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GTX 480 Stuttering/mediocre performance

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited January 2011 in Graphical and Sound Issues
Has else tried STO with a GTX 480 yet? I just upgraded from a 280 and I am noticing lower framerates (sometimes on the order of 20% less) and some nasty stuttering (especially running around Spacedock) that I did not have before.

I understand new cards may have some glitches with existing games that will be ironed out via new drivers or game patches, I just wanted to see if anyone else was noticing the same thing to make sure it's not anything on my end.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Hmmm, tell ya what, try turning you DYNAMIC LIGHTING option off. A lot of ATI card users with the newer 5xxx cards are experiencing this same problem, myself included. Turning off DL has fixed it for us. I'm not 100% sure but if you could try it and let us know the results. If it doesn't affect you then sorry, I have no clue :(

    If this does solve your problem, re-post. It would be interesting to see if the issue is on new nvidia cards as well
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Just tried that, didn't make a bit of difference. Thanks for the advice. Going to try tinkering with settings one by one and seeing if one is the culprit.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Slight pity, I was hoping for either the fermis to beat the 5970s or at the very least drive the prices down, seems it did neither.

    As for stuttering, my friend has had some somewhere around release time, mainly some shadow issues and lightning. Though course that's degrading your quality when you probably shouldn't be required to. Probably only suggestion I can give is reinstall the driver even if the previous card was an nvidia card if you haven't already, there are occasionally issues that arise.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    I'll give a driver cleaner a shot. Haven't had 'dirty driver' issues in several years though but it's definately worth trying.

    And I think you'll see your price drop in a month or so, once the availability improves on the 480. It shouldn't be expected to beat the 5970 though, as that's a dual-GPU card from the same 'generation', and effectively is an Xfire setup (bringing along all the fun compatbility and random performance that comes with SLI/Xfire). The 5870 is the closest comparison to the 480, which it beats in most tests, just not by a wide margin like it should have probably been. Nvidia dropped the ball on these cards, and personally, I was expecting to get a 5870 after all the early rumors...but the 480 ended up being cheaper and performing a little better than the rumors, so I wen't with it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    I have a 480 since the 9th and have had no issues in game with everything maxed out.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    One one machine with ATi I have no problem, on another with a 260m it stutters like mad. It's just crazy that there is no sticky on this problem since it is so widespread and no fix from anyone.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    I haven't had stuttering issues, but I crash to desktop once about every 15 min. I just build my computer from the ground up with a new GTX 480, so I can't rule that as the only culprit. Age of Conan does the same thing, so I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my system somewhere. There is just too many possibilities :( STO and AoC still works fine on my old machine though...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Upgraded my GTX 280 to a GTX 470(free!)
    And i am also having problems with serious performance drops when playing STO, especially in fleet actions and PvP. :(
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    T_U_M wrote:
    I haven't had stuttering issues, but I crash to desktop once about every 15 min. I just build my computer from the ground up with a new GTX 480, so I can't rule that as the only culprit. Age of Conan does the same thing, so I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my system somewhere. There is just too many possibilities :( STO and AoC still works fine on my old machine though...

    Try Doing a Mem test on you ram or test with Prime 95 If you encounter rounding errors great possibility it is your Ram
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    My suggestion is to reinstall DirectX also... when I encounter an explosion in space in a nebula, my GPU usage is pegged at 99% even after restarting the game... the only solution I have found so far is to reinstall DirectX. When this happens... my FPS goes form a constant 60 in space to a max of around 32. I have no idea what is using up the rest of the GPU. I would suggest installing an overlay GPU usage / temp monitor like the one provided by evga. You may find that there is a driver/DirectX issue causing something else to run wild on our GPU in game keeping it from doing graphics...

    Oh yeah... I have a 260GTX...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Kaztith wrote: »
    Try Doing a Mem test on you ram or test with Prime 95 If you encounter rounding errors great possibility it is your Ram

    It was indeed a bad stick of RAM. It didn't show up as bad during POST, but using Prime 95 and one of my three sticks at a time, I figure out which was the bad one (it was the one that crashed Prime 95 in less than 30 seconds). Woot! Now I can play STO in all its graphical gloryness. :DNo stuttering issues at all here. Try the 197.55 driver. It might be in BETA since when I downloaded it last Tuesday it was findable by Nvidia's driver search. I found it through the EVGA GTX 480 fourms. Other than that, I am clueless as to the Stutterings.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    for 480 gtx users just max everything out and go to Troubleshooting and klick on the Limit Frame Rate to off and u got steddy 60 fps all the time:) , and i recommend using vsync on ! u can do that in the Nvidia Control panel and the card vill be cooler;) and use windowed Maximized, will be smoother
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Rhayne05 wrote:
    Hmmm, tell ya what, try turning you DYNAMIC LIGHTING option off. A lot of ATI card users with the newer 5xxx cards are experiencing this same problem, myself included. Turning off DL has fixed it for us. I'm not 100% sure but if you could try it and let us know the results. If it doesn't affect you then sorry, I have no clue :(

    If this does solve your problem, re-post. It would be interesting to see if the issue is on new nvidia cards as well

    STO plays FLAWLESSLY on my 5870 ATI card.

    I love it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I do believe I'm having a similar issue with my GTX260. While I'm docked, I notice that my character movement is very unsmooth, this however is not the case while doing ground missions (at least the ones I have done so far) or running around on my bridge.

    I'll try disabling DL when I get home.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I recently switched from a Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 4890 1GB to an EVGA GeForce GTX 470 SC.

    With the exception of dynamic lighting causing the 4890 other issues, it ran very smoothly. There were
    some problems on earth space dock and to some extent on DS9 when panning the camera around
    for the first time so that things could load, but these stutters went away after the first 360 degree
    sweep. There were no issues with stuttering in space.

    The GTX 470, however, with Nvidia driver version 197.75 (also 197.41), suffers major stuttering
    issues on both earth spacedock and DS9. You have to walk around the whole station before
    everything is loaded. Even after that, I get a small stutter when someone new beams in. This occurs
    to a lesser extent in space. (What happens to the GTX 470 in space is about what happened to the
    4890 on earth spacedock in terms of severity, and it goes away after everything is loaded).

    I opened up EVGA Precision, and STO apparently is only using up to 500MB of VRAM when I have
    1280MB available on my new card.

    I played with settings to see what was causing the stuttering, and it turns out that if you set
    Shadows to either High or Medium, you get severe stutters. Setting Shadows to Low or Off
    completely alleviates the problem in all environments.

    Defragmentation and optimization of my disk using Smart Defrag did not fix the stuttering.

    Specs:

    Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
    Intel Core i5-750 overclocked to 3.0 Ghz
    EVGA GTX 470 SuperClocked 1280MB, overclocked to GTX 480 stock speeds
    G.SKILL DDR3-1333 PC3 10666 4GB(2GB x 2) CL 8-8-8-24-2N
    Western Digital Caviar Black 750 GB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM
    Gigabyte P55A-UD3 Motherboard
    OCZ 550W Fatal1ty Modular Active PFC Power Supply
    Apple 20" Cinema Display (1680x1050)


    All settings in STO were maxed out except FSAA, which I set at 4x. 8x causes some
    shadows to disappear (same with 4890)! Fullscreen, full resolution. I used the same
    settings between the 4890 and the GTX 470.

    Already tried the earlier suggestion of disabling the framerate limiter. Didn't help.
    I also tried the option to keep more data in memory. That helped a little bit, but not much.
    Turning shadows to Low is the only fix I can find that works for me, and I shouldn't
    have to do that.

    EDIT: Trying a complete reinstall of STO (steam version). I noticed that my loading screens
    for DS9 and ESD were switched, so maybe there's other issues lurking.

    EDIT2: Complete reinstall did help with stuttering, although it did NOT resolve the loading
    screen problem. Stuttering is now down to what I remember the 4890 doing, where it
    could be resolved in one or two 360 degree sweeps. The 470 seems to take a little longer
    still, but it does go away eventually on both ESD and DS9.

    EDIT3: Game still stutters as I walk through earth spacedock when turning my camera in circles
    to look around, especially when I enter a new room. Not as bad as it was, but the 4890 did not
    do this. As soon as I did a 360 degree sweep on that card, the entire station was loaded.

    Cryptic, please do something about the way shadows are loaded so that STO isn't having
    to read from the disk so much all at once, if you can. Having the shadows "pop-in" like how
    the textures go from low to higher resolution would be fine. You could start with the "low"
    shadow setting which has no performance impact, then bring the higher res shadows in
    later, without blocking the entire rendering pipeline.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    The good news is Nvidia has recognized that STO stutters if you use a GTX470 or GTX480. It has earned a mention in the driver release notes for 257.15.

    The bad news is it's still not fixed yet.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Yeah and the new Beta drivers have some new bugs with the 470 for me, which causes some of the bloom effects to freeze up(uber bloom aah) and the weapons textures to get all messed up when going from game to desktop and back to game again.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Well, my new PC shipped this morning from the folks at Cyberpower PC. It should be able to handle STO quite easily, but we shall see.

    CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-975 Extreme Edition 3.33 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366

    FAN: CyberPower Xtreme Hydro Liquid Cooling Kit 240MM w/ Dual Fan(CPU & GPU Liquid Cool Capable, Extreme Overclcking Performance + Extreme Slient at 18dBA)

    HDD: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

    CD: LG 22X DVD±/±RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer Drive

    MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable™3 Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 Dobly Audio, eSATA, GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, IEEE1394a, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI

    MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Kingston HyperX)

    POWERSUPPLY: 1200 Watts Power Supply (* Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular PSU - PN: TRX-1200M)

    VIDEO: Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video (Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 470 1.28GB GDDR5 VRAM [DirectX 11 Support])

    VIDEO2: Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video (Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 470 1.28GB GDDR5 VRAM [DirectX 11 Support])


    While this isn't top of the line, I'm hoping the SLI'd liquid cooled video cards with 2.56 total gigs of VRAM between them can handle any graphics issues. Hopefully the drivers it comes with will be the most current, and I won't have too many problems.

    If I do, I imagine I'll be back in this thread asking for help.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Avery wrote: »
    I have a 480 since the 9th and have had no issues in game with everything maxed out.

    Anyone Remember ACH from Armada?

    Nice card, do you remember [Q] ?



    I recently switched from a Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 4890 1GB to an EVGA GeForce GTX 470 SC.

    With the exception of dynamic lighting causing the 4890 other issues, it ran very smoothly. There were
    some problems on earth space dock and to some extent on DS9 when panning the camera around
    for the first time so that things could load, but these stutters went away after the first 360 degree
    sweep. There were no issues with stuttering in space.

    The GTX 470, however, with Nvidia driver version 197.75 (also 197.41), suffers major stuttering
    issues on both earth spacedock and DS9. You have to walk around the whole station before
    everything is loaded. Even after that, I get a small stutter when someone new beams in. This occurs
    to a lesser extent in space. (What happens to the GTX 470 in space is about what happened to the
    4890 on earth spacedock in terms of severity, and it goes away after everything is loaded).

    I opened up EVGA Precision, and STO apparently is only using up to 500MB of VRAM when I have
    1280MB available on my new card.

    I played with settings to see what was causing the stuttering, and it turns out that if you set
    Shadows to either High or Medium, you get severe stutters. Setting Shadows to Low or Off
    completely alleviates the problem in all environments.

    Defragmentation and optimization of my disk using Smart Defrag did not fix the stuttering.

    Specs:

    Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
    Intel Core i5-750 overclocked to 3.0 Ghz
    EVGA GTX 470 SuperClocked 1280MB, overclocked to GTX 480 stock speeds
    G.SKILL DDR3-1333 PC3 10666 4GB(2GB x 2) CL 8-8-8-24-2N
    Western Digital Caviar Black 750 GB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM
    Gigabyte P55A-UD3 Motherboard
    OCZ 550W Fatal1ty Modular Active PFC Power Supply
    Apple 20" Cinema Display (1680x1050)


    All settings in STO were maxed out except FSAA, which I set at 4x. 8x causes some
    shadows to disappear (same with 4890)! Fullscreen, full resolution. I used the same
    settings between the 4890 and the GTX 470.

    Already tried the earlier suggestion of disabling the framerate limiter. Didn't help.
    I also tried the option to keep more data in memory. That helped a little bit, but not much.
    Turning shadows to Low is the only fix I can find that works for me, and I shouldn't
    have to do that.

    EDIT: Trying a complete reinstall of STO (steam version). I noticed that my loading screens
    for DS9 and ESD were switched, so maybe there's other issues lurking.

    EDIT2: Complete reinstall did help with stuttering, although it did NOT resolve the loading
    screen problem. Stuttering is now down to what I remember the 4890 doing, where it
    could be resolved in one or two 360 degree sweeps. The 470 seems to take a little longer
    still, but it does go away eventually on both ESD and DS9.

    EDIT3: Game still stutters as I walk through earth spacedock when turning my camera in circles
    to look around, especially when I enter a new room. Not as bad as it was, but the 4890 did not
    do this. As soon as I did a 360 degree sweep on that card, the entire station was loaded.

    Cryptic, please do something about the way shadows are loaded so that STO isn't having
    to read from the disk so much all at once, if you can. Having the shadows "pop-in" like how
    the textures go from low to higher resolution would be fine. You could start with the "low"
    shadow setting which has no performance impact, then bring the higher res shadows in
    later, without blocking the entire rendering pipeline.


    I to see slow down when turning around in space doc or DS9 until it loads up. Ground mission are weird after patches I found my setting needed changing to get my FPS back from 40 to 60+. I also find when accessing the exchange or storage my FPS can go from 50+ down to 10.

    I'm thinking of getting a 470 (or lower 465/460) and keeping my 8800GT just for PhysX


    Vincit wrote: »
    Well, my new PC shipped this morning from the folks at Cyberpower PC. It should be able to handle STO quite easily, but we shall see.

    CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-975 Extreme Edition 3.33 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366

    FAN: CyberPower Xtreme Hydro Liquid Cooling Kit 240MM w/ Dual Fan(CPU & GPU Liquid Cool Capable, Extreme Overclcking Performance + Extreme Slient at 18dBA)

    HDD: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

    CD: LG 22X DVD±/±RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer Drive

    MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable™3 Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 Dobly Audio, eSATA, GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, IEEE1394a, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI

    MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Kingston HyperX)

    POWERSUPPLY: 1200 Watts Power Supply (* Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular PSU - PN: TRX-1200M)

    VIDEO: Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video (Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 470 1.28GB GDDR5 VRAM [DirectX 11 Support])

    VIDEO2: Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video (Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 470 1.28GB GDDR5 VRAM [DirectX 11 Support])


    While this isn't top of the line, I'm hoping the SLI'd liquid cooled video cards with 2.56 total gigs of VRAM between them can handle any graphics issues. Hopefully the drivers it comes with will be the most current, and I won't have too many problems.

    If I do, I imagine I'll be back in this thread asking for help.

    Nice rig hopefully STO runs sweet
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Nice rig hopefully STO runs sweet

    Rig showed up late Friday afternoon. Spent several hours installing STO and all the patches (and tribble) onto it.

    I'm able to run everything maxed (except until they fix dynamic lighting I'm keeping it off) and keep a frame rate over 60fps. Talk about smoooooth!

    Now the liquid cooling system gets hotter than hades, but it keeps the CPU and GPUs cool, so it does its job. I'm debating an extra fan on the radiator to increase the cooling power.

    Just totally loving the new system.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Vincit wrote: »
    Just totally loving the new system.


    I'm able to run everything maxed (except until they fix dynamic lighting I'm keeping it off) and keep a frame rate over 60fps. Talk about smoooooth!



    Have you limited the frame rate?

    I get 80+ in space

    I get 60+ ground missions

    Because with your rig you should be getting more than me (16x10 res) I max out nearly all the setting
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited June 2010
    Have you limited the frame rate?

    I get 80+ in space

    I get 60+ ground missions

    Because with your rig you should be getting more than me (16x10 res) I max out nearly all the setting

    That's over 60 on ground missions. Space was rarely a problem before. Cluttered ground missions, especially with all the turrets my away team uses, could get dicey before.

    Oh, and for a laugh, the SLI wasn't properly set up. The bridge wasn't installed. Once I popped that sucker on, the heat from the liquid cooling went down considerably. And I haven't had a crash, stutter, fuzziness or funky string coming off an object once.

    I'm in geek heaven.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited June 2010
    I'm more curious to know what people are getting in Fleet Actions and intense PvP rather than mere normal ground and space battles.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    Sweet Jesus!
    Thank you SO much for finally ending my search for a temp fix to this issue!!
    (My set up is near identical to yours and i too have to set shadows to low, ridiculous!)
    You are a credit to this forum, my good friend!

    Thank you thank you thank you!!!!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    There was a thread on this when the 460's came out, too. Dynamic lighting and shadows were the cause of the stutter if I remember correctly. You can check my post history and dig up the threads if you are really curious.

    Think we also figured out the alt-tab crashes were being caused when folks were running an nvidia card with the in-game resolution at something different than their desktop resolutions. Matching those seemed to fix the alt-tab crashes. Again, you'll have to dig to confirm, but this was a hot discussion item back in october.

    I am personally loving the newer highend Nvidia cards. The drivers seem a lot more stabile and less klunky then ATI drivers.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    for all ati and nvidia cards go into your control panels and look for max prerendered frames and set that to 0 for sto and set power to max performance this helps fix eliviate stutter on ground and space where possible.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    boglejam wrote: »
    There was a thread on this when the 460's came out, too. Dynamic lighting and shadows were the cause of the stutter if I remember correctly.

    actually only the shadows are the cause.

    but dynamic lighting just looks horribly bad with shadows at low, so yeah should be shut off too.
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