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View Full Version : Sata, decompression, everything all around


rashal
08-25-05, 05:28 AM
Hello.

I've been having slight problems with games ever since I installed my new rig. While I play games like Doom3, F.E.A.R, and BF2 (doesnt happen on HL2 though), I get some stutters (like real heavy ones, near freezing) for about a secound or two, and than everything goes on as smooth as it was before... this happens every time something new happens, like every time I get in a new area, or look at a something new... As if stuff is being loaded somewhere. It usually happens at the beggining of the gaming time, and doesnt happen when I'm a few minutes into the game. as if things get warmed up after starting cold.

My specs:

A64 venice 3200+
DFI lanparty UT nf4 ultra -D (23/6 bios)
Gig'o ram. Mushkin Redlines XP4000 (downclocked to 200mhz running 1:1 of cource, solid as a rock at 2-2-2-5, 3v) 512x2mb
Hitachi deskstar SATA 120GB (8mb buffer something)
Geforce 6600GT (the 128mb gddr3 thingie) by XFX

And now for some recent history.

The first time I started this computer it was with a gig'o mushkin blackline ram (512x2, 2-2-2-5). The memory itself was defective and had a hard time running 1T timings on most latencies. Before I was fully aware of these problems I installed windows and all drivers. At first I installed all the chipset drives that came along with the DFI disk. Old nforce drives which werent even for x64 windows. Anyways I experianced some game crashes and slight stutters (as I described above).

I RMAed my mushkins, got some redlines, installed them, lunched windows, updated nforce drivers.... Everything seemed to work fine but new games (such as BF2 and FEAR) hard locked evey once in a while on very specific spots (for example FEAR locked at level loading, and if I pressed esc to access the menu in the middle of the game). Anywas, I got ****ed and formatted the crap out of everything.

New windows. Installed fresh 6.66 nforce drivers, fresh 77.77 vga drivers, downloaded the realtek drivers 3.75 for the sound module (I think it's 3.75, cant recall). Without the sound drivers installed, windows boots in about half a secound (unlike the 30 secound piriod it took it to boot before I formatted), with sound drivers installed it takes it around 3-5 secounds. Kinda annoying and I guess it's because the sound drivers arent 100% x64 compatible. Anyways I had KOTOR2 handy so I installed and played it, not stutters... But I guess it doesnt count as a resource demanding modern game...

Now I looked around the net for some answers, and I stumbled on a term called "texture decompression delay". That seems to suit my problem very well as it seems like there is a delay when textures decompress for the first time... I'm not sure if this problem remains now that I formatted and installed everything properly, but if it does remain, how can I get rid of it? Also, it might be possible that the hard lock problem is still there also. I'll have to check both though.

Now one major thing I had in mind was the harddrive sata drivers... OH ****! now I remembered! The mobo came with a small disk that had something related to sata written on it... Could the sata drive thingie cause issues like I described above (I mean the absence of them)? Anyways, I'm sure I'm having software issues since well coded games like HL2 run flawlessly...

Any suggestions or comments? Thanks for your time.

AMDforlife
08-26-05, 08:19 AM
Great description and history, wish I could offer some advice,

rashal
08-26-05, 09:35 AM
Heheh...

Well I've got an update...

I searched the net and stuff for some answers, and I guess I found them. Apearently, the nforce 6.66 ide controller drives tend to give people some problems (havent seen anyone post about how great they are compared to MS ide controllers so I do see much point using them). Anyways, I'm almost sure it was the cause of all the games getting hard locked. Solution:

Install nforce 6.66 drivers and uninstall the IDE drivers only... Now this wasnt the most user friendly thing to do since the nforce drives dont allow you to simply uninstall the ide controllers in win x64 (this was caused by uninstalling program being copied and connected to the system32 forlder insted of the WOWsystem64 folder or what ever the name of that is).

Results:

Now downloading FEAR demo to make sure nothing locks up. windows does boot 2 times slower though, but I doubt game preformance was harmed.

PS.

At least now my harddrive doesnt apear in the "safely remove hardware" list... Kinda scary when windows allows you to 'safly' remove hardrive :P

Yuriman
08-26-05, 09:38 AM
What you have on that disk are SATA drivers, XP needs them if you decide to install raid. You might want to try inviting a friend over, and combining your ram and his, to see if it goes away. 1gb of ram is not enough for some games today.

Other than that... defragment? I suggest Diskeeper like or 9. Set your page file to a specific amount to prevent fragmentation, like 768mb - 768mb. Get rid of spyware, I use a combonation of Ad-Aware, Spybot and Spyware Blaster. I recently added microsoft anti-spyware beta to this, and it works very well. Get rid of all processes running in the background, if you fold, stop it before playing and resume afterwards.

el_leumas
08-27-05, 12:32 AM
the nforce boards support hot-swapping of hard-disks, meaning that you can plug out SATA (ONLY) hard disks as you would a thumbdrive. This is why you have the 'safely remove hardware' icon appearing. lts NORMAL


BUT, do not try that on your OS....problems might occur.

rashal
08-28-05, 03:42 AM
Oh, ok good to know that.

Well since I uninstalled the 6.66 sata controllers games stopped locking up. So if anyone has hardlock problems in new games like BF2 and FEAR, uninstalling the sata controllers is the answer. I think that the game hard locks whenever the visual memory is used, and the nforce controllers become problematic right there... But that's just an assumption.

The ocasional stuttering is still there though... This is kinda annoying. I wonder if it's related to x64 windows... Is there anyone here with a similer system to mine who experiances the same problems?

Still working on fixing this. Will update soon.

rashal
08-28-05, 04:51 AM
Update,

I found some post by people in several forums refering to PCI latency... lowering it might solve stuttering problem. Will check when I'll get home.

rashal
08-28-05, 11:16 AM
GARRR damnit... PCI latenci tool v2.6 refuses to load!

Error message: Failed to initialize config space access

Gar... Does anyone know how I can change pci latencies in x64 windows? hardware specs in main post.

rashal
08-28-05, 11:56 AM
arh, just found out PICE doesnt have latency timing controls. :\