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4870x2 and Vista: Eliminate Microstutter!

7238 Views 34 Replies 18 Participants Last post by  gatattack, 
MagicBox
Hello guys, I would like to share with you something useful. A couple of days ago I was running under XP which I had been for years. I never experienced the infamous "microstutter". But since a couple of days, I've gone to Vista64. Everything seemed to run so much smoother! Well.. except for that I indeed began to notice what you'd call this micro-stutter.

Thinking about it, I've found a good solution which should work for all of you.

1) First of all, disable the Super Fetch service in Vista64. This is the one service that makes your harddrives grind for hours on end. Google it to find out what it does and you'll see that you don't need this service _at all_.

2) The very most important setting you have to do in your BIOS, and may vary from mobo to mobo. It is the PCI Latency Timer setting. For most motherboards, this is set to 32 cycles. It is the time a PCI device can claim the bus before having to release it. For high-bandwith cards that use PCIe as their link like SLI'ed or CF'ed cards, this timer setting will be much too low! It is causing a lot of overhead (= less data transfer, more bus arbitting (= fighting over which device gets to use the bus)). Added with Super Fetch accessing HD all the time, (and therefore using the PCI bus continuously) the CF'ed cards are intermittently starved for throughput.

Set the PCI Latency Timer to 128 or 192 (my current setting) or even 256 to allow the CF'ed cards to burst transfer much more data in one go before they have to release the bus to another device (SATA controller or which ever). This gives SLI and CF'ed cards room to breathe and transfer data quickly enough to keep up the frames! Thus, a higher setting improves datatransfer/arbiting ratio.

Good luck guys, may the microstutter be gone
Yes, for me it has disappeared completely.
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Wattes
1) Super Fetch is a service you actually want and people need to stop saying to disable it. Yes your harddisks will grind after a format for a couple of days (learning time) and during windows startup, but this is for a good cause. Super Fetch pre-loads programs (games w/e) you frequently use into your (un-used) memory. This is a good thing as it will shorten the load-times of your programs by a lot.

2) I wouldn't know anything about it, but sounds plausible.
Will give it a go later, when I'm home.
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MagicBox
Learning mode or not, Superfetch is detrimental to performace. Especially if you're not just using one or two programs most of the time. Especially when those programs have a large memory footprint. For example if you play different, large games, Superfetch will never stop grinding. It's overrated and lowers performance when you need it: While in your favourite game. There you want zero HDD access.

To each their own.
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Marin
I fail to see how superfetch, which caches apps which are used more onto the ram, can effect microstutter. Also superfetch has nothing to do with the HDD's.

Quote:
SuperFetch is a technology that pre-loads commonly used applications into the memory to reduce their load times. It's based on the "prefetcher" function in Windows XP. [7]

The intent is to improve performance in situations where running an anti-virus scan or back-up utility would result in otherwise recently-used information being paged out to disk, or disposed from in-memory caches, resulting in lengthy delays when a user comes back to their computer after a period of non-use.

SuperFetch also keeps track of what times of day that applications are used, which allows it to intelligently pre-load information that is expected to be used in the near future.

By default the necessary files are loaded into main memory but Windows Vista can use alternate storage such as USB flash drives, thereby freeing up main memory. Although hard disks usually have higher data transfer rates, flash drives can be faster for small files or non-sequential I/O because of their short random seek times.
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MagicBox
That's because you need to get your brain in gear and link the two points I gave together. Give it a try


I really don't want to turn this thread in a pro/against Superfetch thread. Instead it's there to help our fellow games eliminate microstutter and enjoy a smooth gaming experience.

Point is, on most systems SuperFetch causes a lot of harddisk access. Harddisk access takes up PCI bandwith. A low PCI latency timer together with SATA controllers claiming the PCI bus continuously causes intermitent throughput starvation for SLI'ed / CF'ed graphics cards. There you go.

P.S. I know well what SuperFetch is and does. I simply referred you to Google because I don't have intentions to explain it here.
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Wattes
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Quote:

Originally Posted by MagicBox View Post
That's because you need to get your brain in gear and link the two points I gave together. Give it a try


I really don't want to turn this thread in a pro/against Superfetch thread. Instead it's there to help our fellow games eliminate microstutter and enjoy a smooth gaming experience.

Point is, on most systems SuperFetch causes a lot of harddisk access. Harddisk access takes up PCI bandwith. A low PCI latency timer together with SATA controllers claiming the PCI bus continuously causes intermitent throughput starvation for SLI'ed / CF'ed graphics cards. There you go.

P.S. I know well what SuperFetch is and does. I simply referred you to Google because I don't have intentions to explain it here.
First of all, I can vouch for Marin's brain to be in a faster gear then yours....

Secondly, superfetch only uses your harddisk during it's learning period (usually the first couple of days after a format/install) and on system startup and has zero (null, nada) to do with games and or apps when Windows is fully loaded up. Just use the search button, there are plenty of threads about this on the OCN forums.

Last, the only service that you could disable to stop a bit of harddisk grinding would be the Windows Search service, since it indexes your harddisk. But that will make searching for files on your computer slower (which doesn't matter for most of us overclockers).
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Originally Posted by Marin View Post
I fail to see how superfetch, which caches apps which are used more onto the ram, can effect microstutter.
Maybe its not directly related to superfetch, perhaps it's just freeing up more ram which can be utilized by gpu drivers for texture caching, ect. But my first thought totally agreed with your comment: If its related to harddrive performance, thats not microstuttering, thats macro-stuttering
.
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MagicBox
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Originally Posted by Wattes View Post
First of all, I can vouch for Marin's brain to be in a faster gear then yours....

Secondly, superfetch only uses your harddisk during it's learning period (usually the first couple of days after a format/install) and on system startup and has zero (null, nada) to do with games and or apps when Windows is fully loaded up. Just use the search button, there are plenty of threads about this on the OCN forums.

Last, the only service that you could disable to stop a bit of harddisk grinding would be the Windows Search service, since it indexes your harddisk. But that will make searching for files on your computer slower (which doesn't matter for most of us overclockers).
I can definately vouch for your capability of quoting, but not reading a single letter I typed. If you fail to understand that ANY type of harddisk I/O (SuperFetch and yes like you say Indexing are the main causes for a lot of HD I/O) causes PCI bandwith usage, then I better give up trying to make it clear as I did twice now. It's clear you'd rather back up some buddy over actually understanding the topic at hand. So much for constructiveness
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MagicBox
Quote:

Originally Posted by Wattes View Post
2) I wouldn't know anything about it, but sounds plausible.
Will give it a go later, when I'm home.
This is why you and others in this thread fail to link the two points (HDD I/O and PCI Latency) together. But that's okay. That's why I posted this thread. To explain what one can do to remove microstutter, together with explaining as to why these settings fix it, along with the technical background.
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Wattes
Quote:

Originally Posted by MagicBox View Post
This is why you and others in this thread fail to link the two points (HDD I/O and PCI Latency) together. But that's okay. That's why I posted this thread. To explain what one can do to remove microstutter, together with explaining as to why these settings fix it, along with the technical background.
I'm not saying that those 2 aren't connected nor that somehow reducing harddisk I/O may help against microstutter (like I said, I'm no expert on that subject). We are merely stating that Superfetch doesn't cause harddisk I/O during games and has zero relevance to your theory.

Now this has nothing to do with backing up a buddy, but with backing up a statement you clearly did not read correctly yourself. And my comment was a response to your hostility towards a respected member of this community.
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Quote:

Originally Posted by MagicBox View Post
Hello guys, I would like to share with you something useful. A couple of days ago I was running under XP which I had been for years. I never experienced the infamous "microstutter". But since a couple of days, I've gone to Vista64. Everything seemed to run so much smoother! Well.. except for that I indeed began to notice what you'd call this micro-stutter.

Thinking about it, I've found a good solution which should work for all of you.

1) First of all, disable the Super Fetch service in Vista64. This is the one service that makes your harddrives grind for hours on end. Google it to find out what it does and you'll see that you don't need this service _at all_.

2) The very most important setting you have to do in your BIOS, and may vary from mobo to mobo. It is the PCI Latency Timer setting. For most motherboards, this is set to 32 cycles. It is the time a PCI device can claim the bus before having to release it. For high-bandwith cards that use PCIe as their link like SLI'ed or CF'ed cards, this timer setting will be much too low! It is causing a lot of overhead (= less data transfer, more bus arbitting (= fighting over which device gets to use the bus)). Added with Super Fetch accessing HD all the time, (and therefore using the PCI bus continuously) the CF'ed cards are intermittently starved for throughput.

Set the PCI Latency Timer to 128 or 192 (my current setting) or even 256 to allow the CF'ed cards to burst transfer much more data in one go before they have to release the bus to another device (SATA controller or which ever). This gives SLI and CF'ed cards room to breathe and transfer data quickly enough to keep up the frames! Thus, a higher setting improves datatransfer/arbiting ratio.

Good luck guys, may the microstutter be gone
Yes, for me it has disappeared completely.
OP, if you really want to test if you have eliminated micro stutter, download DM-Shrift for UT3, and play it at the highest resolution your monitor supports, preferably 1920x1200 or higher. Make sure the ingame graphics are set to highest. Then, force 8xAA (or even 16xAA) with the Box filter in CCC, and also enable quality Adaptive AA. Then play Shrift and report back on micro stutter.
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MagicBox
I can test that for you when I get back home again


@Wattes: I have no intention to be hostile; it was nothing more than a stimulating comment (I never said he did not have a brain what so ever).
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d3v0
Forum troll is a troll.
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MagicBox
We'll see when more 4870x2 owners have made the suggested modifications. It's sort of funny that there hasn't been a single post yet from the intended target users (people with x2 / SLI / CF setups).
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Quote:

Originally Posted by MagicBox View Post
This is why you and others in this thread fail to link the two points (HDD I/O and PCI Latency) together. But that's okay. That's why I posted this thread. To explain what one can do to remove microstutter, together with explaining as to why these settings fix it, along with the technical background.
...And to simultaneously berate people for kicks! XDD j/k You did come across as harsh, though.

That aside, I'm running an ASUS Rampage Formula; checked out the BIOs, page for page, and no luck. Any other way I could change the PCI latency time? I have the problem with my 4870x2's and would love it if this were the magical cure-all for me.
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MagicBox
I googled a bit, but the board doesn't seem to have a setting for it. Perhaps there's a thirdparty tool out there that would allow you to set the latency.
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Yea, I did some looking myself until OCN went down for maintanence... There is one particular tool called PCI Latency Tool v3.1 (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951), alas it doesn't work on Vista x64 v_v.

Oh well, the search continues!
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D
I know where you coming from. I had to disable it when I use to play bf2142 under Vista. When my game use to stutter. But when I disabled it just for Bf2142 game it went away. That time I had Vista 32 bit and only 2 gigs of ram.

Each to their own. On some people it will work and some people it doesn't. Don't flame the guy when he came up with something that helped him out and wanted to pass it on to some people that might be having the same problem.

I just turn it back on when I finished play the game.
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pixie
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Quote:

Originally Posted by Marin View Post
I fail to see how superfetch, which caches apps which are used more onto the ram, can effect microstutter. Also superfetch has nothing to do with the HDD's.
wow, and i coulda swore that caching apps... you know, the process of reading info from the hard drive and storing it in memory... would kinda use the hard drive at least once.
no offense, but you statement is a fallacy.

but yeah, once superfetch is done reading all the info it needs to fill up its cache, it stops accessing the HDD. plus, superfetch only does this on system load, or after you've shut down a fairly memory intensive program. so you'll only notice the HDD light glowing for a few minutes after those two things.

superfetch just plain helps. if you have a slow system, it might seem like a pain, but it does it's job and if you were to take a stop watch and check your program load times, you'd see that.
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D
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Originally Posted by pixie View Post
wow, and i coulda swore that caching apps... you know, the process of reading info from the hard drive and storing it in memory... would kinda use the hard drive at least once.
no offense, but you statement is a fallacy.
What he meant to say was that SuperFetch does not interfere with any user-started programs, whether it is right after start up or not. It works in the same way that [email protected] works in that SuperFetch only uses idle HDD "cycles" and is given a lower priority to any programs being launched by the user.
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