games on my computer like to "studder"

[MisterSako]

this only happens with Americas Army, and Need for Speed: Most wanted (i havent tried other games to see if this is happening)

this just started a couple days ago, its sort of like im running out of ram so the game gets choppy. but i have plenty of free ram, i even tried closing all my programs besides the game. the game will run fine but "studder" and almost freeze for abuot 3-5 seconds then continue on like normal.

i do regular spyware/adware and virus scans with norton anti virus, spybot S&D and Adaware (and i keep them all up to date)

i also ran aboutbuster and it didnt find anything. does anyone have any other ideas?

This is my dxdiag

[major_small]

check your CPU levels... are they spiking when this is happening?

do you have any virus scanners running or any other CPU or GPU intensive apps that just start doing something?

[MisterSako]

i opened windows task manager to the performance tab.

without anything major running besides firefox/thunderbird and aim/msn the usage is below 5% and it sometimes jumps up and down but never higher then 10 (which is abuot average)

i just opened need for speed and when the game started to stutter i alt tabbed out of the game to see the performance window. the little line graph thing showed the usage being up to 100%. which explains the stuttering but i dont understand why it does this now and not before?

the page file usage is 614MB and the bar graph is about 1/4th (im not exactly sure what that means but i dont know if it could be related)

[MisterSako]

i did just notice there are liek 5 scv hosts in my processes tab, arent there supposed to be less than that?

is there a list of super essential windows xp system processes that has to be running. i try to keep it so nothing runs in the background that isnt necessary and i like to run scans and things manualy so i can have them happen over night when they wont bother me

edit:btw what is system idle process supposed to be, it always says 95 under the CPU column, it seems to do nothing but its always there

[MisterSako]

update: it seems i found the problem unfourtantly

i disocvered this about 6 months after buying this computer, my mobo apparently has terriable AGP video card support. i first found this out when it started not being able to play some games, i was doing research and found about the agp slots. its continueing to get worse now.

i noticed in need for speed if i do a race, it stutters,but if i restart the race half way through it, it wont stutter until i get to the point in the race i restarted

this is telling me the problem is somehow invovling loading graphics into the video cards memory or something like that.

ive been wanting to just get a PCI card but im worried that i would just be throwing money away. (maybe for some reason the problem will continue) i tried contacting the manufacturer before with no response. i wish i could find out the exact problem if its the AGP or just video in general that the mobo isnt good with.

im contemplating onwaiting until vista comes out and buy a whole new computer for vista. or if i should keep using this one (1.8 ghz gig of ram blah blah blah). id rather get a whole new computer than a new mother board since my computer is edging onto the obselent edge of computing. (for games atleast it does everything else fine)

[SMurf]

The System Idle Process is that part of Windows that goes around everything (drivers, apps, etc.) saying "Everything alright here? Nothing for me to do?". This will always be around 95% usage unless something's hogging the CPU.

As for your other problem: yeah, could well be flakey AGP support (although you would've thought they'd get it right by now ). But buying a PCI card is like repairing a brick wall with bits of wood; You're going back in time and this won't improve your performance if it doesn't make it worse.

Next time you're in the market for a mobo, get one with PCI Express (PCIe). Welcome to the future.

[MisterSako]

when is vista supposed to come out? when it come sout im probaly gonna get a machine for it seeing how i virtually cant play any games anymore

[VirtualAce]

100% CPU is common for all games.

The process of ALT-TABBING to desktop to see the CPU usage while DX is running in the background will almost always have 100% CPU usage.

Your stutters are video related. You either need more video ram or your card cannot keep up. I have NFS: Most Wanted and it runs terrible on my card. Most Wanted requires a lot of video power since it looks to be nearly all bloom shaders and per-pixel lighting shaders.
It also has blur-shaders, tunnel-effect shaders, environment mapping shaders, etc, etc. Nearly the entire game is shaders and damn does it look sweet.

Drop the res to 800x600 and drop the Level Of Detail slider to about half. Test and continue dropping/increasing LOD until you get acceptable performance.

[MisterSako]

i already have every setting as low as it can go, i have to do this with all my games sinces my motherboard has that agp problem.

i meant by the hcpu usage history, it was 100% before i alt tabbed.

im pretty sure its because its having toruble writing to the video ram now running out of it it s 256 meg card.

if anyone is selling an apprxoaimtly 9600 raedeon ATI slot id be happy to buy it off of you (depending on the price)

[VirtualAce]

100% CPU has more to do with being inside of a loop than writing to video RAM. Sleep will fix that, but you don't want sleep() inside of a game. Most games write once to video RAM during the load phase. Writing to video RAM inside of a game is extremely costly.

[major_small]

yeah, 100% cpu is to be expected for windows, I just wanted him to check which process the CPU was dedicating it's time to.

[MisterSako]

i didnt mean the game was using 100% i meant there was 100% cpu usage

[MisterSako]

btw im looking into a new computer has anyone used these motherboards or know if theres anything exspecially bad/good about them

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813123251
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135211
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131569

as of now the first one is the one im going to get most likely, its going to go with this ram and processor (and a normal IDE hard drive which i havent picked out yet)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103535
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145464 (2x)

i dont want to end up with a crappy motherboard again