Lag/Stutter current fixes dont work

[DaMan007]

Lag/Stutter current fixes dont work

I just reinstalled the witcher 2 due to an entire computer format. It installed fine, all of the patches loaded, and it did the auto configure to ultra. I loaded the game and in the menu it will run smooth, stop for about 1-2 seconds with the music still going smooth in the background, then run smooth again right after catching up to itself, and this happens over and over and over. In the game itself the same thing happens. I tried the dx9 fix that is floating around, I tried the radeonpro fix of setting the flip queue to 1, ive tried setting the settings as low and as high as possible (and a mixture of both), nothing works. It is unplayable. I need help. Here are my Pc's stats:

Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5 and turbo to 3.8
12 gigs of ram
2x sapphire 5870 1gb in crossfire
x-fi fatality
intel 80gb ssd
4x 1tb Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive
1000watt gold rated power supply
My rig has the chops to play this at least on high. in 1080p, well, it should.

 

[tommy5761]

Sounds like something is accessing the drive . Maybe an indexing service or a realtime scanner from an antivirus or antimalware program . Have you made an exception for the witcher 2 .

 

[DaMan007]

I have made exceptions in both superantispyware and avast. I also turned on silent/gaming mode to no avail. I have witcher 2 installed on a 1tb seagate barracuda used exclusively for games, there should not be any program being accessed by the drive, except for maybe steam, and that isnt doing anything. You said indexing service, and I thought that maybe Everything could be the problem so i closed it entirely and that didnt do anything either. Only Witcher 2 is giving me this issue.

 

[tommy5761]

Crossfire shouldn`t be causing the issue but try disabling one of the cards just to be on the safe side . If nothing else that could be eliminated . Also how long since the Seagate drive has been defragged and how much free space is on it ?

 

[GuyNwah]

Pauses of a few seconds are not the usual stutter, and the usual stutter fixes won't solve them. That sounds a lot more like driver resets or competition from other applications. Especially driver resets. Tommy's right, make sure you can run single card to eliminate the possibility of a Crossfire problem. I'd also suggest removing the second card temporarily to eliminate the possibility of a power problem.

 

[DaMan007]

I have all of my drives on a schedule for defrag, including boot time defrag. The game hard drive has over 140 gb of free space so it should have plenty of breathing room. Ill try disabling crossfire.

I disabled crossfire. I got the same pause, speedup, smooth, pause. Power should also not be a problem, 1000 watt gold rated power supply (edited first post to reflect this)

Im also running catalyst 13.12 stable since they are newer than the the 13.11 beta, and the newest 14.1 beta drivers dont apply to me since my videocards cant support mantle yet. (dont know if any of this helps.)

 

[DaMan007]

OK, I am closing just about everything. Chrome is still open. Antivirus is on game/silent, only thing i have open are, my razer mouse and keyboard synapse driver, radeonpro, catalyst control center, f.lux, dropbox, and the windows updates icon because the update is new help files that i dont care for.

IT WORKED!

I have systematically turned on each program one by one, and as i turned them on, I loaded Witcher 2. I have turned on everything. I have no idea what the issue was. Runs smooth now. Anyone out there with my same issue, I implore you close everything you have open. Worked for me. (I just hope I dont have to do this every time i restart my pc)

To the Mods: Thanks for the ideas and help. Good to have support out there.

 

[DaMan007]

Well.... guess were not out of the woods. After about a solid 15 minutes of game time, my computer just shut itself off. I was hitting about 90 or so frames, and during the arena I was about to kill the gargoyle and it {the pc} shut off. It couldve been a heat issue. I will never disapprove of that idea, but im doubtful.

 

[GuyNwah]

That sounds like power or heat problems. Dual 5870's are a heavy load of both, and this game will run them wide-open throttle. Your power supply will be sourcing about 32A at 12V to the GPUs alone, producing 384W of heat that has to go somewhere. Hot air that's sucked into the power supply or the CPU cooler will add to the heat load on these components.

 

[humanevil]

i have a very similar issue i go from 50/60 fps down to 0 then back again within a second but it does this every few seconds and i only have this issue with witcher 2 and ff 14 the odd thing is if i reinstall my gfx driver it fine for a few days then back to the problem. ive tried 3 diff drivers and im running the latest beta ones atm
cpu: i7 950 @ 3.2 ghz
ram: 12 gig ddr 3
gfx: gigabyte gtx 670 oc edition windforce
psu: 850w
win 7 64 bit

 

[tommy5761]

i have a very similar issue i go from 50/60 fps down to 0 then back again within a second but it does this every few seconds and i only have this issue with witcher 2 and ff 14 the odd thing is if i reinstall my gfx driver it fine for a few days then back to the problem. ive tried 3 diff drivers and im running the latest beta ones atm
cpu: i7 950 @ 3.2 ghz
ram: 12 gig ddr 3
gfx: gigabyte gtx 670 oc edition windforce
psu: 850w
win 7 64 bit

Have you tried a clean install of the video drivers ? Also as noted earlier make exceptions in your AV program for witcher 2 . Might also be a good time for checking your hard drive for errors .

 

[humanevil]

yea i tried a clean install of the drivers and it all ways works for a few days then back to the issue. ive tried with my av on and off and the issue still happens ive tried turning my firewall off and no difference the only thing ive not done is the hard drive check.

 

[tommy5761]

Concerning the hard drive check make sure that it goes through a 5 stage process

 

[humanevil]

Concerning the hard drive check make sure that it goes through a 5 stage process

ive finished the test and no issues found

 

[tommy5761]

Try opening Nvidia control panel and under Manage 3D Settings click Global settings and scroll down and find Maximum pre-rendered frames and from the drop down menu select 1 then click apply .

 

[humanevil]

Try opening Nvidia control panel and under Manage 3D Settings click Global settings and scroll down and find Maximum pre-rendered frames and from the drop down menu select 1 then click apply .

i done that and no change however i started to stop each running program 1 at a time and i had like clock work around 5-10 mins of hassle free game time then it would crop up again so i stop another program from running and 5-10 mins of no hassle playtime and so on????

 

[tommy5761]

i done that and no change however i started to stop each running program 1 at a time and i had like clock work around 5-10 mins of hassle free game time then it would crop up again so i stop another program from running and 5-10 mins of no hassle playtime and so on????

Have you tried a clean boot procedure ?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796

 

[humanevil]

ive not tried that yet ill do it tomorrow thanks!

 

[humanevil]

i just jumped on to the game and for the 40 odd mins i was on to brake the game to try your idea and i had no issue though i did notice that the shadowplay icon had a red line through it this time if that makes any difference?

 

[tommy5761]

By doing a clean boot you disabled all 3rd party applications that are running normally so yes that would be normal . Some applications will not be available during normal startup . If you saw a an improvement in the gaming experience during the clean boot then at least one of the disabled programs is what`s causing your issue . What you can do now is is enable one or two programs at a time and play witcher 2 after each time a program is enabled to find out the culprit(s) .

Can you post a pic of what you are describing with shadowplay ?