Windows 7: Stuttering on Games

Hi there

I am starting to lose patience with my laptop. Since the beginning of August, my games have started to stutter in gameplay. It is driving me mad now. This never happened before the end of July. I got my laptop in May 2011, and it was fine through May, June and July. Is the problem the sound card, the graphics or something else. I have installed the latest driver ( I think. Something called Catalyst Mobility Suite). My Acer aspire 5920g never did this and I do wish I had not spilt drink over it. I've already tried lowering the settings on games, I've tried software like Gamebooster and the framerates are fine. Running around 70 to 85 fps on most games. It is just that there is stuttering about every 40 seconds. My only guess now is that it is the sound card. The games that are stuttering badly are City bus simulator 2010, Openbve (freeware train sim), Railworks 2. There are very few and little stutters in Ship simulator 2008 and in Ship Simulator extremes, Bus driver gold and 18 Wheels of steel extremes 2, are working as usual!

My computer is a Hp pavilion dv7 4144ea.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
with 512 MB dedicated memory
2.20 GHz AMD Athlon II P340 (2 cores)
4 Gb RAM
17.3 inch Glossy LCD (LED-lit) (1600x900 px / 16:9)
IDT audio HD. With altec lansing speakers and dolby advanced audio
Windows 7 Home premium 64 bit.

Other specifications here

Index of /product-specifications-and-comparison/ ... -shopping/

Has anyone got ideas how to solve the stutters. The framerates are fine and they don't go even if the game or ATI catalyst is on low settings. Please help. I have no idea why this has suddenly come on as it was happening before.

Thanks in advance



P.S Please could you explain not in too much technical terms.

When installing the driver for the graphics card I do the custom install and don't install the suite just the driver, I found that in my experience with it it just creates problems rather than fixes them and it a memory hog too.

Ok. Tried a custom install but no difference.

Have you install the latest directx?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...res/directx-11

Try running the directx diagnostic tool and see if you have problems that arise from doing so.

Go to start and type dxdiag in the search box and hit enter and check each tab it will tell you if you have issues which graphics and sound at the bottom of the window. Also check if your drivers are digitally signed.

Game performance is highly dependent on hardware, also the game you're playing, game settings used, and drivers.

With that said most laptops are not suited for gaming, so some games, Crysis for example, will struggle (even at low settings) on that system. By the way it would help if you told us what game(s) you're having issues with.

Bottom line: Depending on what game you're playing/trying to play your system specs may struggle to keep up. This is where the Recommended system specs of a game comes into play.

You could look through this to see if something may help - Tips on Troubleshooting Game Issues. One thing I do suggest you do is Update your Direct X files

And ATI's Catalyst suit is not a system hog, epsecially since you have 4gig of RAM.

Let us know.

I have said about the games. Also, I didn't have this issue up until recently. They were running just fine. The games were running well. Anyway, I have the latest Direct X version and there are no problems according to the dxdiag.

Could be an overheating issue as well. Try monitoring your system temperatures.

Also, try to remember what have you done exactly before the stuttering started. Have you installed a new driver or something? If so, try rolling back to an older version.

How do you roll back to old drivers?

Click Start Button then type Device Manager in the search box and press enter. Select a device from the list and in the drop down menu double click its driver. Then, go to the "Driver" tab and press "Roll Back Driver".

Rolling back the drivers hasn't worked I'm afraid.