"Hiccup" while using some video features

**3D Prophet III** · June 25th, 2002, 08:30 PM

Windows XP itself eats up a lot of system resources. Check out these system requirements -

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/sysreqs.asp" target="_blank">http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/sysreqs.asp</a>

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/upgrading/sysreqs.asp" target="_blank">http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/upgrading/sysreqs.asp</a>

So I guess you could say if you were running WinXP at the minimum requirements or close to them, to get adequate video performance playing DVDs you would probably need a DVD decoder card, not a software decoder like power dvd which uses up processor resources.

Have you noticed excessive HDD activity, with the amount of RAM you have installed you could probably get away with lowering your page file size to half the physical memory size if not a quarter. Disk thrashing can cause a system to hiccup if it's trying to access data from off a fragmented HDD. The problem with lowering your page file in XP is sometimes you'll get a "low on virtual memory" warning when you go to reboot or shut down.

I may be off in left field with this, but I've never seen a system lower than a PIII 650 MHZ perform satisfactory running WinXP while attempting to play games like Quake III Arena. And that's pushing it, but that's just my opinion when using WinXP.

**ilovetheusers** · June 25th, 2002, 09:46 PM

I take back what I said earlier. I just put a zippy 32mb vid card in my pII 450 system and it's playing video and smooth as a babies butt now.

Have you turned off the virus scanner or any other programs that are running in the background?

**clascomp** · June 25th, 2002, 10:57 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by ilovetheusers:
Hey - I'm all about that CPU not being able to handle those games! I tried Q3 on a P2 450 with a 32mb Rage Fury card and it dogged (no ata either). I went and put the same card in a 1.2ghz machine and it flew.

I have the same issue with playing media player movies that are quite large (like a 640mb rip of a CD). It never happened with older media player versions but now that I have XP and MP8, of yeah, it's friggin slow. Try it on a box with a faster processor.<hr /></blockquote>I have to agree with this.
Its probably time to bite the bullet and move up to a board that, at minimum, supports an FC-PGA CPU.
I doubt if the board you are using even supports all the benefits of the GF2 video card.
Is it even running 4X AGP?
Your trying to use technology that is at least five years old on a two year old game.
3D Games and video take a more powerful machine than almost any other applications.
TIME FOR A MAJOR UPGRADE!!

**Garak** · June 26th, 2002, 01:05 AM

I had the same problems with a P3 800, and your software has been working fine till now - so i doubt its hardware, i would look at anything running in the background, codecs and software that has been installed / removed latley...

Just a thought...

**freddy** · June 26th, 2002, 01:25 AM

i note that u are using an ASUS board ? ,,,do u by any chance use either Asus "probe" m/board monitor or more to the point the asus i-panel ??

there were/are serious probs with the early i-panels ,,

just a thought ??

FtF

**Garak** · June 26th, 2002, 01:31 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by 3D Prophet III:
I may be off in left field with this, but I've never seen a system lower than a PIII 650 MHZ perform satisfactory running WinXP while attempting to play games like Quake III Arena. And that's pushing it, but that's just my opinion when using WinXP.<hr /></blockquote>Intel Pentium 2 266 - 256meg ram, 16meg Nvidia Vanta runs Quake 3 nicley in 640x480 on WinXP..

that's my findings anyhow....

**CMonster** · June 26th, 2002, 09:34 AM

I experienced some stuttering (particularly in Revolt) after moving to WinXP.

Disabling VSYNC seemed to help me quite a bit.

I had the problem on a P3-733 and an Athlon 1200 with Radeon 64MB VIVO, RagePro 128 and a variety of 32MB nVidia cards. Turning off the Vertical Synch had the biggest impact on reducing the hiccups.

**Stalemate** · June 26th, 2002, 10:33 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by CMonster:
I experienced some stuttering (particularly in Revolt) after moving to WinXP.

Disabling VSYNC seemed to help me quite a bit.

I had the problem on a P3-733 and an Athlon 1200 with Radeon 64MB VIVO, RagePro 128 and a variety of 32MB nVidia cards. Turning off the Vertical Synch had the biggest impact on reducing the hiccups.<hr /></blockquote>

**SoJo** · June 26th, 2002, 11:20 AM

Looks like some pretty good sugestions on how to turn off options in the game, but I think it's not just games it's other apps as well.

What size Power Supply do you have 250w, 300w, 350w ??? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="eek.gif" />

Another problem could be the CPU, memory or one of your PCI cards is burnt from OC'ing. Do you get any BSOD?

I don't know if you have any spare hardware to test this out with but it might be worth looking into.

My 2 cents

**ilovetheusers** · June 26th, 2002, 12:34 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by a d e p t:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by CMonster:
I experienced some stuttering (particularly in Revolt) after moving to WinXP.

Disabling VSYNC seemed to help me quite a bit.

I had the problem on a P3-733 and an Athlon 1200 with Radeon 64MB VIVO, RagePro 128 and a variety of 32MB nVidia cards. Turning off the Vertical Synch had the biggest impact on reducing the hiccups.<hr /></blockquote><hr /></blockquote>So did that do it? You didn't put nuttin' in dere.

**Stalemate** · June 26th, 2002, 01:58 PM

Crap.

My entire post got sent to /dev/null!

I was basically stating that turning off VSync did "smooth out" the pauses, but they're still noticeable.

The proble exists in games (OpenGL) and movie playback (ASP, MPEG, AVI). Garak's suggestion re: codecs struck a chord though - I believe the last DivX version was one of the things installed...

Here are my comments on the other suggestions:

Things done:
- Not using a 18" IDE cable on my lone CD drive on secondary IDE channel. Using 12" rounded cables on the 4 hard drives linked to my Promise card.
- No BSOD apart from when I voluntarily tried to get one (months ago - unrelated to current situation).
- No HD activity that I've noticed, but I'll keep an eye out.
- Tried without any superfluous tasks/processes running in background with same "pause" effect afterwards.
- AGP set at 2x (I think...).
- No Asus probes/utilities loaded (ever).
- Power supply is 350w (Have to confirm this, could be 300w)

Things yet to do:
- Modify sawpfile size (I have 768Mb RAM, so I'm pretty safe there).
- Re-install DirectX / codecs.
- Try my old, trusty 3Dfx Voodoo 3000 (16Mb) instead.

In my dreams, I can see a package arriving in the mail containing an MSI K3T Ultra board, an Athlon 2GHz+ CPU, 512Mb stick of PC2700 DDR RAM...

But that's a 600$ CAN dream I can't afford right now.

<h5>I'd like to thank everyone who's contributed so far. I can see I'm not the only one who can't let a PC have the last word!

</h5>

**Garak** · June 26th, 2002, 03:47 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by a d e p t:
<h5>I'd like to thank everyone who's contributed so far. I can see I'm not the only one who can't let a PC have the last word!

</h5><hr /></blockquote>I know what you mean.....

aside from that - hows things now???

**Stalemate** · June 26th, 2002, 06:54 PM

Removed swapfile entirely - no change in video settings but I think the overall performance may have been improved.

Using NVRefreshTool 1.0, I can see that the card runs at close to 200FPS but drops down to the thirties and even the twenties during each "pause".

I'm out to re-install DirectX now.

**Stalemate** · June 26th, 2002, 07:21 PM

DirectX re-installed and colors brought down from 32 to 16 bits.

The only change is that I now get FPS highs of about 220 and lows at about 35.

I'm going to remove DivX and see what happens.

**Stalemate** · June 26th, 2002, 08:34 PM

Re-installed all WMP codec (just in case).
Removed DivX and associated utilities.

Result: 220-250 FPS at 800x600x16 (VSync off) with lows at around 45.

It's still there in video playback.

I'll go test gaming now.

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