to coagulate the taskbar, but I think installing all the Utilities on my MSI CD might maybe/kinda/sorta have an effect.

OpenGL?  Emm...  What's that?

I believe it's a universal issue, however most games don't have video's while simultaneosly loading something.  The NFSU2 demo has a video which plays fine, however in C&CG:ZH has a video while loading the level and it stutters horribly.  I believe Far Cry loads while playing the videos as well.  I think.  Maybe.  Actually I dunno.

Your partitions are not the problem. However, your "dirty XP installation" is definitely suspect. Time for a re-format in my opinion. Just format your op sys partition though.

Your C: drive (if you have XP on C drive that is) seems a tad small as far as partition size goes, have you got a program to increase that partition to 10 gig without losing any data? I'm wondering where your swap file is located, thinking if it is on C: drive, that your virtual memory cache may be running out of space, or close to it, possibly causing the stutter.

FarCry, maxed out, will push almost any PC. It's very CPU intensive as well as video intensive, much like FS9. Drop a setting or two down and see if the stutter is still apparent.

Try to find out if you have any other programs running that might be sucking up some CPU power.

I recently obtained the latest driver for AC'97 sound, a Realtec codec driver I think. It really improved my already good onboard sound.

I have seen sound drivers corrupted when I used to use a  Creative Soundblaster Live! soundcard, it caused terrible stutter. Re-installing the sound driver cured the problem. I had about 3 occurences of that problem.

You need to approach the problem logically starting from a base level (BIOS settings) and work your way through your system's configuration systematically in an attempt to isolate the problem.

Using msconfig to shutdown services is actually not as effective as going to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services and actually disabling them from there. There is much to be done on that page actually, and it has been the cause of quite a few re-formats for me in the past.

A really good and safe way to shut these services off is to use this guide......

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

I open the guide in the top half of my screen, and open my services in the bottom half, then make the required changes.

Getting rid of all unneccesary services in XP is a good start, but don't forget to disable any other software you have installed on your PC that may be interfering and using resources.

This includes Sound programs that may have been installed while you thought you were just installing your sound driver,

Anti-virus, scanning software, media player, and a multitude of other possibilities.

go to add/remove windows components, there are some baddies in there to get rid of as well.