what could cause game stuttering?

from Stardock Forums

I'm having an odd problem. It seems that with most games, I'm noticing the game stutters a bit, some like rise of nations or battle for middle earth 2. I'm just wondering what could cause this ,since I'm getting my new computer built within a few weeks.


I have a radieon 9600  card, 1 gig of ram. pentium4 2.4  processor right now. And a 100 gig hard drive from 3 years ago. Would any of that be the reason why this is happening?
43,281 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Tons of stuff. It could be something in particular you are panning past, like particle effects or shadows. It could be your PC lagging preloading graphics. It could be your virus checker. Your hard drive could be a bit too fragnmented so when your game is loading things it takes a bit more effort.

There's a tweaking guide for XP over at tweakguides, it is a good place to start. Get rid of all your spyware and your demanding background applications, defragment, turn of anything that would update automatically while you play, and generally try and make sure it is the game itself lagging. Then hit the forums there and see what the issue is.

I've been playing Oblivion. I feel your pain.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't think it's the game, as I'm trying to play Rise of nations with a 2.4 ghz 512 ram, (just did a recheck and I have 512 ram. When the game gets pretty crowded on screen the stuttering gets worse , could that be processor or memory problem?
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Could any of this be hard drive related? I sometimes hear my hard drive making that noise when I start running a program, but nothing is running. Or would getting more ram help?
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
I can't really imagine why Rise of Nations would tax your PC. I would tweak my system as much as possible to reduce things that would be running while the game is running. Defrag your hardrive, as fragmented game files can cause slowdowns. It is always good policy to defrag before and after installing a game of reasonable size.

If it is happening when particular things happen on the screen, it is very possible that it is the game. Check the forums at the game's site, and see if there are any patches you haven't installed. I dunno what kind of grpahics bells and whistles that game has, but given the system requirements I wouldn't think it would be much.

Here's the game's support site. There seems to be issues with some video cards, etc. You might want to start there.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
My best guess would be your video card not being quite powerful enough, though it depends on what you're playing. It could also be that you've got a lot of stuff running in the background sapping your precious RAM.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
Yarlen: You might want to look at the description of his card and the game in question. The req. for that game is a 16 meg card, and he has either a 128 or 256 meg card. I'm thinking that he's got enough of a system to run it. It could be something running in the background, but the way he says it does it at particular time during the game makes me think differently.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
It seems to be happening when there is either alot of movement on screen, or if I move the view around my base. It also gets really bad in the end game when there are alot of units on screen.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Yarlen: You might want to look at the description of his card and the game in question. The req. for that game is a 16 meg card, and he has either a 128 or 256 meg card. I'm thinking that he's got enough of a system to run it. It could be something running in the background, but the way he says it does it at particular time during the game makes me think differently.

True, but the 9600 is a budget gaming card. Not that it couldn't be stuff running in the background (I suggested the same), but it's not just how much RAM a video card has that determines its performance. Still, you're right - if every game is causing stuttering, something else is likely going on to cause it.

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree with BakerStreet.

My brother has a powerfull computer, and games like warcraft 3 were lagging on it.

A format just fixed all the things... the cpu system and specially the hard disk were overloaded of things and programs...