Help: Games stutter @ high fps

[FiLTHY_SNiPER]

Ok so I'm having some issues with STALKER and Crysis in that they are benchmarking at over 40 fps but I see visible stuttering (as if it's <25 fps).
Isn't 30 fps like the norm for console games? They look absolutely fine...

Anyways, this is really pissing me off, because when I'm playing at 50 fps and I see it dip below to like 40 fps it looks pretty choppy. This should definitely not be happening with my pretty l33t new PCm or on any PC for that matter, considering the framerates.

Here are my specs:

Diamond Radeon HD 4870 (tried both OCed and stock)
Intel Core2 Duo E8500 3.16mhz
2x1024 (2gb) OCZ DDR2 Reaper HPC 1200mhz RAM (not OCed - PS. how the hell do I OC RAM?)
ASUS P5Q Motherboard
SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
33gb free disk space

Any help would be appreciated. I really don't want this problem to persist when I get GTA4 and other such intensive games.

[Kitty]

The help I can offer may sound silly but, this happened to me and I have a kick ass PC as well.
What fixed it was more airflow. As in cooling.
I simply put a fan aimed at the back of the PC when I'm playing those games. It is odd but it really does work.

Good luck.

[[W33T] JimmytehHand8]

Did you run defragmenter? :P

[Gruthar]

I just got the 4850 and have had some driver issues with it, but that may not be your problem. When is the stuttering happening? Graphically intense sections, moving to/looking at new areas, or just seemingly at random? Also, are you running Windows XP or Vista on your machine?

There could be a lot of things causing the stuttering. For what it's worth, I had a similar problem, in my case it was largely due to the UAA driver for the HDMI audio eating up 35% of my CPU time through hardware interrupts. It's probably not your problem, but I figured I'd throw it out there just in case.

Now if it stutters some when loading new areas or looking at new things, that can be the result of textures being loaded into memory, and is normal provided it doesn't do it too much. Defragmenting, as Jimmy suggested, might help. One thing I don't know is how much memory Crysis and STALKER consume. You have 2 gigs, though I don't know what OS you're running. Both games I assume have nice big textures. If they've filled the RAM and are frequently having to use the hard drive to swap textures, then that will cause the momentary stuttering I was talking about a lot more frequently. I guess the test there would be to see if you run into similar problems when you play older games, and/or also see how much memory you're actually using when you run these games.

As far as RAM overclocking goes, it's a little more complicated than OCing your CPU or GPU. You would increase the clock speed of your RAM by increasing the clock speed of the Front Side Bus, or adjusting the FSB:RAM ratio. For example, if you have a motherboard with a 1066 MHz FSB and DDR2 1066, overclocking the FSB 10% would effectively give you DDR2 1173 (assuming a 1:1 ratio and that it doesn't crash.) You could also just change the ratio to 4:5 and achieve a similar effect, though the FSB will remain the same. The other thing to consider with RAM are the timings, which are a measure of how many clock cycles it takes the RAM to do various operations. I think I wrote up an article here about what the timings mean a while ago. Anyway, CAS latency is one of the more important numbers, and it's the first one that's described in the memory timings. So if you have memory timed at 5-5-5-15, to gain better performance you would tighten the timings to something like 4-5-5-15, or 4-4-4-12, or any stable combination thereof. You want operations done in fewer cycles, so with timings lower numbers are better.

Though to be honest, with the system you have, I don't foresee adjusting the memory giving you a huge performance increase.

[FiLTHY_SNiPER]

@Kitty: I actually have 8 fans in my PC, with the most recent addition really blowing out any hot air accumulating.

@Jimmy: I just recently formatted and re-installed windows so that shouldn't be the issue.

@Gruthar: It does happen when there is quite a lot to render on screen but the thing is it's stuttering even when my fps is showing around 37. Most high-end console games run at around 30 fps and they fine with no noticeable stuttering.
Something has to be causing my stuttering, since the fps is fine.

As for RAM, I don't think I'll bother OCing them. CPU on the other hand, is a different matter. I wonder how much of a gain I'd get by OCing my E8500..

[Drayu]

what OS?

[JustMeBF2]

Defrag After I reload XP (you still haven't said if your running XP or Vista) and SP2, SP3 and other crap I defrag. If your running XP as I think you are you can click the "Analyze"
and see what it looks like. RED equals bad.

Consoles at 30FPS Console games will nerf the textures and such. So the same game will take more power to run on PC.

[FiLTHY_SNiPER]

I run XP 32
I've read that 64 bit XP or Vista gets even worse performance gaming-wise

@JustMe: Well, I know games are dumbed down for consoles but doesn't 30 fps mean 30 fps regardless of what system you're playing on?
I mean if the textures and detail are more detailed on PC and my PC was getting lower fps than the console, that would make sense.. but I'm not, I'm getting an average of 55 then as soon as it drops below 50 I get noticeable stutter. It's BS

I've been researching stuff like motherboard settings and Rivatuner and D3Doverride but not really finding anything that pertains to my problem.
I must have spent 2 hours today just looking up variations of "high fps stuttering Crysis 4870" on google.

I wish you guys could see how it looks, but no video would do it justice.

[DoctorToxn]

64x XP does NOT lower your FPS.

Stalker really does have problems for me too. More on the FPS side of it due to my 8800GT.

[Drayu]

run your task manager in the background and watch the memory usage. Tab out when it stutters to see how much physical memory is being used. If it is up near 2 gigs, then there is your prob :)