BEWARE nvidia fermi cards are stuttering / hitching despite good fps!

[NOVAA]

It really dpends on the card.. size of the VRAM and more importantly the BUS width. The 4890 holds its own very well at high resolutions compared to the current gen just as the 8800GTX/Ultra did before it.

(I have been eyeing up upgrading my 4890 and so far the only thing that can be called an upgrade costs way too much for my 1920x1200 gaming.)

I was talking specifically about Crysis, I know the hit isn't as big with other games. And my previous card was a 4890, its a great card, still performs great today. Only reason I upgraded is because I wanted something to last me longterm, and my brother wanted a good gpu for his computer, to meet his demands (Games running well at decent settings, no bleeding edge surround 3d monitor @ 128xAA for him)

My new 480 is great, don't get me wrong, but right now there really isn't much out that'll show a big difference. Crysis is a lot better, and Metro is MUCH better. Other than that, its been small things like turning up AA a bit more because theres not a lot out there that can push a 4890 hard, let alone a 480. So if you don't need it, you can probably hold off and wait for either a 5870/480 to drop way down in price, or wait for the next series of GPU's.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

they should not release the cards if they are not ready. i did not buy these cards with the intention of playing games 9 months after i got them due to driver maturity. this may not even get fixed. you never know.

They are ready, otherwise forums would be full of this complaint, but since they are not, this is something related to you, yourset up and your hardware.

Also, SLI 460 wont last long term at that resolution, new games would just floor it power wise.

 

[NOVAA]

They are ready, otherwise forums would be full of this complaint, but since they are not, this is something related to you, yourset up and your hardware.

Also, SLI 460 wont last long term at that resolution, new games would just floor it power wise.

Yeah 460 SLI has been met with nothing short of awesome reception. That fact, combined with the fact that you had a similar expirience on another SLI setup leads me to believe that your simply too sensitive to microstudder to be able to use MultiGPU setups.

 

[Enemy Down!]

on console;

battle field bad comany 2
halo 2
halo 3
halo odst
battlefield 1942

just some examples of fps games. do you know what they all have in common?....they are all LOCKED at 30 fps. that means the fps will is never allowed to go above 30. this is done to balance out competitive gameplay and maintane a smooth gameplay experience throughout the game. do you EVER see people complain that these games stutter/ hitch, or otherwise state they are not smooth? of course you do not. 30 fps is the indurstries target frame rate for smooth gameplay.

i am not talking about 60 fps being better than 30. of course it's a better framerate. it is a faster more precise frame rate. but both are liquid frame rates. if you don't believe me, even though i just posted proof of popular games being locked at 30 fps, then you are fooling yourself and YOU are playing through this same stutter / hitching and are in denial.

 

[Enemy Down!]

i just put in a 5870 and it was smooth compared to the 460 in 2 games i tested, crysis and darkfall. i did not test bfbc2 but i am sure it will also be smooth from what i read. i did test bfbc2 on an asus gaming laptop with the mobility 5870 and gameplay was smooth as butter at 30 fp.

i believe this stutter that nvidia cards are showing goes beyond simply a driver level. it does not make any sense. i say this because darkfall is a very small mmo and has no ties to either gpu makers. why would it run smooth at 30fps when nvidia cards stutter? it may very well be a hardware and design issue. i am giving nvidia 2 weeks from now otherwise i am forced to return the 460's to the store.

 

[Enemy Down!]

Bottom line is this, its been documented time and time again, micro-stutter is a known issue on multiple GPU setups and it has to do with the staturation of the PCI-E/Chipset bus. The most common solution is to push your HTT/FSB/etc as high as humanly possible and make sure that you have as much "hardware accelerated" devices as possible to offload as much stress of the chipset as you can.

Example; you claim to have micro stuttering; ok fine. What have you done to alleviate it? Do you have:

A *real* soundcard, not onboard
A *real* NIC not onboard
A *real* RAID/HDD controller
Pair of *FULL* 16X PCI-E 2.0 slots.
Latest BIOS
More than 4GB of RAM and or Ready Boostie *ANY* caching to the HDD/Virtual Memory Taking Place
Non-Midrange cards with low frame buffer ie 1GB

Normal causes of micro-stutter can and are caused by all of the above especially if you are running on 8x slots and are relying on the software emulation. All of that will put tremendous loads on the CPU bus and Chipset bus then once you start approaching minimum playable framerates and you load the cpu subsystem up guess what happens? Microstutter because you are overloading the PCI-E bus with a buncha garbage at minimum playable frame rates which as the cpu has to buffer itself to run all the junk you've loaded onto it.

Having this issue on the laptop makes sense because you are running:

A slow CPU
Almost zero hardware accelerated anything
At minimum playable framerates

I do not have issues with microstutter until I start to approach 30FPS which is the minimum playable framerates and have zero issues when I'm above 60. Why?

Because I have:

A real discrete NIC
A real soundcard
8GB of RAM *WITH* 16GB of Readyboost
Running on two 16x 2.0 PCI-E slots

of course you have zero issues when playing at your monitors refresh rate. did you no read my post? i too, have ZERO issues playing at such high frame rates. you just admited that you also experience the stutters at the 30+ frame rate where you should not be.

and yes, i have 2x pcie both running at 16x. and yes, i have the latest bios for motherboard. and yes, i am testing on a FRESH OS instal. i even disabled the soundcard in the bios. like i said, i have done everything you can think of in terms of tinkering around with the system's settings.

 

[EarthDog]

Enemy... why dont you just run things at your monitor's native refresh? Aside from Crysis (which just takes some tweaks like disabling AA) you should be able to run anything at 60FPS....

Oh and consoles /= PCs. Not sure what relevence that has in this conversation considering consoles arent SLI either so.....and 30fps is slow for me as well. I can notice that difference. 30fps is as low as i would want to go on a PC.

If/when you return those cards, just get a single GTX480 or 5870 and call it day so you dont have to worry about these issues you seem to be having.

 

[Enemy Down!]

Enemy... why dont you just run things at your monitor's native refresh? Aside from Crysis (which just takes some tweaks like disabling AA) you should be able to run anything at 60FPS....

Oh and consoles /= PCs. Not sure what relevence that has in this conversation considering consoles arent SLI either so.....and 30fps is slow for me as well. I can notice that difference. 30fps is as low as i would want to go on a PC.

If/when you return those cards, just get a single GTX480 or 5870 and call it day so you dont have to worry about these issues you seem to be having.

the relevance is that all those games are locked at 30 fps and they are a smooth experience. i am showing you that a frame rate of 30 is smooth.

 

[EarthDog]

THEY ARE ON A CONSOLE. Thats comparing apples to oranges.

Anyway, just return your cards and get a single one, problem solved. No need to scream from the hills (create propoganda threads) will little merit...

 

[NOVAA]

on console;

battle field bad comany 2
halo 2
halo 3
halo odst
battlefield 1942

just some examples of fps games. do you know what they all have in common?....they are all LOCKED at 30 fps. that means the fps will is never allowed to go above 30. this is done to balance out competitive gameplay and maintane a smooth gameplay experience throughout the game. do you EVER see people complain that these games stutter/ hitch, or otherwise state they are not smooth? of course you do not. 30 fps is the indurstries target frame rate for smooth gameplay.

i am not talking about 60 fps being better than 30. of course it's a better framerate. it is a faster more precise frame rate. but both are liquid frame rates. if you don't believe me, even though i just posted proof of popular games being locked at 30 fps, then you are fooling yourself and YOU are playing through this same stutter / hitching and are in denial.

Yes, you know what else they all have in common? They are all console based games, with their visual's tweaked very, very precisely so that gameplay is smooth throughout. The lock at 30 isn't the important fact, its the fact that throughout 95% of the gameplay, the game won't run below say 27fps or so that makes it seem smooth. This is easy for the developers to do however, they can tweak each setting, they know exactly what each console has for hardware, and can identify what visual effects cause big slowdowns, and disable them. It is a very precise science, and why you see a game like Killzone 2, that looks impressive even by PC standards, yet is running on basically a 7800GTX.

On a PC however, 30fps shouldn't be your target for smooth gameplay. If you've benched and tweaked every setting meticulously to identify what settings cause slowdowns, maybe you could get away with it. But its much easier to target a 45fps average or so, because then you can have a significant slowdown, yet still expirience smooth gameplay. Say a complex scene cuts your framerates by 1/3. 45fps average, your still at 30 and the game is still very playable. 30fps average, your down to 20, and the slowdown is very noticeable.

So yeah, maybe the console standard for smooth gameplay is around 30fps, but console games =/= PC games.

 

[Tokae]

the relevance is that all those games are locked at 30 fps and they are a smooth experience. i am showing you that a frame rate of 30 is smooth.

LOL so all this was about was that these games on consoles looked smooth and not smooth on your pc?

Console games have the advantage over pc games in several areas.

1) they are designed to run on 1 platform and not literally 15000 combinations of pc platforms.

2) the console was designed for gameplay as its primary function! PC's were not created to play games initially (more specificallly the OS that runs on the PC is not there just to run games).

definitely apples to oranges comparison.

 

[Enemy Down!]

i am uploading a new youtube video in high def 720p to show you guys how smooth the hd 5870 is compared to the gtx 460. i just completed another test. hd 5870 @ 3840x800, max settings, 2x AA putting out 30 fps and extremely smooth compared to gtx 460 sli @ 4320x900, max settings, no AA putting 30+ fps and is extremely stuttery / hitching.

will be ready in about 30 minutes.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Why don't you just keep the 5870, return the 460's and be happy? Plenty of ideas have been mentioned here, and you shoot them all down. It's like you know what is wrong, and you're waiting for us to guess it.

Fraps is a total resource hog. I can run Crysis @ 1440*900 on all high settings with my computer, but with fraps running, nothing over medium will play smoothly. Recording or not, it causes epic lag.

 

[Neuromancer]

Why don't you just keep the 5870, return the 460's and be happy? Plenty of ideas have been mentioned here, and you shoot them all down. It's like you know what is wrong, and you're waiting for us to guess it.

Fraps is a total resource hog. I can run Crysis @ 1440*900 on all high settings with my computer, but with fraps running, nothing over medium will play smoothly. Recording or not, it causes epic lag.

Do you think that is because of the overlay (like subtitles with GPU acceleration for video playback) or due to CPU performance being taxed?

If the latter you might be able to adjust the polling period of fraps to reduce the effect.

If the former perhaps enable logging and have it NOT display anything on screen.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

It was with basically all settings I tried. I could check again, but I can't remember which version of Fraps I used. I can tell you, however, that cpu speed made no difference. And let me remind you, sometimes all I did was open Fraps in the background, and played the games, only to have it lag.

 

[Enemy Down!]

here it is. it should be going live any moment if it isn't already;

0-58 seconds is teh ATI run. 58-1:58 is the nvidia run.

the first run is the ATI HD 5870 at 30 frames per second @ 3840x800, max settings, 2x AA.

both cards are running on the same system
evga x58 sli board native 1600mhz ram support, with both pcie slots @ 16x
evga gtx 460 1gig gpu's
xfx hd 5870 gpu
6 gigs corsair 1600mxz ram
triple monitor setup
750w corsair psu
core i7 930
system is stock, no overclocking
the second run is nvidia GTX 460 SLI at about 30+ frames per second @ 4320x900 max settings, no AA.

my main goal was to keep the frame rates as close as possible so it can be an even test. the ATI run was with triplehead2go device to stay in surround gaming but ATI drivers refused to let the triplehead drivers to instal so 3840x800 was the highest res i could get. i did not have the active display port adapter to be in ati's eyefinity mode but this should not matter as the test is pretty conclusive from what i can tell.

the nvidia run was with nvidia surround using it's drivers. nvidia drivers also did not allow triplehead drivers to be installed so i had to stay at 4320x900 with nvidia surround.

i did not go above the frame buffer of either cards, which is 1gb.

as you can clearly see now that the ATI cards are smooth compared to nvidia, despite running at a lower framerate. the nvidia cards stutter like crazy and negates the high frame rate readings these cards are able to display.

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

Who cares anymore... He will just keep shooting down any advice given in this thread. Every bit of text I read seems to feel like yelling.

sorry had to say it

 

[Neuromancer]

I know you tried to keep it close but if it is not exact... you are not going to receive positive feedback on your research.

@chance: Okay. I have not used FRAPS in years as I do not do GPU reviews.

 

[NOVAA]

here it is. it should be going live any moment if it isn't already;

0-58 seconds is teh ATI run. 58-1:58 is the nvidia run.

the first run is the ATI HD 5870 at 30 frames per second @ 3840x800, max settings, 2x AA.

both cards are running on the same system
evga x58 sli board native 1600mhz ram support, with both pcie slots @ 16x
evga gtx 460 1gig gpu's
xfx hd 5870 gpu
6 gigs corsair 1600mxz ram
triple monitor setup
750w corsair psu
core i7 930
system is stock, no overclocking
the second run is nvidia GTX 460 SLI at about 30+ frames per second @ 4320x900 max settings, no AA.

my main goal was to keep the frame rates as close as possible so it can be an even test. the ATI run was with triplehead2go device to stay in surround gaming but ATI drivers refused to let the triplehead drivers to instal so 3840x800 was the highest res i could get. i did not have the active display port adapter to be in ati's eyefinity mode but this should not matter as the test is pretty conclusive from what i can tell.

the nvidia run was with nvidia surround using it's drivers. nvidia drivers also did not allow triplehead drivers to be installed so i had to stay at 4320x900 with nvidia surround.

i did not go above the frame buffer of either cards, which is 1gb.

as you can clearly see now that the ATI cards are smooth compared to nvidia, despite running at a lower framerate. the nvidia cards stutter like crazy and negates the high frame rate readings these cards are able to display.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1317582

Your cards are fine, that is microstutter. If you can't deal with it, you can sell your two barely used cards for probably about 200 a piece, and get a GTX 480. It won't give you quite the same raw FPS performance, but you won't deal with the issue anymore.

 

[EarthDog]

Enemy... again. We are sorry this is happening to you. My suggestion is to wait out a driver release to see if that helps or try lowering the settings to high (thus using DX9 paths) and see if that helps. Otherwise, sell teh cards, and get a single 480 or 5870 and call it a day.

maybe someone else with more expertise can come in and help, but it seems you have tried everthing.

And your solution, which you already knew:

If I notice microstuttering, can I minimize/eliminate it?

Yes. By running the game at a setting where your graphics cards are able to output more than the monitors refresh rate (that is, the maximum FPS the monitors are capible of; the pixels on your screen can only change so fast) microstuttering is eliminated completely. Most monitors have a refresh rate of 60 or 70Hz, meaning you would need 70 or 80 FPS to eliminate microstuttering. Also, running the game in Split Frame Rendering (SFR), with the top half being rendered by one card and the bottom half being rendered by the other, will eliminate microstuttering, but opens the door to tearing and a performance hit. I don't know if SFR is even still supported...