Hmmm, stuttering bad in HL2, or skipping?

I just got back from a biz trip and installed HL2, on the very fast machine in my sig. Every so often it stutters, and I thought the machine had hung up repeating the sound. Then I just let it do it for a while and it fixed itself.

The problem is not my computer. The problem is the game. It sucks.. but I'll try a few suggestions.. really really sucks..
 
I you ever looked at your HDD activity light when it stutters, you'd notice that your HDD is doing stuff. Your computer is loading crap for the game. Defrag or lower the game settings, it will probably help, but it probably won't make it go away because the environments are so big.
 
The problem is the game isnt loading that stuff (sounds prolly) to the ram, and not using most of the ram ( a person w/ 1 gig reported 300MB usage of ram).
 
Well I beat the game, but mine stuttered as well, but generally when I was zoning in for the first time, so I would image it was probably due to high quality textures loading in and out. But all I gotta say is this is hands down game of the year imo, much better than doom 3 gameplay wise.
 
CatsGoMoo said:
Just checking in to say that it also does this in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (Another Source Engine game).
Click to expand...

Yup, fun isn't it.
Haven't found anything thats helped yet, it's obviously a source engine problem.
 
Same problems as everyone else....gonna try the ol' defrag shit.

This is ridiculous...
 
If it is a source problem then why does CS:S not skip?? Hmm... I think it has to do with a feature in Source that CS:S doesn't take advantage of... cough*autosave*cough
 
I followed the directions mentioned earlier:

1: Downloaded and installed latest Radeon drivers from ATI
2. Loaded my save game, hit ESC, and changed the audio settings from High to Medium.
3. I then changed my resolution from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 (yes, better resolution!)

I did not defrag, but I will tonight. New drivers and changing audio settings seemed to have helped a LOT.

Here's my current settings:

Running at 1280x1024 0AA 4x AF, high model detail, high quality textures

Here's my rig (just FYI for comparison)
2.4c @ 3.3 GHz
512Mb DDR500 OCZ Ram
Radeon 9800 Pro ATI
Sound Blaster Live! Value PCI
 
Defrag. Defrag. Defrag.

Trust me.

I defragged and set my textures to medium (which I did preemptively and not cause I had to) and all the stuttering went away.

Running everything at high, 1600x1200 with med text, 4aa, 8af - smooth

I am going to try to bump textures back up to high and see if it occurs again, but I doubt it.

Specs: AMD 64 3000+, Abit KV8 , 1GB 3200 Corsair XMS, BFG 6800GT oc, Audigy Gamer, Seagate SATA 120x2 Raid0.
 
Yeah, but that doesn't seem to work for everybody. I've defragged down to 1% or 0% without improvement. I'm going to try (right now) clean installs of chipset, video and audio drivers. 'Course I'm getting crashes instead of just the stutters, so maybe the only thing that will help here is a patch but I'm willing to try this anyway.
 
Vesh said:
Yeah, but that doesn't seem to work for everybody. I've defragged down to 1% or 0% without improvement. I'm going to try (right now) clean installs of chipset, video and audio drivers. 'Course I'm getting crashes instead of just the stutters, so maybe the only thing that will help here is a patch but I'm willing to try this anyway.
Click to expand...

Post your system specs, OS, etc
 
I think the problem might be solved for some by adjusting virtual memory which will help with the hard drive accessing during play. I set my minimum and maximum the same for my sys. 1000mb. That seemed to help alot, but hard drive still runs more than it should and that kills frame rate.
 
Guys, the problem IS THE AUTOSAVE. It hangs for a sec when it saves the game then it resumes.
 
SparkedFire said:
Guys, the problem IS THE AUTOSAVE. It hangs for a sec when it saves the game then it resumes.
Click to expand...

I respect your conclusion, but I have to disagree to an extent. Case in point: The game does NOT autosave during the opening video sequence with the g-man. Remember "wake up Mr. Freeman..." Well, on my system the opening sequence used to go "wawawawake kkk up Mr. Frefrefrefreman..." (for example). Clearly it's not autosaving every 2 seconds during the intro sequence.

I installed the latest video drivers and dropped the audio from High to Medium in the HL2 settings. That seemed to fix it.

I do agree, however, that it will always stutter when it autosaves.
 
PrkChpXprss said:
I respect your conclusion, but I have to disagree to an extent. Case in point: The game does NOT autosave during the opening video sequence with the g-man. Remember "wake up Mr. Freeman..." Well, on my system the opening sequence used to go "wawawawake kkk up Mr. Frefrefrefreman..." (for example). Clearly it's not autosaving every 2 seconds during the intro sequence.

I installed the latest video drivers and dropped the audio from High to Medium in the HL2 settings. That seemed to fix it.

I do agree, however, that it will always stutter when it autosaves.
Click to expand...

Well thats interesting. I didn't have any prolems like that except the stuttering with the autosave. Sorry if i missed people mentioning the problem to that extent (i just skimmed the thread real quick becuase of all the posts).
 
I read five pages of people saying nothing but assumptions as to what the problem actually is.

It isnt the damn video card you're running and its not the stupid system the game is running on. Hell if you see the system I can get the game to run on then you will obviously know its not your super systems having set up flaws.

This game is very HD reliant and there is no real way according to anyone here or any geniouses on steampowered as to why everyone and their mother are having the jitter problems... if anything with all of the hd accessing going on it makes me wonder if valve themselves have a trojan horse program running on the machines while you play half life two to see whos cheating and how people are running through the game or to monitor if anyone is making apparent changes or trying to figure out some way to code themselves into valve using the steam engine as a trojan horse.

I mean its way more past more than meets the eye here people. If doom 3 ran fine on your machine then there is no fucking reason at all that half life 2 shouldnt be running FLAWLESSLY on your machine. Only people I havent heard complaining are people running dual xeon machines with 2 gigs of ram and drives configured in a raid set up.

Unless someone has an answer to the problem stop trying to wave your half ass knowledge having dicks around here and get strait to the point instead of trying to pass the buck on ati or nvidia.
 
try this it worked for me:

POST BY Mav3r1cK ON GURU3D FORUMS:::

----1----

snd_async_fullyasync 1

See if it's any better. It might de-sync some of the dialog, but it should remove the stuttering.

----2----

Getting the game to load as much of its self into memory as possible also helps a lot; to do this, right click on Half-Life 2 in steam and select properties, then click launch options, put in "-heapsize 256000" without the quote marks. For the number, choose half your total system memory, in the examples case, its for a system with 512megs ram, you should use 512000 for systems with a gig of ram.

----3----

Edit the config.cfg file if the hl2\cfg folder and set the following.

cl_forcepreload "1"
sv_forcepreload "1"
cl_smooth "0"


----4----

If you're still getting sound stuttering, or popping, or static after the above (which should help with HD pauses, but not the sound pauses), then change the following setting in config.cfg -

snd_mixahead is originally set to "0.1"

Change it to a higher number - the number will vary by PC, but for me it was:

snd_mixahead "0.4"

That'll fix it - if it doesn't, set the number higher. If you set it lower than the default setting, the popping/stuttering gets much worse,

Hope it helps guys !!!
 
PrkChpXprss said:
Post your system specs, OS, etc
Click to expand...
I have in this thread (pretty sure anyway - yeah! Here ya go: http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1026880198&postcount=47), but it's no matter. I think I may have gotten it. I've not really played for long enough to know for sure but I had a save in Route Kanal that was a sure-fire crash point. It's not crashing anymore and stutters are gone except for the occasional very slight tick when it's obviously loading some resource. To me that's acceptable.

I just stripped drivers, installed:

6.14 beta nForce unified drivers - with nV IDE drivers - without nV audio drivers.
4.12 beta Catalysts - without CCC.
Latest Audigy 2 ZS web update drivers.

Seems pretty smooth so far but I haven't hit a dialogue-heavy part yet where the worst happens.
 
I also get the stutter and then HL2 crashes and I'm back to the desktop. I tried running HL Source via steam and guess what the same thing happens. I've dropped Audio back to medium with no improvement.

I haven't tried the regular version of HL that's available via steam yet. If that does the same thing then there's probably something wrong with the steam client or it might interfere with how the games access system resources. Don't know!

Anyone else notice similar problems with steam downloads outside of HL2?
 
*sigh*

Nope, didn't help much. Fixed the stutter for the most part, but it didn't fix the crash.
 
Seems like turning off AUTOSAVE helps.
http://forums.anandtech.com/message...did=1444203&highlight_key=y&keyword1=autosave

Try it and see if it works.

havn't been able to 100% verify that this works, but I noticed in my console that it attempted to autosave and failed because of what I had done, and I never noticed a stutter.

Basically you just make all the autosave files read-only.. here's how:

Go to your half life 2 save folder.

Example: C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\vhold\half-life 2\hl2\SAVE

Hold down ctrl and select:
autosave.tga, autosave.sav, autosave01.tga and autosave01.sav

Right click on one of them and go to properties.

Click on 'read-only' then click OK.

Viola. Tell me if it works for you, it works for me, I think there might be a tiny bit of stutter still as it attempts to do it, but its nothing like it was.
Click to expand...
 
Steam update and file validation didn't solve the crash. And again... might've made it worse. I couldn't even get past the load menu without it taking a dive.
 
i just watch this: http://home.broadpark.no/~krhagen/

i have a p4-3c, ht enabled, intel d875pbz1gb ram, 9700pro128, 8xmode, 128mb aperture allocation, audigy1, windows xp sp2, all up to date drivers, all video attributes at maximum except filtering at trilinear, no af, 1280x1024res, and i never experienced this a bit.

i do feel some of this has to do with proper installation of os, drivers, bios options, and proper upkeep (e.g. chkdsk /f and defraging). when i see what i saw in that vid, i am thinking i/o subsystems. (e.g. dma enabled? drivers installed for dma operation? what dma mode? how much cache for hd? etc..)

note: i segregate my data. os/apps drive one, games drive two, archives drive 3. these are real physical drives, not logical partitions on one physical drive. paging will happen on drive c: while d is read or written. i do this specifically due to windows ability to handle mutiple drives concurrently and paging file optimizations.
 
I changed the autosave files to read-only and did this which I found on the Steam forums:

Originally posted by [3e]^voodoo
The stuttering audio is caused by decompression of the Audio files

Download GCFScape "A utility that lets you extract the .gcf files"

Go into your "Steam\SteamApps" Folder and open "source sounds.gcf" it should open with GCFScape, then locate the "Sound" folder and extract it into "Steam\SteamApps\[email protected]\half-life 2\hl2"

Now your game should run fine.. ^voodoo

GCFScape can be found here: GCFScape It does require some .NET software installed from Microsoft.

My stuttering was getting slowly worse so I tried these two suggestions and they made a huge difference. The stuttering is much less frequent and barely noticable.
 
Kong said:
I changed the autosave files to read-only and did this which I found on the Steam forums:

Originally posted by [3e]^voodoo
The stuttering audio is caused by decompression of the Audio files

Download GCFScape "A utility that lets you extract the .gcf files"

Go into your "Steam\SteamApps" Folder and open "source sounds.gcf" it should open with GCFScape, then locate the "Sound" folder and extract it into "Steam\SteamApps\[email protected]\half-life 2\hl2"

Now your game should run fine.. ^voodoo

GCFScape can be found here: GCFScape It does require some .NET software installed from Microsoft.

My stuttering was getting slowly worse so I tried these two suggestions and they made a huge difference. The stuttering is much less frequent and barely noticable.
Click to expand...

I just did exactly what you said and it didn't do jack. I'm tired of people putting fixes on here that dont work. And I'm really tired of paying 80 dollars for a game that doesn't work either. VALVE you need to get your ass in gear and fix this shit.
 
I think there may be some confusion because there are several things that are similar happening.

My problem - the game would run okay, then it would stop with a sound loop repeating over and over. I would let the sound loop for a couple of minutes and it would unlock itself. Sometimes it wouldn't unlock itself and I'd have to reboot the computer. I thought it was only related to auto-saves, but it seems that's not the case.

I did 3 things last night that, one or more of which seems to have fixed the problem. I updated the bios on my P4P800 delux motherboard. It was 3 revisions behind. I updated the driver on the built in network card, it was 2 revisions behind. I changed the timing on my memory from 2.5/3/3/6 to 2.5/4/4/8.

It seems to be working fine and smooth now. I don't know which of those 3 fixes resolved the problem, but I suggest everyone check each piece of hardware in their computer and install a new driver. Then, try slowing your memory timings down a bit. I have my CPU and 6800GT highly overclocked, so since it's still working, I don't think that's what's causing the problem I described.
 
Jazzy jeff said:
I just did exactly what you said and it didn't do jack. I'm tired of people putting fixes on here that dont work. And I'm really tired of paying 80 dollars for a game that doesn't work either. VALVE you need to get your ass in gear and fix this shit.
Click to expand...

It worked for me. Obviously there are multiple issues here, so therefore there is not 1 fix.

HL2 has never crashed on me, but this is a problem for some. My problem was stuttering which seemed to be sound related for me, but others it seems to be video related. People are putting fixes on here that worked for them. No need to get angry at folks trying to help.

I am curious after I extracted the Sounds folder from the 'source sounds.gcf' file the Sounds folder is smaller than the orignial file... so what is the purpose of compressing it?!?
 
well, I bought a new 74 gig raptor, imaged my old drive, put the image on the raptor and now the game plays flawlessly...I thought it was because i had a crappy drive that my game was having problems so I bought the raptor without knowing that I was not the only one with game problems. it could be a coinsidence, but I am playing with no problems. :)
 
I know exactly what the problem is, VALVE is so paranoid that someone will mess with there precious source code that they but a million different copy protections on the game and now its messed up. I didn't have this many problems with Doom III and I didn't have to deal with the Steam bullshit either. I want a refund and I'm keepin the T-shirt. :D
 
Just wanted to let everyone know that I too am having trouble with Half Life 2 locking up BOTH the video and audio every few seconds. I can't even start a new game it's so bad. It loads just fine and FAST for my system, but once loaded the start game screen freezes about every 3 seconds. The bird that flies around in the background stops moving and the sound totally drops out. This appears to be an entire system freeze for just a few seconds, but then it will unfreeze and return to normal then repeat again.

I have the specs of my system in my signature below, so I KNOW that's not it. Yes, I've done all the usual things to make sure, trust me this IS NOT my first time troubleshooting. All of my video and sound drivers are up to date from their web sites. I've defraged just to be sure and of course have no running background tasks. My BIOS and motherboard chipset are all OK as well.

There should be no reason to be having this problem since Doom 3 runs SMOOTH AS BUTTER. I have NO freeze at all playing that game. So, the question remains, what's left to check? Has anyone else had this happen with a system and video card like mine? It seems like after reading several posts here that it varies widely and not card specific. However, I wonder if it has to do with the 6800 Ultra series itself? I think we should all stay on top of this and try to help each other find a solution IFpossible.

Thanks,

Jeff

Well, signature is not working for some reason, here's the specs:

Case: Coolermaster - Model ATC110
Custom Artwork: American flag, Liberity Bell and other done by Smooth Creations (VERY NICE and HIGHLY recommended).
Power: PC Power and Cooling 510 Watt Turbo.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX-53.
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo2 nForce3.
Video Card: BFG nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra OC.
Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro with external breakout box.
Memory: 2 GIG of Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO.
Primary Storage: 2 Western Digital Raptor 74GIG.
Optical: Pioneer Model DVR108 - Dual Layer DVD+/-RW.
Mouse: Logitech Laser - Model MX1000.
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural.
 
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