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Games Stutter/Pause/Jerky
(Just a bit of background on my level of PC knowledge; I'm a technical writer who's been a Windows user now since version 3.0 and have been putting PCs together now for 5 years.)
I have an Inspiron 9300 with the following specifications:
* 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 6800 video card
* 1GB memory
* 1.86Mhz Pentium M CPU
Since I got my Inspiron 9300, I've had an ongoing issue with it: it has not been able to play 3D games properly.
All manifest the exact same behaviour: the graphics pause or stutter every few seconds. I emphasise that the _average_ frames-per-second is fine and the laptop can easily handle these games, some of which are up to 4 years old. I'm not trying to play any cutting-edge games on it.
However, every few seconds, the screen appears to lock for around a half-second. It doesn't matter what type of game; this happens in everything from Half-Life 2 (recent) to Neverwinter Nights (4 years old).
At first I thought it was due to online lag (since I was only playing World of Warcraft), but realised it shows up in any game, no matter how old or whether or not it uses networking/internet. I've noticed that on most occasions, the disk access light lights up.
I've done the following troubleshooting (in roughly this order):
- Attempted to play the games - even the 4 year old ones - at their very lowest visual settings; didn't make any difference to amount of stuttering
- Defragged the machine
- Run chkdisk
- Run Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool (passed).
- Used msconfig to stop all non-Microsoft background processes while trying to run games.
- Installed the latest version of all drivers from the Dell support site.
- Used compressed air to clean the heatsink and fan vents.
- Toggled wireless access off
- Checked the BIOS setting and Used SpeedswitchXP (http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/index.html SpeedswitchXP) to ensure the machine was running at full speed.
- Ensured that laptop was running at full CPU speed in BIOS (that is, Speed Step is enabled).
- Ensured I had the latest BIOS version installed (A05)
- Run the DirectX tests (passed).
- Rebooted and ran the Dell diagnostic program as advised by support (passed).
After all the above, I performed a complete reinstallation of the machine; that is, wiped the C partition, reformated it to NTSC and installed XP SP2 again, using the back-up CD that can be burnt from the Dell laptop.
I didn't install any further software other than 3 games to test. Again, same stuttering.
I've had no luck with support. Hope someone out there can help before I'm forced to sell.
Regards,
P.
Gravestone
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Posted July 21st, 2006 01:00
Tough one. Sounds like you have done the basics and beyond.
What is your virtual memory set to? Have you set your power settings to Always On?
Games all fully patched?
I'm not saying that the drivers at http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ are the way to go, but it would be a good way to find out if it is a driver issue causing the problem. I doubt it is a driver issue or there would be more posts about this issue.
What about other 3D apps, 3D screen savers, the Nvidia "Vulcan" or "Nalu" demos available at: http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_nvidia.html, do they have the same stutter?
Run 3D Mark http://www.futuremark.com/download/3dmark06/ or another benchmark, lets get some hard numbers.
Does it happen after the system has warmed up some, or does it happen on a cold system as well?
- Sorry for the late response; as you can imagine, I was very tired of having to deal with this problem so took a break from it and went off and played Oblivion on my desktop.
> What is your virtual memory set to?
I've tried everything from none at all up to 2GB in 512MB increments; I also tried putting the virtual memory cache on a seperate partition.
> Have you set your power settings to Always On?
Yup.
> Games all fully patched?
Yup. Tried a few other games since. The only one that appears to be OK is Day of Defeat, but since this is a game from 1999 that requires 2MB of video card memory and 32MB of RAM, I'm not exactly overwhelmed.
> I'm not saying that the drivers at http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ are the way to go, but it would be a good > way to find out if it is a driver issue causing the problem. I doubt it is a driver issue or there would be > more posts about this issue.
True; this is one thing I haven't done yet as I'm not entirely keen on the idea until I exhaust other possibilities. I'm not sure how video card drivers would cause disk stutter.
> What about other 3D apps, 3D screen savers, the Nvidia "Vulcan" or "Nalu" demos available at:
> http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_nvidia.html, do they have the same stutter?
Tried Nalu and it seemed fine.
> Run 3D Mark http://www.futuremark.com/download/3dmark06/ or another benchmark, lets get some hard numbers.
OK, did so; here's the results:
1881 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score - 794
HDR/SM3.0 Score - 696
CPU Score - 800
You can view detailed results at http://services.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=436405
Any idea if they are as expected?
> Does it happen after the system has warmed up some, or does it happen on a cold system as well?
Definitely either.
Cheers,
P. - Finally, I found a fix for this problem on this page:By default, Dell sets all their hard drives to “power saving mode” which keeps temps down, saves on battery, and might even prolong the life of the drive. This also makes the drive much slower and for gamers it causes stuttering as every time your pagefile needs to be accessed the HDD must turn on and start spinning. For those of you that want your HDD running “full speed” the way it should be, Notebook Hardware Control allows you to adjust the power management of your HDD, letting you run your HDD the way it should be, full blast and stutter-free in games.
Notebook Hardware Control can be downloaded from here:In the Hard Disk tab, setting Advanced Power Management to Max. Performance appears to have cured stuttering problems, woo-hoo.Is there any way to alert Dell Support to this?P. Gravestone
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Posted September 10th, 2006 23:00
Good thing I check my email once a month. :)
I can honestly say I would never have thought of this. I've never encountered this with any portable I have used but then again I don't have an I 9300, I have a Latitude D600 and don't really play games on it other than Zuma and Luxor. ;)
Is there anything in the BIOS that shows this or is it only the utility that shows the setting?
Dell monitors the forum, so someone will probably find it, but think about it, there are probably 10,000 technicians at Dell, no way they can all be advised of it.
Message Edited by Gravestone on 09-10-200607:21 PM
Well, I informed the Dell support person about the fix. Her only reply was to state that there was no such problem (I'm obviously hallucinating) and that I should only make configuration changes mandated by Dell-qualified experts such as herself (which gave me a hearty chuckle - remember, this is the same person who told me games couldn't be played on an Inspiron until I pointed her at her company's own marketing literature).
Needless to say, despite the fact that my machine is now performing as it should be, I have pretty much no confidence in Dell right now. It's one thing to be technically unknowledgable about your own products. It's another to repeatedly deny there's a problem and ignore your customers, even when they present you with both a detailed desciption of a problem and its solution.
I emailed Jeff Jarvis of the famous Buzzmachine blog over the issue; hopefully he can post about the issue at some stage, but in the meantime, I've posted about my experience on Dell's own blog, Direct2Dell.
Regards,
P.
Message Edited by oceanclub on 09-11-200604:20 AM
rwm32
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Posted July 18th, 2006 15:00