S-s-stuttering in g-g-games

[Ken2012]

OK, recently I've been playing Test Drive Unlimited and Doom 3 (once more). In both titles I'm getting severe video & audio stuttering frequently.

I think I've narrowed the contingencies down to my hard drive(s). I notice that there is a hell of a lot of HDD activity when playing games.

All drives/partitions have been defragged. I thought it could be a virtual memory/pagefile issue, so I tried creating a dedicated 7GB VM partition (on a SATA-II). Same story.


All thoughts welcome, thanks in advance.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

If it's just audio problems, maybe it's your sound card?

 

[Ken2012]

If it's just audio problems, maybe it's your sound card?

Both video & audio stuttering.

 

[redfalcon]

Tried monitoring the HDD-Activity with Filemon? Maybe some other program accesses the disk. Any Anti-Virus programs running in background?

 

[Ken2012]

Anti-virus is turned off.

Sound card (Audigy2 ZS Plat, btw) should be fine. No IRQ's being shared. Drivers haven't been touched since the last time I played the mentioned games.

 

[Kyyla]

I had some hard to pinpoint horrible stuttering with popping sounds. It turned out to be my 965p northbridge needing a voltage bump.

 

[digitalwanderer]

What are your system specs Ken?

 

[Ken2012]

I had some hard to pinpoint horrible stuttering with popping sounds. It turned out to be my 965p northbridge needing a voltage bump.

Voltages are stable. Since I've recently installed a third HDD, I tried bumping my 12v rail up a shade out of curiously. Same story.

What are your system specs Ken?

AMDX2 4400
2GB DDR400
Asus A8N-SLI SE (NF4 SLI)
7800GTX SLI
Audigy2 ZS Plat'

Currently on XP SP2 .

EDIT: Latest drivers all round.

Unrelated AFAIK, but while I'm at it can anyone tell me where to find the settings for 'max frames to render ahead' in the 'new' Forceware control panel? Thanks.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Nice rig, so much for an easy answer.

 

[Ken2012]

Nice rig, so much for an easy answer.

Well, evidently I'm baffled too.

I'm thinking it's just an issue of the proverbial Windows Rot, bearing in mind my other recent woes too.