stuttering in games. (mainly valve)

[sotorious]

Almost same setup and just tried this and seem to seem to play smooth again. The only bad thing is now I have to confront creative to fix there driver and to switch back and forth from onboard for play and creative for everything else.

So you're able to play TF2/etc. online stutter free with your onboard sound enabled? I've got my onboard sound disabled via the BIOS (has been this way since I built this system), didn't even bother to try gaming with it instead of my XFi.

Creative and their drivers have been really disappointing for a while now (there was definitely trouble with Vista as well), I wouldn't hold your breath for a fix from them.

try playing with your on board and see if that helps you, go into your bios and enable it and download the latest drivers, while disabling your other sound card.

 

[burger]

Almost same setup and just tried this and seem to seem to play smooth again. The only bad thing is now I have to confront creative to fix there driver and to switch back and forth from onboard for play and creative for everything else.

So you're able to play TF2/etc. online stutter free with your onboard sound enabled? I've got my onboard sound disabled via the BIOS (has been this way since I built this system), didn't even bother to try gaming with it instead of my XFi.

Creative and their drivers have been really disappointing for a while now (there was definitely trouble with Vista as well), I wouldn't hold your breath for a fix from them.

try playing with your on board and see if that helps you, go into your bios and enable it and download the latest drivers, while disabling your other sound card.

Well after pulling out my Creative X-FI card I reinstalled the on-board drivers and hooked everything back up to my stereo and guess what!! It still shutters! So right now I'm thinking it's some kind of windows7 setting. idk :huh: Some kind service allocating audio processes? Someone in the Creative Labs forum was talking about the Audiodg.exe having a memory leak? lol idk either. I know you don't have an xfi card sotorious but im guess this is from some audio conflicts. I'm about to give up and not play for a bit.

 

[sotorious]

So you're able to play TF2/etc. online stutter free with your onboard sound enabled? I've got my onboard sound disabled via the BIOS (has been this way since I built this system), didn't even bother to try gaming with it instead of my XFi.

Creative and their drivers have been really disappointing for a while now (there was definitely trouble with Vista as well), I wouldn't hold your breath for a fix from them.

try playing with your on board and see if that helps you, go into your bios and enable it and download the latest drivers, while disabling your other sound card.

Well after pulling out my Creative X-FI card I reinstalled the on-board drivers and hooked everything back up to my stereo and guess what!! It still shutters! So right now I'm thinking it's some kind of windows7 setting. idk :huh: Some kind service allocating audio processes? Someone in the Creative Labs forum was talking about the Audiodg.exe having a memory leak? lol idk either. I know you don't have an xfi card sotorious but im guess this is from some audio conflicts. I'm about to give up and not play for a bit.

and your having a problem in tf2 only??? if you disable multicore if you dont have it disabled already, also if you have an anti virus try uninstalling. does your sound loop??? or is it just a stutter and it freezes for a sec and sound is fine...

 

[Diosoth]

I have had no stuttering on Valve games, but I use Steam-free versions which might be a BIG factor.

Sorry, But I do not feel it's necessary OR fair to require I have an internet connection running to play an offline single player mode. It's not as if all these anti-piracy measures have even done anything to stop piracy, but they always add on needless crap for legal consumers. if the game company insists on treating a paying customer like a potential thief, then screw 'em

 

[mushroomboy]

Try disabling cache flushing on the drive, though I'd read what it does first so you know what your disabling. It helped me with my Fear 2 loading times, which were ****ing long.

 

[BusOfTheUndead]

I have had no stuttering on Valve games, but I use Steam-free versions which might be a BIG factor.

Sorry, But I do not feel it's necessary OR fair to require I have an internet connection running to play an offline single player mode. It's not as if all these anti-piracy measures have even done anything to stop piracy, but they always add on needless crap for legal consumers. if the game company insists on treating a paying customer like a potential thief, then screw 'em, I'll run a cracked version regardless.

I love reading the justifications people use for stealing. You do NOT need an internet connection running to play Steam games. You only need to activate the games once then you can play them in offline mode. It's no more work then downloading the pirated versions you are playing. You sure need an internet connection to pirate the games.

 

[Dragoon]

I have had no stuttering on Valve games, but I use Steam-free versions which might be a BIG factor.

Sorry, But I do not feel it's necessary OR fair to require I have an internet connection running to play an offline single player mode. It's not as if all these anti-piracy measures have even done anything to stop piracy, but they always add on needless crap for legal consumers. if the game company insists on treating a paying customer like a potential thief, then screw 'em, I'll run a cracked version regardless.

I love reading the justifications people use for stealing. You do NOT need an internet connection running to play Steam games. You only need to activate the games once then you can play them in offline mode. It's no more work then downloading the pirated versions you are playing. You sure need an internet connection to pirate the games.

Can we get back on topic?
While problems are fixed I'm still following this topic.

Maybe a Moderator could delete the posts of Diosoth and BusOfTheUndead?
Not that more people get tempted going off.


@Burger
You did try already what Hipzilla has pointed out earlier her?
http://www.sevenforums.com/sound-audio/31980-lag-online-games-windows-7-a.html

Because I got an X-FI Titanium and onboard Realteak HD Audio. I had stuttering with both of them. After I removed the link between MMCSS and Audio service the stuttering disappeared. Now I have both soundcards (the Microphone support of the HD Audio is superior to the X-Fi (shame on Creative)) and multicore support enabled, and neither is even putting a dent on the performance.

However I noticed Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer doesn't like windowed mode.
Sometimes for inexplicable reason the framerate suddenly goes down. Never happens in fullscreen. Something unique as I prefer to play most games in windows mode because of my dual display setup and performance was never an issue.

 

[skunksmash]

just play nice you lot........

 

[hipzilla]

I enabled my onboard sound, and yanked the XFi out of my system. I also went and reversed the MMCSS fix that I had recently applied just so the testing was accurate.

The stutter came back.

Turned MMCSS off again, and the stutter was gone.

So I'm back on my XFi (onboard disabled via BIOS), MMCSS fix is applied, and the stutter is gone. It's stupid that I'd have to disable a service and kill a registry key to play these Steam games smoothly but what're you going to do? Hopefully Valve will release a patch for Steam/Source Engine games to fix this, but for now this is an ok solution.

 

[burger]

@Burger
You did try already what Hipzilla has pointed out earlier her?
"lag" in online games with Windows 7

No, but I just did.

I put my creative card back in and edited the registry and seem to have done the trick. I'll have to play more tongiht and this week to see a long term effect. I'm glad pinstripe posted.

 

[sotorious]

mine seems to be gone as well but i think im so anal any lil thing that happens im just waiting for it to happen again almost like im looking for the problem to happen.

That guy also made an update to his post.

 

[pinstripe]

Hey guys, glad my thread was helpful. A little +rep would be nice. Also, I have updated my post and extended it. While that registry fix helps smooth things out and reduce lag, I noticed in other games it could cause audio glitches. So I found another fix (more elegant), where you leave MMCSS running, but you disable the network throttling aspect of it (instead of nuking the entire thing). That way you get lag free games and balanced audio.

http://www.sevenforums.com/sound-audio/31980-lag-online-games-windows-7-a.html#post331641

Satorious, would you mind updating your original post so people know about the fix without having to go to the 8th page? Also, I see this fix helped and you have a quad core, which is very interesting, I thought only older, slower systems would have this issue, but it seems I was wrong.

 

[Dragoon]

I enabled my onboard sound, and yanked the XFi out of my system. I also went and reversed the MMCSS fix that I had recently applied just so the testing was accurate.

The stutter came back.

Turned MMCSS off again, and the stutter was gone.

So I'm back on my XFi (onboard disabled via BIOS), MMCSS fix is applied, and the stutter is gone. It's stupid that I'd have to disable a service and kill a registry key to play these Steam games smoothly but what're you going to do? Hopefully Valve will release a patch for Steam/Source Engine games to fix this, but for now this is an ok solution.

I enabled my onboard sound, and yanked the XFi out of my system. I also went and reversed the MMCSS fix that I had recently applied just so the testing was accurate.

The stutter came back.

Turned MMCSS off again, and the stutter was gone.

So I'm back on my XFi (onboard disabled via BIOS), MMCSS fix is applied, and the stutter is gone. It's stupid that I'd have to disable a service and kill a registry key to play these Steam games smoothly but what're you going to do? Hopefully Valve will release a patch for Steam/Source Engine games to fix this, but for now this is an ok solution.

I didn't disabled MMCSS, I just did the reg fix. MMCSS shutdown itself anyway after booting. I think you can keep you on-board turned on if you need it.
I myself have it. Has the advantage others can watch movies and get sound from stereo while I keep playing with my headset.

Beside that I'm the only one thinking X-Fi drivers are crap?
Considering the abilities of my on-board Realtek HD Audio to X-Fi Titanium with it lousy drivers, I regret the money I spent. EAX 5 is nice, but don't offset the investment.
Their drivers should the most stable you can get, at least compared to a free on-board sound.
I think when they missed the change from selling soundcards to consumers, to directly selling chips to mainboard manufacturer their company went downhill.

 

[sotorious]

everyone that did this fix can you upload your specs so we can determine if its mainly singe core or multi cores.

that would be very helpful, thank you.

 

[Dragoon]

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400

 

[mushroomboy]

Something I've noticed that helped performance is disk cache flushing, Fear 2 was taking forever to load and would lag real bad but after I checked to disable windows right-cache buffer flushing it was better. Though mind you all I have is Fear2 and CSS installed. =P CSS works fine.