Is HL2 stutter bug getting worse with time?

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sholmes01

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I played and finished HL2 a while back and had the stutter bug, but it was not that bad. I had not played in a while, but I got a new vid card (went from AIW 9800 Pro to an AIW X800 XT) and thought I would try it out at a higher rez. I tried playing at all the recomended settings which were maxed out for all things except (Res, AA and Filtering), but it appears to stutter more now than it did before! I tried played at the same settings I had for my 9800 Pro and it does not seem as smooth. If I lower Texture detail to medium it is a lot better. It is also even better at Medium sound Quality. I got a better vid card, why should I have to lower Texture detail? I have HL2 on DVD so I uninstalled and reinstalled, but no help.

I thought The Lost Coast will look nice on the new vid card, but plain HL2 looks bad. :(

As a point of info....Doom 3 at 1600 all setting maxed..***ns smooth. So do a lot of my other games all maxed out. Just HL2 (promoted by ATI) runs poorly.

I am just wondering if it is just me or is my new vid card bad?

Intel D875PBZ Mother board - 3GHz
ATI AIW X800 XT
1GB RAM
Lots of HD space (newley defraged after reinstalling HL2)
SB Audigy 2
 
If its the stutter problem with the new G card.. then it'll be HL2 not the card, I still cant believe that people still have trouble with it, helooooO valve...

I dont think weve actually had a straight forward answer as to why it does stutter randomly for alot of people anyway, all ive heard is.. do this, do that, sv_preload this, cl_smooth that, cl_fixstutterbug please :P. all I know is its something to do with memory usage and the way source precache's all the resources its using.
 
Ummmm, I sympathize with your problem, but you already started a post exactly like this one and it's still active...

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=93598


Did you try the solutions I suggested? There are plenty of remedies that could help here:

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/


Like I said earlier: It isn't you or your hardware, it's a bug in the software; your video card is most likely fine. Plenty of other people out there get the exact same problem - very annoying! I recommend making an autoexec.crg file and putting some of the things in it suggested by the site above.
 
i still have it .. that's why i don't play hl2 anymore unless i use the pirated copy, which has no stutter.
 
Thanks...I know you wrote there too. I just a little pissed off. I thought it would be better , but it seems worse. I can tweak and it seems better for a bit and then not again. I just hate lowering the texture setting for smoother play. I will check that site again and see if there is something that I missed.

Thanks

Like I said...I was looking forward to Lost Coast and then Aftermath, but not now. What good is a setting for BETTER graphics (HDR) if I can't play at HIGH Texture detail now?

destrukt...
Why would a pirated copy play better?
 
Wait for it, i'm waiting for the crap that comes next.

Anyway, it's your system. That's the nature of PC gaming, check your running process clean spyware tweat latencys etc.

My advice to you, drop the sound quality 1 notch from high to medium, you won't notice the audible difference but it helps for stuttering.
 
I just got a copy of HL 2 and it crazy stutter. Im really pissed off that this problem hasnt been fixed in a year. Is it illegal for me to get a pirated copy that doesnt stutter and use it with my cd key for the purchased game? I just want to play the game as its supposed to be played.
 
Rumpleforeskin said:
I just got a copy of HL 2 and it crazy stutter. Im really pissed off that this problem hasnt been fixed in a year. Is it illegal for me to get a pirated copy that doesnt stutter and use it with my cd key for the purchased game? I just want to play the game as its supposed to be played.
Click to expand...
The pirated copy :
1) Doesn't need a CD-key
2) Doesn't have HL2 as it is now (completely different maps, etc.)
3) NO A.I. !!!
 
Um...Beerdude, what do you mean by "NO A.I."? The enemies can't just stand there...
 
beerdude, there is ai, its just that the pirated copies have disable_ai on, so you need to renable it.
 
Cool, so we gonna be telling people where to get theese pirate copies next?
 
I have tried dropping the sound to medium and it does not really help much. The only thing that helps is dropping the texture to medium, but that just sucks. I played the game fine with a ATI 9800 Pro with High settings with barely any stutter. They updated HL2 and now the same setup plays poorly. I upgraded my vid card to an X800 XT with no improvement. I have tried all the tips and tweaks with little change. I even removed all startup programs and all non needed services with little improvement. All other games (Doom 3, Far Cry, ect on Max settings run perfect).

Valve chaged the game and made it worse.....they better fix it or I wont be buying anything made with the Source Engine.
 
Waaaaaah.

Cry me a river.

I think your not going to be buying anything witht he source engine anymore.
 
^Ben, don't trivialize his pain! So insensitive...

Imagine if your copy of HL2 suddenly started not working at no fault of your own - by the fault of an update by Valve. I think you would be more than upset, seeing how you obviously enjoy the franchise from your 2,263 postings to this forum.

If you're familiar with the stutter bug at all, you would know that it isn't just his system - many many people have gotten the stutter bug and there have been numerous informal studies trying to find the cause and the solution. Just do a quick search on Google using "half life 2 stutter" and you'll see what I mean.
 
^Ben....are you in a habbit of buying things that don't work? Not me....

I did try forcing to dxlevel 81, but it didn't really help and looked poor. Thanks though.
 
I am so confused as to how valve could overlook (or make the the problem worse for that matter in regards to the 9-23 update) this problem when so many people are experiencing it.

Ive been craving to play HL2 for a month now, but I can't because of how bad the stutter is. I don't know how bad everyone elses is, but mine renders the game unplayable, period. the game will run at "120" fps, than pause for 2-3 seconds. I think the problem is with the sounds, because I have noticed the pauses come when (for example) I shoot the shotgun. Click the mouse-pause for 2-3 seconds, shoot.
 
Got the same problem, had some little stuttter with my 9700 pro and now i made a test with a brand new PC (athlon 3400 1 gig RAM and X800XT) with nothing else than windows and Half-Life 2, i got a lots of stuttering.

Then, I installed Far Cry, it runs perfectly with max settings, also Doom 3 runs perfectly fine, I just installed Quake 4 at max stiings and it's simply astounding!! Yesterday i installed FEAR and that game also has a lot of stutering on max settings( it uses more than 800 gig of RAM just for the game, plus the system it makes 1150 gig of RAM needed that's the explanation for that stuttering). Half-Life 2 never used more than 700 gig with system, so no real reason for stuttering. After studying the game and how it works, i noticed that i keeps only 16 meg for sound cache, so it keeps loading sound from the HD all the time, you can see that on the debug console. So at the end of Half-Life thre are a lot of sound annoucind and effects, so a lot of stuttering happens even if you lower the resolution and the video settings.
 
i now get the stutter ,never had it before , i have 1.5 gig of ddr400 ,6800gt 256 ,and an athlon64 3200 @2.2ghz .
i do not get any stutter in any other game (including fear)
 
someone send valve the links to these threads...

(i would but I dont know how to and don't really care to learn :farmer: )
 
The best thing to do is to send them a problem report to http://support.steampowered.com. Tell them about the problems we are having. The more people that write, the better chance of a fix. If we don't tell them then they think there is no problem.

I sent a report, but have not heard anything yet.
 
flycrusher said:
Got the same problem, had some little stuttter with my 9700 pro and now i made a test with a brand new PC (athlon 3400 1 gig RAM and X800XT) with nothing else than windows and Half-Life 2, i got a lots of stuttering.

Then, I installed Far Cry, it runs perfectly with max settings, also Doom 3 runs perfectly fine, I just installed Quake 4 at max stiings and it's simply astounding!! Yesterday i installed FEAR and that game also has a lot of stutering on max settings( it uses more than 800 gig of RAM just for the game, plus the system it makes 1150 gig of RAM needed that's the explanation for that stuttering). Half-Life 2 never used more than 700 gig with system, so no real reason for stuttering. After studying the game and how it works, i noticed that i keeps only 16 meg for sound cache, so it keeps loading sound from the HD all the time, you can see that on the debug console. So at the end of Half-Life thre are a lot of sound annoucind and effects, so a lot of stuttering happens even if you lower the resolution and the video settings.
Click to expand...

Thats what i found and came to the conclusion that the stutter is not random but was directly related to sounds being loaded from the HD (which were compressed and had to be uncompressed) and also the autosave function caused a stutter and considering how often the game autosaved it accounts for nearly all the stuttering. I thought this was common knowledge? If you are getting random stuttering and you know for sure is not related to sounds being played or the game autosaving (check console everytime you get a stutter) then you have a hardware issue.
 
Sounds are not compressed/decompressed from the GCF.
 
sholmes01 said:
^Ben....are you in a habbit of buying things that don't work? Not me....

I did try forcing to dxlevel 81, but it didn't really help and looked poor. Thanks though.
Click to expand...

No, because I don't get the stutter, and I have helped many people like you.

"Omg it's all the programs fault!"
 
I am so glad that you don't have the stutter. I didn't have the problem, but now I do after they made an update. If I lowered my settings as low as yours then my system plays fine too.

I am so glad that you comments of how you have no problem has helped me. I am so much better now for all that you have said. Thanks bunches! I am sure everyone else is happy now too.

All programs are perfect. The users are always to blame. I know when I install a program or update and something goes wrong it is always my fault.
 
It's funny how some people think since they have a problem with the game, its the game fault

I get no stuttering at all, and I'm running it on high with 2.9 GHz P4, 512 MB RAM and a 256 MB GeForce 5500. Not the best setup in the world, but I don't get the problem at all.
 
ECUnlimited said:
It's funny how some people think since they have a problem with the game, its the game fault

I get no stuttering at all, and I'm running it on high with 2.9 GHz P4, 512 MB RAM and a 256 MB GeForce 5500. Not the best setup in the world, but I don't get the problem at all.
Click to expand...

what's even funnier is when you assume it's user error, even though there have been several people describing similar symptoms all appearing after a certain software patch :dozey:

you lucked out, their patch is compatible with your setup...no more no less. Yours systems specs have nothing to do with it.
 
I don't think it is any one setup that is causing the problem. My setup WAS running perfect since day one that HL2 came out. I was playing the game one night with no problem. I shut down. I booted up the next day. Steam updated and now it does not work. If this is my fault that I am missing something.
 
This stuttering bug seems to be realted to memory (RAM) use. When HL2 was published i had almost no stuttering. Then it started a bit, sometimes more sometimes less depending on updates.
Now i found a total solution by updating my RAM modules. Before i had two 256 single sided and one 512 double sided. I changed them for one 1 gig double sided with my 512 double sided and placed them in the slots exactly as decribed in the MB docs. So now no more stuttering at all!!
What seem strange is that it afected HL2 only and not Far Cry, Doom3, Painkiller and so on...
 
flycrusher said:
This stuttering bug seems to be realted to memory (RAM) use. When HL2 was published i had almost no stuttering. Then it started a bit, sometimes more sometimes less depending on updates.
Now i found a total solution by updating my RAM modules. Before i had two 256 single sided and one 512 double sided. I changed them for one 1 gig double sided with my 512 double sided and placed them in the slots exactly as decribed in the MB docs. So now no more stuttering at all!!
What seem strange is that it afected HL2 only and not Far Cry, Doom3, Painkiller and so on...
Click to expand...
Hmmm... Has everyone tried adding this parameter to the .exe? : "-heapsize 256000" (If you have 512MB RAM, do 128 MB if you have 256MB)
Oh, and without the brackets of course :p
 
I have 1GB (2 512MB) and tried "-heapsize 256000" and "-heapsize 512000" and neither helped.
 
In your launch commands for HL2, remove everything you have in there now and just add in the line
-autoconfig

Then run HL2 and see what happens.
 
Killer Koala said:
In your launch commands for HL2, remove everything you have in there now and just add in the line
-autoconfig

Then run HL2 and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I'll do it sure, I'm getting desperate here as well, I mean its smooth as a baby's butt, but then around every 3rd or so corner it hitches for a nano second, then continues on it's way, I mean usually these things dont bother me at all, but now it's getting ridiculous since its so frequent. What does this autoconfig option do?
 
The autoconfig setups your .cfg file to the most optimized settings for your system. Valve recommends deleting your .cfg first and then running the game using the autoconfig. Here's the actual quote:
First delete the configuration file (config.cfg) for the game you are attempting to play:

Steam\SteamApps\accountname\counter-strike source\cstrike\cfg
Steam\SteamApps\accountname\day of defeat source\dod\cfg
Steam\SteamApps\accountname\half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2\cfg
Steam\SteamApps\locash\half-life 2\hl2\cfg

Next open launch options and add -autoconfig

-Open Steam, then Play games
-Right click the Source game, click properties, then Launch options
-add -autoconfig, click ok, then close
Click to expand...
This really helps for people who are experiencing crashes in any Source game.
 
Thanks for the tip, but it did not help. I deleted the cfg file and added
-autoconfig to the launch properties. All that seemed to do is set everything back to the default. I tried it with the settings it reccomended, but same thing.
 
Killer Koala said:
In your launch commands for HL2, remove everything you have in there now and just add in the line
-autoconfig

Then run HL2 and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I tried that and now ive been given a bonus 3 stutters. I get these stuuers bow @ the beggining of a map, when the music starts or when sumert is guna happen eg a gun battle.
 
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