Source Games "Stuttering" At Times

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

This is a problem affecting all Source games I own, namely the Half Life 2 series, Portal, Team Fortress 2 (which uses the Half Life 2 engine, of course), and L4D2. Near the end of December I switched from Vista to Windows 7, which is when this problem began.

When I start the game, everything runs fine and incredibly smoothly. However, within 5-20 minutes, the problem starts happening. The FPS drops like a rock (to 2-3 FPS), the sound loops, and the game becomes unplayable for 10-20 seconds. Then it goes back to smooth normal playing for a minute or two, then stutters, then smooth, etc. I have the most up to date nVidia driver for the 9700M GT.

I’ve tried lowering the graphical settings to the lowest. Doesn’t help.

I’ve tried disabling multicore. Doesn’t help.

I’ve tried disabling Vsync. Doesn’t help.

I’ve verified the game files and defragmented them. I’ve told Norton 360 to ignore the appcache folder bit. I’ve tried setting it on Low and High priority with the task manager. I’ve tried manually setting the CPU affinity to either 0 or 1 with the task manager.

Nothing seems to work. Any help you might be able to offer would be appreciated.

#2

Looks like your card is overheating, you could try installing rivatuner and lowering the clock speed, and clean your laptop’s air vents.

#3

Any idea why this would only be happening in Source games, then? No issue with Mechwarrior 4, Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft 3, etc.

#4

Do you see the prompt “igfx error” popping up? Try opening the console and putting in “mat_dx level70”.

#5

I don’t get any prompt. If I try entering that bit it says unknown command in L4D2, but are you referring to https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Mat_dxlevel ?

#6

I’m not sure what causes this but something similar was happening to me in TF2 a few days ago. Try opening Task Manager and closing everything but steam, explorer and your AV (or disconnect from the internet and close your AV aswell) then try launching it, it may be something to do with random scans from your AV as I’ve certainly had that problem before.

#7

I tried disabling Norton 360 completely. System screamed that it was unsafe, blah blah blah, but still got the issue.

Here’s a video of the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLYQacYDt5Y

First 30 seconds is what it’s like during the stuttering, next minute is closer to “normal,” though I am still running FRAPS, so :wink:

#8

Maybe you should try either upgrading or even downgrading your graphics drivers. I know that bioshock had a similar issue and downgrading my drivers fixed that and all other games were fine too.

Are you running x86(32bit) or 64bit?

#9

64 bit. Here’s a screenshot of CanYouRunThis for Crysis Warhead (which I don’t own), the only thing that’s changed is going to Windows 7 instead of Vista.

960×720 74.2 KB

I’ve tried reverting from my current and most up to date driver to the following:

195.81
195.62
195.55
195.39
186.81
186.03
185.85
185.81
179.48

Didn’t work

Or do you mean something else?

#10

I have Windows 7 as well, and the same graphics card, too. Everything is fine with me.

Like Sersoft said, it could be that it’s overheating. I installed an extra fan on my PC when I was having these problems, and it seemed to have worked. Could be a number of things.

#11

Use Everest to check your CPU and GPU temperatures when the lag starts.

#12

It could be spyware, it could be a slow hard disk, it could be low memory, it could be incompatible software, in fact at this point I would recommend reinstalling the OS.

#13

I also had this problem on Vista 64 bit, but damn I cannot remember what the real issue was.

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