Hardware Gurus, Why BFG 7800GS stutters?

I

iamarto

Geek Trainee
BFG support and this forum is my last line of hope after lots of online research to solve my problem. I bought this card BFG 7800GS AGP 256 mb, and it stutters in graphics intensive games like F.E.A.R and NFS most wanted.

The problem is that in those games (at least) they even stutter in lowest settings, which definitely tells me it's not that I am overloading the card, but there IS a real problem. The stutter occurs at random times, with an average of 20 seconds.

Here is my system specifications: Report of <9A1568A8EBFF49B>

Added to it I have an HEC: AcePower 480 watt, 12 volt dual rail power supply.

What I have discovered/tried so far:

1. Tried tweaking the BIOS settings to optimal AGP aperture size, Fast Writes On/Off.

2. I have formatted my PC with a fresh WinXP installation, tested my system RAM with memtest (thinking it might be a RAM problem), and installed all my motherboard's chipset drivers.

3. Heard that my card is one which could have the "cold bug", that the gpu cools more than it should and therefore reduces performance. I excluded this possibility by monitoring my GPU to see that it's idle at 38C, but even when it reaches above 40C up to 50C the stutter remains the same.

4. I tried to tweak the PCI latency with the PCI Latency Tool 3.1 but the performance loss or gain did not differ much to me as the stutter remained in all cases with different degrees. My current PCI latency seems optimal by setting them all to 0 (it was default anyway with the exception of the Host Bridge, which was 8).

5. I have tried using lots of recommended drivers online, until the BFG support recommended me to use the 93.71 (being the most stable for them). So I stuck on these drivers.

And then I came here wishing deeply from my heart, that I am still ignorant of many other possible problems. How can I eliminate the possibility that my problem is hardware related rather than software?

Because if that's the case, I am a real sad person.. I can't RMA overseas, it will cost me much more than just fixing my problem somehow.

Hardware gurus, plant a light bulb in my head. What haven't I done?
 
Allthough it may just be that the graphics card aint powerfull anough, my old X800XTPE is almost as powerfull as your 7800GS and I got stuttering in NFSMW and F.E.A.R, try turning the graphics settings down, you wont be able to run F.E.A.R at full with that card.

I dont know were you got this Cold Bug from, the more the cooler cools, the better :p, just think, some people use watercooling.

Yea, proberbly just your system overall, and old Pentium 4 3ghz wont help much, another 1gb ram would help though.
 
Man I have wished that what you say is right, but to make sure I have just re-run NFS-MW and F.E.A.R. without LOWEST SETTINGS and I still get stutter.

So at a resolution equal to 640 x 480, if 7800GS cannot run it without stutter, then something is wrong, what do you think? Did you try that with your X800XTPE?

As for the cold bug.. I haven't found any official article about it, but nations and nations are talking about it, not only for the 7800GS, but for many other high-end cards. And as you did get surprised, some people bought my card and water cooled it, and then put back the stock cooler and reduced fan speed to fix their stutter! :)

Check this forum:
I got a reply from BFG today, here is what they said:

"The normal idling temperature of the card is supposed to be between 45-60 degrees celcius. If your card is operating in a condition that is making it that cold, turn off some of the fans. As well as cards overheating could cause issues, so can overcooling.
Thank you,
BFG Support"
Click to expand...

Yes :D and so many people dropped their jaws! They have been putting their PC in refrigerators for so long, now they know why their FPS was straight 3.
 
I dont belive what BFG say.

I dont think this "Cold Bug" is true, people liquid cool there CPU's, overclock them to insane speeds, same for graphics cards :p. Maybe its just a coincidence that there card started working lol.

So when you get this stuttering at extreme low res, did you also turn all the graphics settings down?, even at that res I think with all the graphics setings turned up thats gonna make it stutter.

I am getting stuttering in Test Drive Unlimited though even with my new card, I think that the CPU is causing these stutters, and mine is slightly better than your pentium 4, I moved from the same CPU and it was like allot better in gaming.
 
Well, you're free in what you believe, but if you like to have more info about that, just click here "nvidia cold bug".

And yes, by lowest settings I meant lowest resolution and lowest settings as well. Same thing! Perhaps my RAM (2 x 512 mb) is the problem? But it doesn't make sense man.

And how is it that you're getting stutter with the 8800 GTS 640 mb memory?? It's unbelievable unless it is bottlenecked with your 3700 AMD cpu.

Because if that 8800 GTS is by default is still causing stutter.. then I will probably buy a voodoo PC and sleep in comfort :-|
 
No, the 8800GTS is been extreamly limited by my CPU, thats why I et stuttering, slow crappy PSU.

You shouldent stutter on lowest settings though, in F.E.A.R I get no stutters, and I run at all max settings 1440x900 res and 16xQ AA and 16x AA, but its at its limit with this CPU.

I think your card may be faulty.
 
i'm a little confused, so your saying your getting an abnormal stutter, or your not happy with your FPS
 
I am very happy with my FPS, but I have stutter in some games even with lowest settings and resolutions.

Stutter by means of... "Very smooth all the time but lags for some milliseconds and then continues". It happens randomly, but I've noticed that it occurs much less when my card's temperature exceeds 40C.
 
thats weird, well i had an issue like that, but it would happen like all the time, it would lag for half a second, maybe less, and then go again and that would happen frequently, like in a row, but anyways it turned out to be a memory problem, the memory on the graphics card was bad. Ok, well if your getting a really good frame rate, than i would most likely say there is something wrong in the graphics area, granted a little more memory would help, like what Willz was saying. So, have you tried re-installing your video drivers, they're weird, and could cause some instabilities like that, so i would try that first if you haven't already. The next step would be to swap some one's hardware with yours. If thats possible it would definitely determine whether or not there is something wrong with your hardware or not.
 
Man.. I think that's right, I think it's the memory on the graphics card because there IS NO other explanation to this wEIRd stutter I get after all the solutions I tried.

But it makes me desperate now.. HOW CAN a memory be bad? Is BFG using generic memories? How do you think if I under clocked the memory frequency?
 
ok, well two questions, was it like then when you got it, if not how old is it. If its early enough to return it, do that
 
What's the specs of this system? Have you tried updating your drivers? Have you defragged recently?
 
Yea try updating to latest drivers, the beta drivers seem to be better for me than the latest official one, I am currently using 100.87 Beta Windows XP Nvidia drivers.
 
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