severe stuttering problems in SH3. but why?

[BilgeMatt]

Hi all--

I purchased SH3 a couple years back but just recently decided to get back into it and installed it on my desktop with its new install of Win XP. I installed the SH3 1.4b DVD patch and have installed no mods.

For some reason, I run into severe stuttering and freezing when in the #2 training mission (naval artillery). It seems to happen when a ship is exploding and sinking. And in particular when using binoculars or UZO. Sometimes it's so bad, it takes me a minute to regain control to exit the mission.

I've tried installing the latest Nvidia drivers, the latest drivers for my sound hardware (AD 1988) and have tried turning off all nonessential things running in the background (ipod junk, defrag service, Mcafee services). I've also tried turning sound hardware acceleration all the way up and all the way off. No difference!

Things do seem to run better when I set 'particle density' to 0. But it just doesn't look good at all, and my machine shouldn't have to be set that low.

My system details:

Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 (2 x 2.4Ghz)
Win XP SP3
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7800 GT (256MB RAM)


What's weird is I have no performance issues when playing relatively modern games (like Dead Space, Half-Life 2, Bioshock)

I was planning on getting back into SH3, maybe doing the GWX3 thing, etc. But if the second training mission causes problems this bad, then I'm not sure I want to pursue it

I guess the next thing to check is cooling on the video card, and cpu (?)
anyone know of some programs that will log system temperatures with timestamps or something similar?

Please throw any suggestions you have at me, at this point I'll try anything

Thanks!
-Matt

[K-61]

Do you have an onboard sound card or a standalone sound card? A lot of systems today have the sound processor on the motherboard. My gaming computer had an onboard processor and I would get the stuttering problem when the game was trying to render explosions and the like. As soon as I installed a dedicated sound card the issue went away. The sound card on my gaming desktop is a SoundBlaster Audigy Value. Not very expensive at all. Something to consider.

[ccc]

I had this problem with my sound for the longest time. Severe stuttering and freezing due to multiple sounds (planes, explosions) in SH3 & 4. I just had to put up with it but finding someone else may have the same problem got me thinking about it again.

I think I may have found a solution. My onboard sound shares an IRQ with the USB controllers. I just disabled "legacy USB support" in BIOS, and it seems to be perfectly smooth now! It's something to try, although no guarantees since I don't know if it's the same problem as you have, and I haven't had time to test it beyond a few training missions.

[BilgeMatt]

Ahoy, K-61, thx for the reply. Yes this is something I've been thinking about as I pore over the various posts by people that have reported issues. Kinda sad if this is indeed the case, shouldn't the AD chip be up to the task of doing multiple explosion sounds? These things are made to play back 5.1 audio for DVDs, etc!

Fwiw, I just ran some stress and benchmark tests with Furmark ( http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/ ) and my video card seemed to hold up well. It ran at 103C for quite some time in the stress test, before I terminated it at 10 minutes. I also ran the benchmark and seemed to come in ahead of the comparable systems (of course, nothing by today's video card standards): http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fu...d3b72854132e8e

compared with the standard table it does better than the Geforce 8600 GT that is cited here, run with the default settings: http://ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/#comptable


I think I might have an old sound card kicking around the garage. I'll take a look around.

[K-61]

BM,I never thought to check into a possible IRQ sharing snag. I've now been with my SoundBlaster card for so long I'll simply stick with it. On my new gaming notebook everything works fine, but I did pay a pretty penny to get a higher end notebook specifically for gaming. In general I'm a fan of dedicated hardware for sound and video, allowing the CPU to do what it does best without having to carry extra processing. Onboard controllers are convenient if you don't push the system hard and also allow for inexpensive systems.

[BilgeMatt]

heh I realized right after I created my nick that 'BM' would be the initials. kinda fitting for bilge, I guess

well this doesn't bode well: I plugged in a USB sound device I have (Edirol) and made that the default sound playback device, and I listened with headphones. Things go fine until I hit the training again..then the same issues.

There must be some low-level incompatibility with my video hardware and the way the code is written. I might just go for broke and install GWX3 to see what happens.

heh I see Ubisoft has a total of 7 questions on their support site for SH3. You know you're desperate when you're checking the publisher's site!

I have an Nvidia 8800 card I plan to move out of my MythTV box so I think I'll try installing that.

thx for the tips, guys!

[K-61]

Let us know how it works out for you. And don't despair. Soon you will be promoted to "nub."

[BilgeMatt]

ok so I cracked open the old PC case and went crazy with a vacuum and cleaned it out. it was fairly dusty..not excessively, but dusty. but more importantly I reconnected some fans i had turned off because of fear of noise. well the fans are pretty high quality so they're not that noisy.

anywhooo, i ran the Furmark stress test again, and this time the GPU maxed at 93C and after a minute or so went back down to 91/92C while still under load. So I think ok cool, the video card is running 10C cooler under severe load.

Went back into this SH3 you speak of and loaded up the same tutorial, and had RealTemp logging (thx to someone's earlier post for the app tip). this time the stuttering wasn't nearly as bad as my previous encounters with it, and I had cranked the particle setting back up to 100, too. During the times of lockup/stuttering, the GPU temp seemed to be around 82-84C. if only I had known about this app before, I would have done logging pre-vacuum and fan reactivation. Now that said, I see in the log during another lockup that my cpu load(s) went to 100 for at least 6-10 seconds (I was logging in 5 second intervals). Now that I chalk up to ... Windows XP's inherent...er how to say this nicely..? But that would definitely aggravate a situation of graphic lockup.

So this begs the question, even though a gpu stress test can draw the fuzzy doughnut just fine at 103C, perhaps moving 'real' data around the gpu and memory is adversely affected by heat, even if we're not at the thermal limits of the hardware? I see some reports to this effect when Googling around a bit.

So before I overhaul my system I'm going to work on some good cooling solutions. Probably not like the guy who posted here with the dual dryer hose tubing going to the window.

I will do some more testing and logging and report back. I know this stuff is riveting! or at the very least, good for treating insomnia.

manning the pump,
bilgematt

[Tessa]

Since my motherboard on my PC died awhile back I've been stuck using my laptop to do anything. It's got pretty good specs (7600 gt nvidia dedicated card) and a 2.2 ghz dual core. Sadly not like my desktops 3.1 fx-62 cpu and ati 7650 (all water cooled) which never experienced slowdowns anywhere.

This laptop suffers from poor heat dissipation issues, and requires almost complete dissasembly to just clean the fins on the heat sinks. After putting blocks under the laptop to raise it up about 1/2" the thing stopped overheating - was only in the time about 2-3 before the laptop would shut itself down (max temp threshold had been exceeded) did I experience any noticeable slow down or jerkiness.

What helped the most was switching from XP to 7, since I use Photoshop a lot XP would frequently crash or just be unable to handle what I was doing. After switching to 7 only crashes have come from overheating, SH3 runs a lot smoother even with higher settings than I did when I was using XP. My previous video card was the same as yours and worked great. Since usb ports are always active (always polling for new devices and drawing power) if you have some that you don't need/use and can disable or shut off that might give you a little more performance.

[ccc]

Originally Posted by BilgeMatt

ok so I cracked open the old PC case and went crazy with a vacuum and cleaned it out.

Don't ever do this. The vacuum cleaner creates static electricity, which can be a killer of sensitive electronic parts. Sounds like nothing went wrong fortunately.

[BilgeMatt]

thx for the tip CCC, that hadn't occurred to me. fwiw, the case is a giant tower of steel and aluminum and our relative humidity around here is running around 70% so maybe that worked in my favor. I didn't vacuum directly on parts that weren't connected to the mobo, except a plastic fan i had disconnected. I'll be more careful next time

Tessa- heh I tried to install Win 7 in this thing and the dopey install saw my hard drive and then claimed it couldn't see it when it went to start the install! apparently a known issue. But yeah I'm using Win 7 at work and it's pretty good (for Windows! )

ok so i just ordered one of these beasts: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835186016

luckily my case is gigantic enough to hold the thing. i'll report back hopefully with good news after the install/testing.

[Jimbuna]

Those temperatures are pretty high....good luck with the cooling kit when it arrives.

[BilgeMatt]

well not that cool, but a lot cooler. I finished installing the beast and at first it didn't actually lower the peak temperature that I previously was able to reach with Furmark stress test. But at least it did take much longer to reach that same 93C that I achieved after the PC cleanout. Also since the heat sink compound was just newly applied, it might have needed to bed-in.

The next day, I installed a small pci slot exhaust fan which sits above (tower case) the vid card. This brought the peak temp down a few degrees. After that, I attached a 92mm thermistor-driven fan (Silenx) to the the beast cooler. After that (and rearranging some cables in the case a bit) I now hit a peak of around 65C with the Furmark stress test. almost 40C lower than when I started all this

One issue is that for a tower case, this one is not the best when it comes to cooling a hot card (like a video card). The design is great for cooling CPU and RAM, as there's a cowl that covers them like a tunnel, with fans at front and back of the case. The only other exhaust fan on the case comes from the PSU at the top. But in spite of all this and while still running with the Asus "Q-Fan" config under 'optimal', things are much better.

Anywhooo back to the game. I found almost no stutters in that same training mission. Had one bad one but I think that some of them are related to CPU load peaking for some reason, and not the video card's throughput. As Tessa mentioned, I think a move to Win 7 should make things smoother overall. This mobo/cpu combo still has some life in it; I have even overclocked the RAM a bit to nearly 4400MB/s (setting DDR2 888 + some CAS tweaks), although supposedly I can get it up to DDR2 1066 with the right Kingston RAM (according to Asus). I might upgrade the HDD to something with bigger cache like 32 or 64 MB.

Blah blah blah, but many thanks to everyone to chimed in, your support was very helpful. I can definitely recommend that anyone with choppy system response/performance should analyze their "thermal situation" to make sure it isn't a source of problems.

Ok, I think I'm ready to get back in the game

[pickinthebanjo]

Originally Posted by BilgeMatt

So before I overhaul my system I'm going to work on some good cooling solutions. Probably not like the guy who posted here with the dual dryer hose tubing going to the window..

manning the pump,
bilgematt

I guess he's referring to me I actually did not do that, that was just some pic I found, but I do like the idea since winter is coming.

anyways just run to the stor and grab a gts 210 for $40, they run sh4 at max and have 512mb ddr3. I used one until I got the gtx 460, a good affordable card

Originally Posted by pickinthebanjo

I guess he's referring to me I actually did not do that, that was just some pic I found, but I do like the idea since winter is coming.

anyways just run to the stor and grab a gts 210 for $40, they run sh4 at max and have 512mb ddr3. I used one until I got the gtx 460, a good affordable card

Whaaaaa?? 40 bucks and it runs SH4 at max?? I assume were talking about graphics cards?? what store could I get this in? and is it compatible with most stock Pcs?