Hello there. I recently signed up to this newsgroup because I'm having
a problem with my PC and I'm hoping that perhaps someone out there can
help me fix it.

I have an ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard, an Athlon XP 3000+ CPU, 1 GB of
PC3200 DDR RAM (I know that there's a chipset limitation that prevents
it from running at full speed, so I'm not concerned about that), SB
Live Value sound card, generic network card, Windows XP, and a GeForce
6600 GT graphics card. My problem is this:

In any game, I have a problem with the video stuttering. It doesn't
matter if it's Doom 3, Quake 2, Knights of the Old Republic, or
anything I run in an emulator. Every second to a second and a half, the
video stutters. Everything just freezes up for a tiny bit, and then it
goes back to normal. But again, this happens every second to a second
and a half.

I have the latest BIOS for the motherboard and the latest ForceWare
video drivers. This problem was also present when I had a GeForce FX
5700LE card. I'm just wondering if there's anything that I can do to
alleviate the stuttering problem. Please help, I'd greatly appreciate
it!

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
"LandRover" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Hello there. I recently signed up to this newsgroup because I'm having
> a problem with my PC and I'm hoping that perhaps someone out there can
> help me fix it.
>
> I have an ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard, an Athlon XP 3000+ CPU, 1 GB of
> PC3200 DDR RAM (I know that there's a chipset limitation that prevents
> it from running at full speed, so I'm not concerned about that), SB
> Live Value sound card, generic network card, Windows XP, and a GeForce
> 6600 GT graphics card. My problem is this:
>
> In any game, I have a problem with the video stuttering. It doesn't
> matter if it's Doom 3, Quake 2, Knights of the Old Republic, or
> anything I run in an emulator. Every second to a second and a half, the
> video stutters. Everything just freezes up for a tiny bit, and then it
> goes back to normal. But again, this happens every second to a second
> and a half.
>
> I have the latest BIOS for the motherboard and the latest ForceWare
> video drivers. This problem was also present when I had a GeForce FX
> 5700LE card. I'm just wondering if there's anything that I can do to
> alleviate the stuttering problem. Please help, I'd greatly appreciate
> it!

Have you tried "Delayed Transaction" [Enabled] in the BIOS ?

Stuttering can be caused by many things, so there are undoubtedly
lots of things to try. Delayed Transaction is an optimization that
prevents slow devices from holding up the PCI bus. So more usable
PCI bus bandwidth is available when it is Enabled.

A second thing to check, is your IRQ table in the manual. The
tables in the manual are not always accurate, and in this case,
the claim is the AGP slot shared the same interrupt signal with
PCI slot 2 and slot 6. (Slot 6 is furthest from the processor.)
Try juggling the PCI cards, so the AGP video card has its own
interrupt signal. I would try SoundBlaster in slot 3 and
Network Card in slot 5, leaving slot 1 blank. That should give
each of your three cards their own private interrupt signal.
Since the Network Card should share nicely with other cards,
if you need to add another card to the system in the future,
you could put it in slot 1. The SoundBlaster doesn't like to
share, so it should stay in slot 3.

It could be a driver issue, or an OS issue (like some kind of
kernel code which is running uninterruptible for too long).
I've heard of the networking stack interfering with real
time performance. You'll have to ask in a video card group
for suggestions on stuff like that. I haven't a clue how
you debug interference in the software domain.

HTH,
Paul

In article <nospam-0801050645410001@192.168.1.177>, (E-Mail Removed)
(Paul) wrote:

> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> "LandRover" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> > Hello there. I recently signed up to this newsgroup because I'm having
> > a problem with my PC and I'm hoping that perhaps someone out there can
> > help me fix it.
> >
> > I have an ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard, an Athlon XP 3000+ CPU, 1 GB of
> > PC3200 DDR RAM (I know that there's a chipset limitation that prevents
> > it from running at full speed, so I'm not concerned about that), SB
> > Live Value sound card, generic network card, Windows XP, and a GeForce
> > 6600 GT graphics card. My problem is this:
> >
> > In any game, I have a problem with the video stuttering. It doesn't
> > matter if it's Doom 3, Quake 2, Knights of the Old Republic, or
> > anything I run in an emulator. Every second to a second and a half, the
> > video stutters. Everything just freezes up for a tiny bit, and then it
> > goes back to normal. But again, this happens every second to a second
> > and a half.
> >
> > I have the latest BIOS for the motherboard and the latest ForceWare
> > video drivers. This problem was also present when I had a GeForce FX
> > 5700LE card. I'm just wondering if there's anything that I can do to
> > alleviate the stuttering problem. Please help, I'd greatly appreciate
> > it!
>
> Have you tried "Delayed Transaction" [Enabled] in the BIOS ?
>
<<snip>>
>
> HTH,
> Paul

Also, I presume you've done the basics:

0) Always uninstall the video drivers from the previous
card, before installing the new one. You can create a
terrible mess, if you leave all the drivers behind. Ask
me how I know :-(
1) Install chipset drivers. In this case Via 4-in-1 Hyperion.
The chipset driver helps the OS enumerate the AGP slot
as an AGP device, and not a PCI device. If running in
PCI mode, you'll get less performance.
2) Install video card drivers. You say you've done that.
3) Try another version of DirectX driver. Microsoft makes
many versions, just to annoy us :-)
4) Get a copy of Powerstrip from entechtaiwan.com . Use the
Options menu item from the popup menu in the tray, to
check that all the AGP features are enabled.
5) Find a 3D benchmark and benchmark your system. Find a
review or an entry in the Futuremark database, to see
if your system is reasonably close to comparable systems.

I expect step (4) will tell you what you need to know,
in terms of the basics.

HTH,
Paul

Paul,

The installation of XP that I have is a fresh one. I have DirectX 9.0c,
as well as the latest 4-in-1 chipset drivers from VIA. The video card
drivers I have are the latest, and it was the first set of drivers I
installed on this PC after reinstalling Windows.

I'm not well versed in various BIOS options, so I'll toggling the
option you suggested.

I'm happy with the board, just not with the video stuttering. So I'll
try anything I can so that the problem can possibly be fixed. If I
absolutely have to ditch this board, then so be it. But I'll try
whatever I can to fix the problem now.

Also, I had a theory about this while I was at work. As I mentioned, I
know this board has a chipset limitation that says that PC3200 RAM will
not operate at that speed if you use a CPU with a 333 FSB. Now, since I
have PC3200 RAM in here, is it possible that maybe there's some kind of
timing screw up somewhere that's related to it? I'm not very
intelligent when it comes to this sort of thing, so it's just a
thought.

Thanks for the suggestions, I really do appreciate it.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
"LandRover" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Paul,
>
> The installation of XP that I have is a fresh one. I have DirectX 9.0c,
> as well as the latest 4-in-1 chipset drivers from VIA. The video card
> drivers I have are the latest, and it was the first set of drivers I
> installed on this PC after reinstalling Windows.
>
> I'm not well versed in various BIOS options, so I'll toggling the
> option you suggested.
>
> I'm happy with the board, just not with the video stuttering. So I'll
> try anything I can so that the problem can possibly be fixed. If I
> absolutely have to ditch this board, then so be it. But I'll try
> whatever I can to fix the problem now.
>
> Also, I had a theory about this while I was at work. As I mentioned, I
> know this board has a chipset limitation that says that PC3200 RAM will
> not operate at that speed if you use a CPU with a 333 FSB. Now, since I
> have PC3200 RAM in here, is it possible that maybe there's some kind of
> timing screw up somewhere that's related to it? I'm not very
> intelligent when it comes to this sort of thing, so it's just a
> thought.
>
> Thanks for the suggestions, I really do appreciate it.

When the RAM runs a little slower, that could have a slight
effect on system performance, but wouldn't cause the stutter.
A stutter is a large change in performance, for a short period
of time. I doubt having the RAM run at PC2700 would do that much.

Get Powerstrip installed, and inspect your settings.

Paul