Stuttering in games. And everything else

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Stevohen

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[SOLVED]Stuttering in games. And everything else

My sound is acting up. Is all started happening when I upgraded my Win7 from x86 to 64bit.

What happens is I sometimes get choppy sound, but it's pretty isolated.

When a video is paused and I resume, the sound glitches (with video freezing) for about 3 seconds.
When I'm playing mp3's I also get this 2-3 second glitch. Usually when I click a new song in the playlist or something.

The biggest issue is when I game. It's worst when I play COD4 MW online. The video freezes for 2-3 seconds while the sound loops. The same happens in about the only other game I play, Battlezone II. Same stutter, though I only play this Single Player (completely offline)

I've played around with settings, and realised that when I disable my Realtek HD Audio sound drivers the stutter goes away. I've also tried upgrading/downgrading the Realtek drivers, as well as switching to Win standard audio. I'm starting to think it might not actually be the sound.

I am on a Acer laptop, kinda decent, i5 with 4gb RAM (which is why I switched to 64) and Geforce GT540M

Any advice guys?
 
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Did a full format followed by a fresh install.

Also, forgot to mention that I noticed in COD that when a stutter occurs, it was just when the game was about to play a certain sound. Like "Grenataaaa" or "Enemy UAV is online". It also usually starts in the second map, too, leading me to think it might be memory issue
 
Mine does the same or similar with the built in sound card on my motherboard. Realtek sounds about right. I was pondering getting a different sound card...
 
I would gladly buy a soundcard if it meant this infernal stuttering would cease. Played CS:S on lan today and it happened again. Very. Frustrating.

Can you get, like, a usb sound card for laptops?
 
Had issues like this before, I seem to recall it being my onboard soundcard.

It used to skip a beat in mp3s and movies every now and again. Often in movies I think it had a regular time like every 3min 12 seconds or something. Was a while ago so cant remember exact details
 
If your laptop shipped with 32bit then it's probably not tested or recommended to be 64bit.
If 64bit is supported then get all the latest drivers from the acer website, usually manufacurers customize them.
 
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Had similar issue a while ago. Found out it was the HDMI sound part of the graphics card that was causing the issue. Had to disable the sound of the actual graphics card and updated my Realtek drivers. Not sure how to explain it ( like I said was a while ago ) but it was a conflict between the actual sound card ( Realtek onboard ) and the Graphics card ( HDMI supports sound to ).

Hope this helps.
 
I don't think I have HDMI sound on my sound card... do I? ATI 5770 ...

*edit* oh crap I do... I will look into this - thanks!
 
I remember having a similar problem and tracked it down to an audio driver. However, no matter how I tried, I couldn't fix it with a simple uninstall/reinstall. I had to format and reinstall everything from scratch.
 
Yes, the thread is 2 years old but I finally solved the issue today and gonna post the solution here anyway:

It came down to extreme latency every time my hard disc was reading after being idle for a few seconds. Apparently this is standard for (especially) notebook hard discs to save power during operation, but in my case the "feature" wasn't playing nice with my system.

I completely disabled the power saving feature using the following program (21 day trial):
http://www.drivepowermanager.com/
This blog also has a (free) script that will probably work just as good:
http://disablehddapm.blogspot.com/2011/12/disabling-hard-disk-drive-advanced.html

I reaslised it was an I/O bottleneck by noticing high disc response times in (the surprisingly capable) Windows 8 task manager. My entire PC is now really snappy! No more stuttering and freezing when for example fetching sound bites in games, and my hard disc no longer click-clicks :D
 
Stevohen said:
Yes, the thread is 2 years old but I finally solved the issue today and gonna post the solution here anyway:

It came down to extreme latency every time my hard disc was reading after being idle for a few seconds. Apparently this is standard for (especially) notebook hard discs to save power during operation, but in my case the "feature" wasn't playing nice with my system.

I completely disabled the power saving feature using the following program (21 day trial):
http://www.drivepowermanager.com/
This blog also has a (free) script that will probably work just as good:
http://disablehddapm.blogspot.com/2011/12/disabling-hard-disk-drive-advanced.html

I reaslised it was an I/O bottleneck by noticing high disc response times in (the surprisingly capable) Windows 8 task manager. My entire PC is now really snappy! No more stuttering and freezing when for example fetching sound bites in games, and my hard disc no longer click-clicks :D
Click to expand...

Can't you just stop the drive from turning off using windows?
Start > power options > change plan settings > change advanced power settings > hard disk > hard disk > turn off hard disc after > change the value to 0 for never

First thing I do when I get a laptop I change things on the high performance mode to be true high performance.
 
That's a good tip, but that setting only influences when the drive turns off: as in the power is cut and the drive stops spinning and needs to power up again. It's not the same as the low-power idle state mine was switching to after just a few seconds. Mine is currently set to 20 minutes, which shouldn't cause significant delays.
 
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