Stuttering Badly! Help Please

[FelipeRRM]

Hey guys, I've got a powerful rig, fast HD and everything, even though Fallout 3 stutters badly here(including indoor places). My FPS is normaly between 50 and 62, but every few seconds the game stops for about half a second! This takes out all the smoothness of the game! My rig (using Windows Seven Ultimate):

Core i7 920 | Gigabyte X58-UD5 | OCZ Platinum 3x2GB DDR3 1600Mhz | GeForce BFG GTX280 | Patriot Warp V2 SSD 32GB for OS | WD VelociRaptor 300GB GLFS | Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro | Corsair HX1000 | Windowed CM-690 + 7 Fans CM 90CFM


My processor is at 2.8 Ghz. Will increase it's overclock to see if it helps. But this is very strange. If it was hardware limitation, the game would run with bad FPS, and this doesn't happen!

[TopGunSF]

-Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro
-Win7

Let's fix that first.
-Download Alchemy from Creative.
-Create an entry for Fallout 3 using:
--Registry Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout3\Installed Path
--Buffers: 8
--Duration: 5
--Maximum Voice Count: 128
-Set Mode to "Game Mode" through the Creative Control Panel (Alchemy WILL crash FO3 if you skip this).

Report results.

[FelipeRRM]

-Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro
-Win7

Let's fix that first.
-Download Alchemy from Creative.
-Create an entry for Fallout 3 using:
--Registry Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout3\Installed Path
--Buffers: 8
--Duration: 5
--Maximum Voice Count: 128
-Set Mode to "Game Mode" through the Creative Control Panel (Alchemy WILL crash FO3 if you skip this).

Report results.

Thanks! But it didn't work :(
And I didn't notice any difference in the sound, (using 5.1 Speakers), so what is this really for?


And you seem to know this things, so I've always asked myself what are the differences between "Game Mode" and "Entertainment Mode", but never found it anywhere. I started to think they were just different "save slots" for my settings lol.

[SoulsCollective]

"Game Mode" enables X-Fi features like X-Ram and suchlike. "Entertainment" disables such features to ensure purity of sound. FOIII needs ALchemy enabled on systems using Creative-based cards to correct the in-game radio stuttering while playing back music, and to correct surround-sound (I'm surprised you haven't noticed a difference). You also might find it more convenient to rather than change mode permanently, download and install Creative's Auto-mode switcher and add Fallout3.exe to it - that way, whenever you start the game it'll automatically switch to Game mode for you.

I was having similar problems, and going through the TweakGuide (http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_1.html) for Fallout III, particularly the .ini tweaking section and the entries re increasing cache, really helped me. Worth a shot.

[FelipeRRM]

"Game Mode" enables X-Fi features like X-Ram and suchlike. "Entertainment" disables such features to ensure purity of sound. FOIII needs ALchemy enabled on systems using Creative-based cards to correct the in-game radio stuttering while playing back music, and to correct surround-sound (I'm surprised you haven't noticed a difference). You also might find it more convenient to rather than change mode permanently, download and install Creative's Auto-mode switcher and add Fallout3.exe to it - that way, whenever you start the game it'll automatically switch to Game mode for you.

I was having similar problems, and going through the TweakGuide (http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_1.html) for Fallout III, particularly the .ini tweaking section and the entries re increasing cache, really helped me. Worth a shot.


Will check it later. The game is just too awesome to be played like that.

[SoulsCollective]

Will check it later. The game is just too awesome to be played like that.Er...what?

If you interpreted my comment to mean disabling graphical features, that wasn't what I meant - the guide linked to above walks you through increasing game cache sizes, which helped reduce stuttering issues while maintaining max graphics settings for me (in fact, increasing graphics - eg. through increasing draw distance via the .ini files).

[Zikco]

...Will increase it's overclock to see if it helps....

Try going the other way and go back to stock speeds on all your hardware.:cool:

Sounds counterintuitive, I know, but it's a fact that some games perform worse on overclocked hardware.;)
(some even refuse to work at all...)

[TopGunSF]

Sounds counterintuitive, I know, but it's a fact that some games perform worse on overclocked hardware.;)
(some even refuse to work at all...)

Wrong and wrong. Ever since you stopped seeing "Turbo" buttons on computers there has been no such thing as "to fast". That ONLY applied when programs didn't clock themselves but were tied to the actual processor clock.

The only reason* an overclock would EVER cause any kind of an application error would be if it were unstable. Otherwise it would be completely transparent.

*(Obviously the processor clock being modified would have an effect on VMs (or any other application that runs an/within a hypervisor) and various other emulation apps (such as dosbox) - however, since processor speeds are variable across processor types anyway, and since the i7 line introduced self-overclocking processors - this hardly makes a difference. Most VM applications would detect actual speed instead of reported and those that don't can be forced to detect a specific speed, and dosbox (and other emulators) would simply require the same tweaking they would have anyway to get the proper speeds.


CPU Properties
CPU Type QuadCore Intel Core i7 920
CPU Alias Bloomfield
CPU Stepping C0/C1
Engineering Sample No
CPUID CPU Name Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
CPUID Revision 000106A4h

CPU Speed
CPU Clock 3808.6 MHz (original: 2667 MHz, overclock: 43%)
CPU Multiplier 19x
CPU FSB 200.5 MHz (original: 133 MHz, overclock: 51%)
QPI Clock 3608.1 MHz
Memory Bus 801.8 MHz
DRAM:FSB Ratio 4:1

Chipset Properties
Motherboard Chipset Intel Tylersburg X58, Intel Nehalem
Memory Timings 8-8-8-22 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)
Command Rate (CR) 1T
DIMM1: Corsair Dominator CM3X2G1866C9D 2 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM (9-9-9-24 @ 666 MHz) (8-8-8-22 @ 592 MHz) (6-6-6-16 @ 444 MHz)
DIMM3: Corsair Dominator CM3X2G1866C9D 2 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM (9-9-9-24 @ 666 MHz) (8-8-8-22 @ 592 MHz) (6-6-6-16 @ 444 MHz)
DIMM5: Corsair Dominator CM3X2G1866C9D 2 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM (9-9-9-24 @ 666 MHz) (8-8-8-22 @ 592 MHz) (6-6-6-16 @ 444 MHz)

Graphics Processor Properties
Video Adapter EVGA e-GeForce GTX 285
GPU Code Name GT200b (PCI Express 2.0 x16 10DE / 05E3, Rev B1)
GPU Clock (Geometric Domain) 702 MHz (original: 648 MHz, overclock: 8%)
GPU Clock (Shader Domain) 1584 MHz (original: 1476 MHz, overclock: 7%)
Memory Clock 1323 MHz (original: 1242 MHz, overclock: 7%)

Flawless.

Will check it later. The game is just too awesome to be played like that.

I'd like to see some benchmarks from your system - make sure it's running where it should be. Run Prime95 and give me the 4M - then run FurMark (at your native rez) and give me your average.

[~kev~]

My processor is at 2.8 Ghz. Will increase it's overclock to see if it helps.

I seriously doubt that is going to help. My AMD quad core 620 - 2.8 ghz runs Fallout 3 just fine. With your setup, you should not be having any problems.

Have you tried disabling v-sync? Have you set your game options for best performance?

[fortunz]

My processor is at 2.8 Ghz. Will increase it's overclock to see if it helps. But this is very strange. If it was hardware limitation, the game would run with bad FPS, and this doesn't happen!

I agree. If you had a hardware issue, you wouldn't be getting 50+ FPS in the first place. If you don't have a bad driver, or a corrupt install of FO, I'd look at what other software is running in the background and see if there's anything screwing with you.

[FelipeRRM]

Probably I'll be testing this again on the weekend, too busy watching E3 conferences and taking care of the house (dad removed both his kdneys today, so mom's in the hospital with him, pray for everything to be allright!)

[MotionTracker]

It could be your hard drive which might start experiencing bad sectors. You should do a hard drive test because you shouldn't be experiencing stuttering with a system like yours.

[FelipeRRM]

It could be your hard drive which might start experiencing bad sectors. You should do a hard drive test because you shouldn't be experiencing stuttering with a system like yours.

:mad: 2 months ago I had to do a zero fill because of bad blocks

Do you think it is happening again?

[Mattk50]

i have the same problem, random hiccups out in the wastland every few seconds. its very annoying and i still haven't found a fix that worked.

[davidm71]

The only fix that worked for me was to disable sound blaster enhancements and turn down audio quality to CD level Quality and turn off any other fancy sound setting in the sound control panel. Only thing is it still sometimes crashes to desktop but that fixed the stuttering at the expense of sound quality.

Anyone else have any cool registry fixes please submit them. Also if all else fails I may go with motherboard sound and just boycott creative products from now on because they're driver releases are just too too slow!

[Gizzi]

Ok, well not sure if it will help your type of stutter, but try the Fallout Stutter Remover:

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8886

It should also clear up the microstutter you may (or may not) notice when strafing/turning. Be sure to read the instructions thouroughly and I would advice tweaking the framerate section as I think it sets the maximum FPS at 30 which is way too low for me.

NOTE: It requires FOSE (http://fose.silverlock.org).