Anyone Else w/Overclocked SB Having Sporadic Stutter?

[Hawk777th 0]

My 4.5Ghz OC is 36hr P95 Stable and 24hr IBT stable. I am getting major stutters.

[Ponk 51]

I have this problem, but it's easily solved. Set FSX frame limiter to unlimited. Use an external frame limiter (the one from Venetubo site). Run the .jar file in there to creat a batch file and set the FPS you require (if the file doesn't run, then install Java). Problem solved...?

[Epikk 63]

Hi guys, I experienced momentary freezes too and I also tried a LOT of things... I just uninstalled my anti-virus software (Microsoft Security Essentials_ My FSX folder was excluded though) and my freezes are gone it seems...

[Noel 4,507]

I have this problem, but it's easily solved. Set FSX frame limiter to unlimited. Use an external frame limiter (the one from Venetubo site). Run the .jar file in there to creat a batch file and set the FPS you require (if the file doesn't run, then install Java). Problem solved...?

I don't think so. Most have tried this to no avail. Further, the external limiter isn't going to stop somethat attacking resources abruptly, it does not offer that. Noel

[Noel 4,507]

OK, take a look at this. I ran ProcessMonitor and hit the freeze button when FSX/NGX did its momentary freeze. I did it a couple of time. Both times I was able to capture a little of one second of unsuccessful file calls. I was unable to screen capture the whole event, but as I say it was a string of SUCCESS calls, then about 1.3sec worth of many consecutive failed calls, then resumption of SUCCESS calls. You are seeing toward the bottom of the screen capture the resumption of SUCCESSful calls. Don't know what to make of it, but both times I did this capture, this was a fairly frequent event: F:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Misc\Bucket\soundAI.CAB NAME NOT FOUND, or PATH NOT FOUND I'm thinking this could be the culprit. Events are moving by fast but you can trap them pretty quickly, then scroll back and view them. You can see how many occur in such a brief period of time, but as I say the section that showed alot of this took about 1.3sec or so. You can download Process Monitor, which is to Vista (and hopefully Win7) 64 what filemonNT was to earlier OS's. Noel

[McDaniel 48]

Some questions from my side:Does it happens also in mid-flight? Or just TO or Landings?Does it happens also at default airport scenerys?My observations:I just see that problem at 2-3 airports (pay ware) from the same company, as much as I love the products it's just destroying the experience to be there when you fly in. Exactly as in the video in this thread.McDaniel out

[Gumps 0]

Noel - I have not gotten a reply back from PMDG, and suspect that they're are busy stamping out fires...very understandable. Still, since they built the NGX, surely they will have some insight into this since it's unique to this addon. At least it is for me, and I have all of their FSX addons, plus others. I read with great interest your investigation with Process Monitor. I'll try to follow suit...just got home from work and will go upstairs and start poking around. I'll report back what I find out. Lain - I've not had any luck with the 2 FPS limiters though I was primarily looking at things in Full Screen Mode. I might take another swing at this, but based upon Noel's observations, I suspect the solution is somewhere else. Thank for bringing this up though. Fritz - I don't have antivirus software installed, since mine is a dedicated FSX machine. Good to know you cured your ills though. Might help someone else. McDaniel - It can happen at any phase of flight, and on the ground. And yes, it happens at default FSX airports. As an editorial comment....this addon is so worth tracking this down and eliminating it. Heck, the FPS are great! How did PMDG pull that off? If the FPS were low, there would be no hope. IMO, this is surely the gold standard for flight simulation. It's every bit as good as I hoped it would be, and well worth the wait. Remember all of the whining over release dates and such? Isn't it nice to read the forum without all of that? More later. All the best,

[Guest Turboblower]

Quote from Lars, regarding stutters, please note the part about 1 second pause. Stutters: You can get different types of stutters. One is when there is not enough CPU power to drive the game so the FPS drops so low so the game start to look more like a slideshow. Another is when FSX is getting limited by the GPU. The FPS is then generally high, but quick variations in the FPS between individual frames produce a jerky stuttery feeling. A third variation of stutter is when there is not enough RAM available so RAM has to be paged. This creates a few, but hard, sudden stutters when the game just pauses for up to a second just to continue as normal after. The complete article can be read here: http://forum.avsim.n...ware-explained/ For the best tuning guides in the business http://www.simforums...topic29041.html http://forum.avsim.net/topic/324786-nvidia-configuration-guide-inspector-2xxxx-drivers-version-20-explanations-of-all-settings/ Make sure you read the part about configuring your bios, memory timings, etc.

[Ioan92 63]

Try putting: [bufferpools]UsePools=0

[DAD 2,653]

Overclocked SB here and no such problem. Are you running anti-virus software by chance? If so, have you excluded the FSX folder from scanning?

same here. overclocked quite a bit and no stutters at all. actually pretty smooth and better than the 'other' ngx. note that I also excluded recently the fsx folder from anti-virus scanning as suggested in the introduction manual.

[tfm 169]

Gumps -Your list of trouble-shooting steps does not include ANY of the basics (see for example, http://forum.avsim.n...ber-the-basics/ ). No matter how stable your o/c seems in other applications or under a stress-tester such as OCCT, the o/c is the first place you should look, not the last. I can tell you from experience that stutters are often a sign of latent instability resulting from an over-aggressive o/c of the CPU and/or RAM, or insufficient voltage: a CTD is not the only sign of an unstable o/c.In your case, in my experience some stutters are specifically related to over-tight RAM settings. As an initial step try using stock RAM settings, and see if you get better results without having to compromise on CPU speed. Also, if your 8Gb are 4x2Gb sticks, then try removing 2 sticks (more sticks = trickier to get fully stable). If you are getting a noticeable "pause" then the culprit might just be the 580s over-heating: try setting the fan(s) to continuous 100% using the Performance options in Nvidia's control panel. Otherwise, I suggest you just follow the basics of going back to stock settings and taking it from there systematically.Until you have eliminated the hardware as a source of problems, I am afraid that fiddling with the software is just chasing the wind.Tim

[Gumps 0]

Noel and hammish777,I installed the Process Monitor (PM) and noticed the same items in your screen capture Noel. I set the PM to filter just the D:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\ directory first, and later whittled it down to just the D:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\...Bucket\ directory. Those unsuccessful process calls appear during the stutter, but also seem to appear at other times not associated with the stutter. (??)Something else I noticed. When I start PM, it causes EZdok to crash. When that happens, I can't use TIR or the various EZdok cockpit views. I tested with it anyway. PM sure has an effect on FPS, but by itself, doesn't cause the hard stutter. I will say, looking around with TIR naturally causes the view to change rapidly which would seem to 'stress' the graphics more than a static view. The airplane itself doesn't turn that fast. Kind of like the stutters folks can get when turning the airplane while taxiing on the ground. That is the time when the outside view changes the quickest.The other thing I noticed, was that more than once I got the stutter when using elevator trim. May have been coincidental, but I've seen this all along sporadically. I didn't capture that with PM.And by the way, I was flying with one finger on the Pause button, to and capture the stutter. Or really, to shorten the list the PM is putting out. Too bad we don't have an Event Trigger. Maybe PM has one, but I couldn't find it.It's odd that FSX is looking for file names that don't exist. What's up with that? Odd. Wish I knew where to turn that off.I've not heard back from PMDG yet.Cheers,

[Irishcurse65 0]

I had this problem in FSX and FS9. After looking for when and why it occurred. It seemed to happen to me whenever another pilot joined the session. Almost like it was processing the model of the aircraft that joined. I solved it by switching to FSInn.

[Gumps 0]

Gumps - Your list of trouble-shooting steps does not include ANY of the basics (see for example, http://forum.avsim.n...ber-the-basics/ ). No matter how stable your o/c seems in other applications or under a stress-tester such as OCCT, the o/c is the first place you should look, not the last. I can tell you from experience that stutters are often a sign of latent instability resulting from an over-aggressive o/c of the CPU and/or RAM, or insufficient voltage: a CTD is not the only sign of an unstable o/c. In your case, in my experience some stutters are specifically related to over-tight RAM settings. As an initial step try using stock RAM settings, and see if you get better results without having to compromise on CPU speed. Also, if your 8Gb are 4x2Gb sticks, then try removing 2 sticks (more sticks = trickier to get fully stable). If you are getting a noticeable "pause" then the culprit might just be the 580s over-heating: try setting the fan(s) to continuous 100% using the Performance options in Nvidia's control panel. Otherwise, I suggest you just follow the basics of going back to stock settings and taking it from there systematically. Until you have eliminated the hardware as a source of problems, I am afraid that fiddling with the software is just chasing the wind. Tim

Hi Tim, You're right, I didn't include the things that were basic. Heck, it would be too long a post! I figured the reference to NickN's hallowed guide would suffice. (Talk about a long post!) You may not have noticed in one of my subsequent posts that I indeed tried the system at stock clock, and that didn't help. Thanks for the thought just the same; sometimes we overlook the easy things. It can just be something little. My RAM is not overclocked, but rather is at stock speed. I've stress tested the memory as part of the system overclocking process. But, I've not tried removing one stick. I have observed the memory useage as part of the troubleshooting and can see that I should easily be able to get by on 4G...so I'll try that tonight. Thanks for that suggestion! Your comments are very much appreciated. Cheers,

[hamish7777 1]

Okay.. so I managed to get home and do a little testing. Loaded the NGX at Tromso Norway Default with no external frame limiter and the internal FSX limiter set to 30FPS. My FPS are stable at 30fps and I loaded the process monitor and started off down the runway... I had just rotated when the long stutter occured at which point I paused FSX and paused the process monitor. I noticed that for the exact time of the stutter it recorded that there was a 'buffer overflow' D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\PMDG\PMDG 737 NGX\PanelState\AutoSave Wed 214035.FLT.sav and there was activity between FSX and ESET my anti virus program even though I have the FSX drive excluded from scanning... I shall now see if I can turn off the auto save in FSUIPC.... will report back..... Hamish.