Stutters

[miata54]

Hi All:
Just got a new PC, installed RW3 and upon loading San-Barstow Cajon Pass, noticed micro stutters as the loco accelerated and also as the AI freight passes by. Here is a comparison of what I was running RW3 on my old rig vs the new PC. I might mention that RW3 ran quite smoothly on the old PC.

Old: AMD Athlon Dual Core 5600+ 2.8ghz, 4GB RAM, ATI HD 4670 1GB, 250 GB SATA 3 HD, WIN XP PRO SP3.
New: i7 3820 Quad Core 3.6ghz, 10GB RAM, ATI 7570 1GB, WIN 7 64 SP1
RW3 Settings on both PC's: TSX enabled, Medium Graphics, AA at first notch, Anisotropic x4

I'm wondering if the micro stutters are being caused by the low end GPU? I have plans to replace it with a GTX 550ti or better. I did read the post about "Core Parking" and indeed CPU's 1,3,5 and 7 are parked. 2,4,6 & 8 were active, but am very hesitant to enact that fix not knowing exactly how to return the power settings to default if something should go wrong.

I bought the new PC to give me smoother fluidity in FSX, which it has done, and was thinking that would also transfer over to RW3, but unfortunately, that is not the case. BTW, I defrag daily.

Another question regarding HP Catalyst Center. As mentioned above, the new PC came with an AMD/ATI 7570 card, which was accompanied by something new: an HP Catalyst Control Center, not the old familiar ATI CCC. With my old PC, when you dowloaded updated drivers, those packages could contain a CCC, if chosen. I downloaded the newest release ATI drivers from Guru 3D which contained an ATI CCC. However, after installing the updated drivers, I could find them nowhere on my WIN7 OS. The ATI CCC did not show as well. Still only the HP CCC. I checked "System" drivers via Control Panel and the only installed drivers shown were the default OEM for the 7570. No mention at all of the updated drivers from Guru 3D. BTW, the Guru drivers I choose were AMD Catalyst 12.6 WHQL 64 bit. Just curious as to why these would not install as well as the CCC?

Would appreciated any and all feedback.

Thanks

Chris

[arizonachris]

Chris, do you have the fix for the core parking issue? http://www.overclock.net/t/1250666/winf ... g-our-cpus

Your stuttering could also be to a slow hard drive, or if Windows hasn't been defragmented.

[miata54]

Hi Chris:

Yes, I D/L'd that program but as I mentioned above, I am hesitant to use it not knowing how to recover from it should something not go correctly. The last thing I want to do is a complete reinstall of the OS. I am in the process of doing a default install of RW3 comparison between the two PC's. I had a number of RW addons on the new PC and I just want to see if any of them have anything to do with the micro stutters. I will let you know the results. If there is no improvement, I will bite the bullet and try the "Core Parking" app.

Also, I defrag daily.

Thanks

Chris

[Kali]

My cure for most ( unfortunately not all ) micro-stutters was to use a SSD, so it does seem to be mostly disk access. Anything you can do in that area should help a bit.

[miata54]

Thanks Kali:

I completed my A/B comparison between PC's with just default installs of RW3 and the stutters are still there on the Win7-64 unit. I find it rather incredulous to think that my old XP OS yields almost no stutters (with TSX on) and my new Win7-64 does (with TSX on). Is this what is called progress? HD's on both units are SATA 3's. An SSD is perhaps in the future. I'm going to try the "Core Parking" to see if there any improvement at all. Maybe, just maybe, the major RW3 updates promised for August & beyond, might address this problem. Here's hoping.

Thanks again.

[arizonachris]

Sorry, Chris, I re-read your first post. Didn't really realize you had installed new drivers, and got something weird. Now, is this a laptop? If so, you have no choice but to go to HP for drivers. Neither Nvidia or ATI's sites will host mobile drivers, you have to get them from the maker of the laptop. If this is a desktop, get the drivers from the source, easily. But, either way, I highly recommend using "Driver Sweeper" http://download.cnet.com/Driver-Sweeper ... 19868.html Just click on the ATI video drivers, or you can fubar your PC.

Oh, and the core parking fix, don't worry, it works fine. You can always make a restore point before installing it.

[miata54]

Hi Chris:

Sorry for the confusion. My PC is an HP h8 1380t desktop with the ATI 7570 video card. Low end I know. I downloaded updated drivers from Guru 3D, version 12.6 WHQL Win7-64. After installation, I looked for the ATI CCC to make adjustments to the video settings. The traditional ATI icon was no where to be found, anywhere in my system. I checked Device Manager and the driver version for the OEM card was unchanged. Still the OEM drivers. I tried re-installing the 12.6 drivers again. Got an affirmative message that they has installed, but again, I could not find them anywhere in my system. HP configured there own CCC instead of using the traditional ATI CCC. The HP one has far fewer categories for video adjustments. Something is precluding the acceptance of the ATI CCC and drivers. As mentioned before, the PC runs MS FSX very nicely and is a definite improvement over my old rig. Much to my chagrin, the hardware upgrade just hasn't transferred to RW3. I now have micro stutters I never experienced before with my old rig. Go figure. So I am running RW3 on the old rig until I can figure out how to eliminate the micro stutters.

I will try the "Core Parking" program and will let you know what happens.

Thanks for your assistance.

Chris

[miata54]

Chris:

This is the window I get with the program. What are these settings and what should they be set at?

Thanks

Chris

[arizonachris]

Guess you can use balanced, but then disable the other two settings. If that doesn't help, NEXT!

OK, so it's a desktop, use Driver Sweeper, get rid of the ATI drivers, and go right to ATI to get the latest. Don't use HP's stuff. Make sure, only the ATI video drivers. If your board has an ATI mainboard chipset, you will FUBAR the whole lot.

[miata54]

Hi Chris:

I left the setting at "Balanced" but did not know what the other two should be set at. I clicked "Apply" and checked the Resource Monitor settings. CPU's 1,3,5 & 7 still show as parked. No change. What should those other two settings, "On AC" and "On Battery", be set at? Unfortunately, there are no instructions with this program.

Regarding my drivers. Please re-read below from above thread.

" I downloaded updated drivers from Guru 3D, version 12.6 WHQL Win7-64. After installation, I looked for the ATI CCC to make adjustments to the video settings. The traditional ATI icon was no where to be found, anywhere in my system. I checked Device Manager and the driver version for the OEM card was unchanged. Still the OEM drivers. I tried re-installing the 12.6 drivers again. Got an affirmative message that they had installed, but again, I could not find them anywhere in my system. HP configured there own CCC instead of using the traditional ATI CCC. The HP one has far fewer categories for video adjustments. Something is precluding the acceptance of the ATI CCC and drivers."

I'll get the latest drivers from AMD/ATI, then use Driver Sweeper". I'm still baffled why the 12.6 WHQL drivers, after running the install program, do not show up anywhere in my system.

Will let you know what happens.

Thanks

Chris

[arizonachris]

The way you can tell Driver Sweeper did it's job, is your desktop will be reset to it's lowest resolution. Before using Driver Sweeper, download the newest driver direct from ATI. Save it to your Desktop so you know where to find it. Now, uninstall all the ATI video stuff. I don't have an ATI card, but with Nvidia, there is HDMI, 3D, all kinds of stuff. Get rid of it all.

Put park control on balanced, then disable the other two settings. But you need to do a cold boot (meaning power off, then make a sandwich, then power on) Now Device Manager should show all cores enabled.

[miata54]

Chris:

Got the Core Parking app to work. Just not sure how to measure it's effectiveness. Saw this article on Flightsim.com which lead me to the FS Pilotshop. Just wondering if this program is similar (or the same) to Core Parking.

http://www.fspilotshop.com/product_info ... ts_id=2652

Thanks

Chris

[arizonachris]

They want to charge you for that? Gimme a break! The fix I posted is free. You should not have to pay for a fix for something that MS messed up. Look in Device Manager, it will show what cores are at zero, parked.