1 Second Freeze whilst Gaming

[DTech]

Hey, getting 1 second freeze in certain games on the G55. It happens every 30 seconds or so, sometimes less, sometimes more. After further investigation it seems it's happening when the hard drive is being accessed.

Note that it's not happening in all games. For example in Mass Effect 3 there is no freeze whatsoever, very smooth.

Any thoughts? Solutions? If this truly is because of the slow hard drive on the g55, is it worth replacing one of the hard drives for a faster one?

If anyone else has experienced this, please comment. It's getting so annoying and I need some solutions!

[dstrakele]

1) Are you gaming while plugged in and on the High Performance power profile?

2) If so, do you have a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive in your laptop. Freezes of 1-2 seconds have been reported when the SSD caching component of the hybrid drive fails. See http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?22479-Computer-GPU-Stuttering for more information.

[dstrakele]

Hybrid sd26gaming while plugged in and on the High Performance power profile?

2) If so, do you have a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive in your laptop. Freezes of 1-2 seconds have been reported when the SSD caching component of the hybrid drive fails. See http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?22479-Computer-GPU-Stuttering for more information.

[DTech]

I've owned 3 ROG notebooks never had this problem before. Yes always game plugged in, high performance mode. I've done hard drive test using both CrystalDiskInfo and HD Tune Pro. There seems to be no problems. C drive is a SanDisk SSD. D & E drive is a Hitachi.

I've cleaned out a lot of the asus bloatware and made sure all my drivers are up to date. removed then re installed many.. Use regularly CCleaner and Defraggler (defrag).

Anyone else get this ever on the G55? I'm thinking either its the games design or to do with the nvidia driver i'm using? Most games are smooth and don't do it, but in games such a euro truck simulator 2, it happens every 10 seconds or so.

[ZeroBarrier]

Are they micro stutters? If so, then I believe it's the WiFi drivers. It used to happen to me on FFXI (which is an 11 year old game that mostly runs off the CPU, the GPU Core usually runs in the 400 MHz - 600 MHz range and doesn't even break a sweat!).

Get an updated Driver for the Atheros AR9485WB from http://www.atheros.cz/atheros-wireless-download.php?chipset=61&system=8. Since updating to 10.0.0.75 & 10.0.0.221 I've not had a micro stutter since.

[kkn]

the best way to game on is to be hardwired to the modem.
theres too mutch that can interfear on a wifi, like a concreete wall, magnetic fiealds+++.

[SubmersedHollow]

same problem here... i'm just frustrated about this... i feel like trowing it into the trash lol.... i got same problem with games like LoL and WoW

[DTech]

I sent off a support inquiry to the creators of Euro Truck Simulator 2. It's not the only game where I experience the 1 second freeze / stutter but I felt they may know of a solution.

Here is the reply from them:

After playing the game for a while or restarting it repeatedly during one Windows boot session, your 12 GB of memory works as a "cache" for the operating system, serving the files more often/recently used and requested again from this "transparent" memory cache, rather than from a disk. This would explain why the game feels smooth in situations where you have "pre-warmed" the Windows memory cache.

If the game files are accessed after reboot, they are not yet cached, and disk latency issues are visible. Is there a chance that you have a highly fragmented disk that would cause slow file loads? Or some other non-fatal yet still undesirable problem with the disk sub-system on your computer?

This goes well beyond standard technical support we would normally provide, but we are always trying to dig deep into reported issues to see what we may be doing wrong and if we can improve the game. Anyway we are inclined to think that it's a disk (could be HW, could be firmware issue, could be over-zealous antivirus checking files on access), rather than the game itself.

1. Well firstly the game is not always run right after a reboot, sometimes many hours after doing work and the stutters are there.

2. Hard drives have been checked in CrystalDiskInfo and HD Tune Pro. No problems found & no signs of any hard drive problems.

3. My drives are defraged regularly, all drivers are up to date and I don't use a bloated virus scanner. I use the windows defender which comes with windows 8 & I have tried disabling it whilst gaming, to no effect.

[DTech]

I sent off a support inquiry to the creators of Euro Truck Simulator 2. It's not the only game where I experience the 1 second freeze / stutter but I felt they may know of a solution.

Here is the reply from them:

After playing the game for a while or restarting it repeatedly during one Windows boot session, your 12 GB of memory works as a "cache" for the operating system, serving the files more often/recently used and requested again from this "transparent" memory cache, rather than from a disk. This would explain why the game feels smooth in situations where you have "pre-warmed" the Windows memory cache.

If the game files are accessed after reboot, they are not yet cached, and disk latency issues are visible. Is there a chance that you have a highly fragmented disk that would cause slow file loads? Or some other non-fatal yet still undesirable problem with the disk sub-system on your computer?

This goes well beyond standard technical support we would normally provide, but we are always trying to dig deep into reported issues to see what we may be doing wrong and if we can improve the game. Anyway we are inclined to think that it's a disk (could be HW, could be firmware issue, could be over-zealous antivirus checking files on access), rather than the game itself.

1. Well firstly the game is not always run right after a reboot, sometimes many hours after doing work and the stutters are there.

2. Hard drives have been checked in CrystalDiskInfo and HD Tune Pro. No problems found & no signs of any hard drive problems.

3. My drives are defraged regularly, all drivers are up to date and I don't use a bloated virus scanner. I use the windows defender which comes with windows 8 & I have tried disabling it whilst gaming, to no effect.

[DTech]

My Atheros drivers are up to date, got the drivers from the official site (AR813x_AR815x_v2.1.0.14_WHQL).

One thing I have figured out is that when installing Euro Truck Simulator 2 for the first time, it runs perfectly. No stutters. But after I restart windows the stutters are back full in force. Same thing happened when I updated the game with the patch. Straight after the update was installed it ran perfectly smooth, no stutters or anything, but after I've restarted windows, the stutters are back.

This is just one thing I have noticed with Euro Truck Simulator 2. I haven't noticed this effect in any other other games doing the same stutter thing. Although I have noticed in one other game, it's when a new sound is played (new sound file?). This would lead me to think that it is hard drive related since the freeze is happening right when it's trying to access the hard drive for the sound.

Also another trend is that, it's mostly in older games. Most of the time, but not always.

It's really strange because there is no one general trend across the games affected by the stutter.

For anyone else experiencing stutters ect, I can say that when I first got the G55 I had major stutters in every single game and it ended up being one of the ausu bloatware bundled which was causing this - ASUS' Akamai Web Interface. So if you do have that installed, Uninstall it and see how you go. I also recommend uninstalling all the other bloatware which you don't need. There is a few guides I've found helpful on the forums here.

If anyone is experiencing stutter or frame rate freezing when gaming please add your experience to this thread, as the more of us working to solve this, the more likely we are to find a solution to this annoying issue!