Windows 7: Stuttering on Games

as those games you mention are relatively "old" now..
try updating your DX9c installation:
Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - DirectX End-User Runtime

it won't affect your DX11 installation and will ensure that your PC
can play older (pre DX10 and DX11) games..

- I'd do it anyway, at least you'll eliminate one possible cause..

Yeah I mentioned the same thing (same link). OP never said if he did.

sorry, didn't spot that..

and it's a good piece of general advice to anyone reading this thread..
it does no harm to ensure that your DX9c installation is up to date..

- fingers crossed for a swift end to the OP's stuttering problem..!!

Yeah I often reference steps 5 & 6 here Tips on Troubleshooting Game Issues.

Anyway no harm as he hears it from two people now

OK. Still stuttering. However, how do I change to run a game in Direct X 9?

If the game is directx9 it's already is running in DirectX9 mode. Please see step #6 for explaination - Tips on Troubleshooting Game Issues

Actually, guys... Let's stop for a moment.

First off, please list off the games you are trying to play that you are encountering the stuttering.

Second - Try and use some sort of CPU monitoring system when you are playing these games... Please note the times when you see stuttering and match it with what your CPU load is. If you have say, a logitech G510, G15, or one of the other Gaming Keyboards, there is performance monitoring tools that make use of the screen those keyboards use. I highly recommend it as a means of helping troubleshoot some things when you lack a 2nd screen to put gadgets or other means of viewing performance hits during those times.

Now, one important thing I have noticed when I look at your original post. You are using a 2 core system. How old is this processor and also look at the requirements for your games you are having stuttering issues.

I know that I had an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz system and would CPU cap constantly on some games while I had Firefox running and an RSS feed reader running while playing a game. Even with those off, there was the occasional CPU spike. That also resulted in stuttering in the game due to CPU loads and more recent Windows 7 updates that are taxing the system. While your speed is significantly higher, the other problem will be whether or not the CPU has the local cache large enough to handle the higher level data. A faster speed processor != better if the CPU Local Cache is limited, or in this case, having 2 cores trying to handle the load instead of 4 or 8 (Quad Core with 2 logical cores per physical core)

While making sure the drivers are up to date, it is also important to look at the CPU load of your system, as this will also directly affect your gaming experience. If it is just teetering at 90% load most of the time, and when heavier things seem to start stuttering, that is more than likely the major problem for you.

The other thing you should consider also is your memory load. If your memory free is less than 30%, you may be also suffering page faulting, which means, memory swapping. This will also slow performance and cause some cpu spiking due to Disk access, especially if you are playing your games on the same disk as your system.

was hoping it wouldn't be a CPU bottleneck..

- still got my fingers crossed..

Well, one could hope, however, here is what I am seeing:

AMD Athlon II P340 2.2GHz processor... This is derivative from the Phenom series AMD. If we look at this chart:

PassMark CPU Lookup

My old Intel Core 2 Duo (E6600 @ 2.4 GHz) processor rated around 1506, the P340 rated around 1304.

And yes, this could be skewed, however, one of the things is, my Core 2 Duo was suffering some serious stuttering on some of the newer games, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Medal of Honor 2010 and, strangely enough, in World of Warcraft, due to CPU spiking. Of course, part of it was also due to background programs running such as Web browser connected to mail services and facebook or a lightweight feedreader trying to do RSS feed gathering.

The problem is, that some of the newer games are now pushing the limits of some of the older processors, hell, my old system was 4 years old and I was seeing FPS drops and stuttering. I used a Logitech G15 Keyboard and the SirReal LCD to show me what the CPU and mem usage and seeing the CPU literally max out during the times system was a bit laggy or stuttering.

Hence my suggestion to use a G510/G15 Gaming keyboard and using the performance monitoring while playing and look down at the screen to see what it shows for CPU usage.

Also, looking at the wiki for the Athlon II, it states:

One thing to note is that the processor architecture is important to note. The lack of a fast L3 Cache and the lower processor speed will affect how well it will perform over all. Intel chips also have a much better 'brute force' method which is why they tend to do better than the AMDs and also why Intel charges more than AMD on a performance level.

Again, I mentioned my older Intel Core 2 Duo chip and citing the CPUmark rating to iterate that there is a possibility that the CPU could be the limiting factor. If my ailing Core 2 Duo which is benched slight better than the mentioned CPU was encountering the problems in question due to capping of the CPU, there is a chance that may be the culprit... HOWEVER, this cannot be confirmed unless you do empirical observations with a CPU Performance monitor while it is happening on his system.

I think we're going way deeper than necessary for this issue. I honestly don't think this is a case of/for bottlenecking. Yes I know it happens but you can make this argument for any system.

Anyway you could have to most powerful system in the world and still have stuttering/performance issues. Thus the other part of the equation is drivers, software, coding, and patches/fixes.

With regards to running apps/open Windows while gaming, yeah that'll impact performance. If the OP is doing that, than I would suggest, as you do, that the system isn't powerful enough to multitask that way and to close all open app/windows while trying to game.

At any rate the way he describes the issue it sounds more like a software/driver issue. Though I would think his system specs aren’t going to lend themselves to 100FPS speeds.

You also have to look at game requirements vs actual system requirements. And, as I suggest here - Tips on Troubleshooting Game Issues - recommended means minimum.

I would also add that some games will struggle depending on game settings. In short he’s not going to run too many games at high settings on that system.

Now we can agree that the game(s) may be putting out more information than the system can handle, but can we call that bottlenecking??? I don’t think so, but…..

My two cents