I built a new computer about a month back and I have recently run into some problems with the computer stuttering every few seconds (little pauses or freezes, then it resumes running normally). It seems to normally happen when watching YouTube videos or playing games (which is why I posted it in here, feel free to move if you’d like). It is very frustrating as I am not computer illiterate (though I am far from advanced), but I just cannot figure out what the problem is. Another odd thing is that the stuttering will usually subside after playing the game for a while. I’ll list the specs below, please let me know if you need any additional information. I would appreciate any help y’all could offer.
Specs:
[ul]
[li]WD Caviar Hard Drive - 1TB[/li][li]WD Caviar Hard Drive - 500GB[/li][li]HT Omega Striker 7.1 Sound Card[/li][li]XFX GX285NZDFF GeForce GTX 285 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 Video Card[/li][li]Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor[/li][li]G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 x 2 (I have heard having all the slots occupied can result in problems. Thoughts?)[/li][li]PC Power & Cooling 750W Power Supply[/li][li]Vista 64-bit SP1, XP 32-bit SP2, Ubuntu Operating Systems (stuttering occurs in all of them)[/li][/ul]
Computer stuttering is frequently an issue with too much access of your hard drive. It’s possible your virtual memory partition (swap file) is too big, or too small (though, later versions of Windows fixed the issues earlier versions had with swap files not being optimized, and the fact that it happens on multiple OS’s including Ubuntu means it’s probably not related to the OS’s.
I don’t know anything about having all the memory slots being occupied resulting in problems, but if you seen it mentioned in other places, it would logically make sense with what you’re experiencing. I don’t know why it would be an issue, but if it is, it would explain why you are having so many disc accesses if your RAM isn’t working properly.
Someone more knowledgeable about what your setup can probably add more. My knowledge of specific hardware pretty much becomes very good when I research a new computer, but after I get it, I don’t follow hardware trends much until the next time I decide to get a new rig.
My current rig dates back to 2004 or so. It was a pretty good rig back then, but it’s a dinosaur by comparison to what’s out there now.
Thank you for your response Happy. Is there anything I can do to test if that is the problem? I was wondering if it could be related to something similar since it seems the stuttering will go away, though it seems to take longer the older the game is. I do the same thing as you regarding hardware knowledge. Staying up to date with all the information is pretty time consuming.
Additionally, the stuttering stopped on YouTube videos when I removed the video card drivers; but I couldn’t play games without them so I have no idea what the effect would be there. Is it possible my sound card isn’t playing nice with my video card?
Given that you’re running with 6Gb of RAM, I don’t think swapping is your problem. On Ubuntu that’s easy to test, though: just disable the swap partition* and see if the problem persists.
edit /etc/fstab and comment out the line(s) referring to the swap file system and reboot.
It would be if for some reason his motherboard doesn’t utilize all 6GB for whatever reason. (Though, it’s beyond my knowledge as to why that situation would arise.)
Although, one thing that can confirm this is to go to your BIOS setup screen and make sure that your BIOS indicates you’re running with 6GB of memory. If it doesn’t, you at least know you’ve got some issue with your memory and/or motherboard. (Of course, the inverse doesn’t necessarily apply.)
And it’s possible you’re having sound card/video card conflicts, but I wouldn’t know where to begin to diagnose that short of Googling.
I remember back when I would play Galactic Civ II on my machine, occasionally the game would hang and then the graphics would crash into a black screen and I’d have to kill the thing via Task Manager. I remember asking on the GCII forums if anybody knew what was going on, but know one was able to help me. So with much searching for the proverbial needle, I found a setting on my control utilities that came bundled with my graphics card. It was a setting that was enabled by default and rather onobtrusive in drawing attention to itself. (I.e. It was buried in some advanced-level properties dialog box.) The gist of the function was if the graphics card didn’t receive a “ping” from the driver within a certain period of time, the graphics card would essentially reset itself. Apparently whatever processing was going on in Galactic Civ II would stop talking to the graphics driver long enough that the graphics card was spontaneously resetting in the middle of the game. I increased the timeout setting significantly, and had no problems after the fact.
Yes, I have Askance. The temperatures are well within normal range. I am using the stock Intel cooler, but I am not overclocking at all. I tried removing some RAM and it didn’t work. Thank you for your suggestions.
Ubuntu does have both versions, I have not tried the 32 bit one.