Source of 6800s gfx "hiccups" found?

[Sentential]

Just wanted to share this little tidbit with y'all. Ive run a number of video tests as to why my 6800 keeps freezing at random intervals for 1-2 secs. Significantally dropping my frame rate.

Oddly enough during a sheer coincidence I think I have found its source. It occured to me that every time I closed out all of my programs during hardcore benches, this hiccuping goes away...odd.

So today while running Rthdribl I was noticed how with each spike of CPU load from F@H my video would do the infamous "stutter / hiccup" that the 6800s are known for.

Very strange indeed....

I went ahead and closed out F@H completely from the task manager. My hiccuping was *completely* gone. I proceeded to reload it and disable it and compare my graphical peformance.

With F@H on <with any % cpu load> ever time the cpu load would spike the video would stutter or hiccup. With F@H disabled i no longer saw these random 40-60FPS dropoffs.

So for those who are suffering from this problem... are you running F@H or not? if So plz post here.

If this is indeed the solution I know this will help out alot of pissed off 6800 owners.

-Sen

[Overclocker550]

looks like folding is taking too many cpu cycles away from whats needed when gaming, hence the low fps and hickups :(

[diehrd]

You may want to set affinity when gaming to low on folding ..

[Mr.Guvernment]

BOINC did this as well previosuly with a MySQL and apache / php servers we had - the program would stall if BOINC was running - but turn it off all works fine - seems they are not doing what they say and ONLY using those" extra" CPU cycles anymore..?

[crimedog]

f@h is on low proirity by default, if it was shooting up to 100% that's because your video application was using 0%. I always run f@h and never have problems with it interfering with anything. I think the issue is more that you're running 512mb ram.

[Roids-A-Flamin']

Interesting. i didn't know that having only 512mb of ram had this effect. Here's some interesting things I've noticed. On the following system I was running 22fps average with 1280x1024x32 with 8xS AA and 16x AF with all settings set to very high detail.

Athlon XP 1700+ (default speed 1.46ghz)
ASUS A7V333 (4x AGP)
1024mb PC3200
EVGA 6800GT (410/1075mhz)

However on my new system benchmarks and far cry run like a 13 year old with down syndrome at the special olympics. Hiccups and stuttering galore and like 13fps average on the same settings as my previous system. Difference being on my system (see sig) I stepped down to 512mb of ram because the other stick wouldn't work. So could it be possible hiccups and stutters during games and benchmarks is due to lack of memory?

[Mr.Guvernment]

Many new games easily use 512 of ram - + your O/S and any background services.