Game Stuttering Not Fixed!?!

Hello All!!!
I am a new guy to this forum and hope some smarter people can point me in the right direction.

My system... Pentium 3.2 g, 250g hd, xp, 4g of ram, geforce 7900 gs 256

I have been struggling for the last 2 months doing everything possible and researching the net extensively for an answer to my game stuttering problem. I tried setting the exe file to priority like one guy suggested on here and no improvement. I have shut down every program running in the background through msconfig. I defrag, disk clean up and remove spyware all the time.

The unique thing to this problem is it always when i start a game for about 30-45 sec of stuttering in game play. The stuttering is exactly 2 sec apart so it not lag. ( you can count 1..2.. and it is a perfect pattern) It will come back again after 20 mins or so of play and last another 30-45 sec. The games played are BF2 and COD4. I have played them for years on this computer and it never did this. I am simply boggled!

Has anyone had this issue? Please help.....

 

I have to wonder if it is a heat issue or hardware failing issue.

You can use this to test your hardware:
http://majorgeeks.com/Passmark_BurnInTest_Standard_d4234.html
Do you have software to monitor the tempurature of your computer?

 

i have considered heat and hardware but..... I forgot to add in that it only happens in multiplayer online gaming. The single player version works fine. Considering this, I replaced my modem with no success and still have the problem. I even had the tech guys check my dsl line and I am running perfect.

 

The burn-in test will also stress test your network connection. Have you tried it yet?

 

I am reinstalling both games right now as a last ditch effort and I will let you guys know if its fixed.

 

Thanks for the input... Just reinstalled the games with no improvement. I have done all you just said. drivers didn't improve anything. Defrag, error checks, etc. I am not sure about the game cache thing though. Its crazy how it will work fine for 20 mins and just start again. Graphics are great.... just this weird effect in intervals

 

I havn't tried a burn test and don't know anything about it.

 

Refer to my earlier post:
http://majorgeeks.com/Passmark_BurnInTest_Standard_d4234.html

 

any chance your AV/FW/suite is interfering, or any anti-malware program (like Spybot, Malwarebytes, Spysweeper, etc.)? you may have to set specific (like Ignore, Allow or Trust) permissions or use Game Mode (if your security software has that option). some security software just won't let you set any decent options. McAfee won't as evidenced by its continual false/positive "trojan" quarantines of my Aveyond game executable...which is one of the numerous reasons i got rid of McAfee and went with Kaspersky Internet Security 2010.

could have been something in one of your security software's recent database updates (.DAT files). something you need to check and maybe post in their (your security product's) forums or contact their customer support about.

 

I recently checked Mcafee, its the only thing running in background, aand it said allow all access for cod file. I thought that would be it also cause the pattern of stuttering was like something trying to update in the bakground but i was wrong.

I just found another guy with the same problem posting and he was calling it fps spikes. I don't know if that helps. His problem wasn't solved as of the end of the thread either.

 

i'm just going by the issues i had with my McAfee suite. it would NOT let me configure well enough to fix my issues; the Aveyond example was only one of them. it absolutely wouldn't let me ignore/allow what it considered a "trojan" (details also mentioned online multi-player similarities & possible vulnerabilites). it just quarantined the game .exe without telling me. specific search at McAfee's site turned up: "we don't have any information on that" even though the program kept quarantining the game .exe.

in-program reporting and emails to AVAST got no response. McAfee online chat "help" only got me: "send to AVAST." contacted the Aveyond developer and they also said their emails to McAfee went unanswered.

i may be "all wet" because i don't do any online multiplayer's, so i don't have any specific experience with those; just not my thing. only thing i do have experience with is a multitude of various McAfee caused problems (mostly with games)...unloaded it with 3 months left on my subscription and purchased KIS 2010. never tried their forums because i'd had enough by then. may be something you could check out.

i'm not recommending you do that, it's just what i felt i had to do. like i said, i could be "all wet" and someone else may have another solution.

 

Here is what i think it is.

After changing the wording for what i was searching for, I found others with the same problems. The issue is Punk Buster. It seems that the last punk buster update, which you have to use to play most servers, has an error of some sort in it that only effects a small portion of players. I tried some techniques found on some other forums and determined it was fps spikes that caused drops of 50-70 fps in 2 sec intervals in my game play.

I know that it is punkbuster because when i cut it off or play non punkbuster regulated servers(only a few out there) the play is fine. Seems that punkbuster and infinty ward(game makers) know of the issue but have yet to fix it.

Thanks for your help.

 

There is actually a very large part of the gaming community that is having this problem so it is not rare, but not everyone has the issue. I get this lag on every pb enabled fps i play.