hmscott wrote:
Northforge, it helps to sort the bottom view by usage Read/Write like the top, and grow the size so you can see the file path/name in full.
Sorry. I'll run a few more tests like that.
hmscott wrote:
Are you seeing glitches with the 345.20? That seems a bit too old... for a 980m to use.
I think the optimal one is supposed to be 344.75 or 344.80.
Yes, still problems. I'll resume backrolling to both of those for my next results.
hmscott wrote:
Also, you probably want to find your tuning suggestions on a Skyrim support site, or google for skyrim 980m settings.
See if setting performance preference to Applications instead of Background processing helps. Turn off anti-virus and any other background services you can find running that you don't need - that is what you are supposed to be looking for in the Resource Monitor window - not just top disk activity but also top CPU activity, Network Activity, etc.
BTW, every time you do a Custom => Clean Install of the Nvidia driver you need to reset the Nvidia Global 3D settings and set the 3D optimization to those settings again - the Custom=>Clean Install resets them to defaults again.
I'll find optimal settings. I kinda thought lowest textures and 1024x768 would be enough. I'm still set to "adjust for best performance of: programs" still haven't installed an AV. Gonna make some perogies and then post my next results with better layout of perf mon with 344.75. 344.80 did not appear on the list of WHQL downloads.
[Update]
344.75 WHQL. @60hz 1920x1080. Skyrim default ultra settings, Single display option, pref max performance. high performance mode.
After this much testing I'm finding that the hicthing is happening at the exact same locations. Once you exit that cave with the guy from Riverwood, that's where my save is and where I start my tests. I run down the path to the three stones, and the hitching happens at the same parts of the road. I don't know if that helps.
Going to update driver to latest with shadowplay and run Skyrim windowed with Task Manager and perf monitor open on the same screen. Hoping shadowplay will also record whole screen and not just gaming window.
[Update}
347.52 installed. Sat and thought about my next test plans. Had this up and noticed a heck of a lot of activity while doing nothing.
Cause for alarm?
Northforge wrote:
hmscott again thank you and all for the time and attention. I truly honestly want to get this laptop to work, to give it a good home. 😮 My intuition tells me that its an accessing issue, and since the hitching is predictable in Skyrim I feel it does more to support that than ruling it out. From the store I bought the last one, and after a week their entire chain online stock showed numbers. I assume they got their new batch as amazon and other vendors were no longer on back order. So I don't believe this exchanged one is from the same batch. I also firmly believe it is a configuration issue, but since it is not easily corrected by user, and there's no fix supplied by Asus, I have few options while my return/exchange period comes to a close. Some solutions I've found online speak to different laptops different generations, different tech, and different games. It makes me curious if a RAID configuration would help, or somehow getting the games I play to utilize the RAM I have. Still uncertain of those ideas, or if there's a way to murder the drive accessing. Note: In my tests it seems like in addition to several unknown reoccurring drive accessing, drivers are being accessed. I'd suspect that's normal for gameplay, but still beyond my knowledge and experience. I work this weekend, so my opportunities to fiddle with the machine are limited I'm still open to suggestions before Monday. Its been a great learning experience for me. I've come to wonder just how much bells and whistles you've killed from monitoring processes and how squeaky clean your systems run. I'd love to learn to do that too, and either after solving this problem I have with this lappy or my next, I'll be spying on you here trying to absorb your expertise.
Northforge, if it is a storage access issue, and you are using the SSD that came with the G751 to host the game(s), it should be affecting others with the G751 as well. Perhaps you are too sensitive to the hitch induced when a game loads game data from storage??
You are saying the lag induced happens at the same points in the game - so it isn't lagging all the time, just at these specific points - so how often do you see that hitch in the FPS?
The PCIE/SATA SSD should be fast enough, I don't host the games on my RAID0 boot partition because there isn't enough room. I have my Steam library on the 2nd Bay Samsung 840 Pro 512GB, and I don't see game lag.
You might try installing Intel Rapid Storage Technology - the RAID software from Intel - some have reported faster response from that driver vs the standard Microsoft driver even though they don't have a RAID set up.
For the G750JH/JZ RAID and G751JY PCIE SSD, or if you have implemented RAID, the latest SetupRST.exe is currently 13.6.0.1002
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&keyword=Intel+Rapid+Storage+Technology+%...
Those that have found benefit find that driver reduces disk response lag, like when doing audio work - recording mastering. And, someone did report better throughput reduced lag for games.
But, if your G751JY came with a PCIE M.2 device, it likely already has the Intel RST driver installed, as it is needed for the PCIE M.2 device support.
Check and see if you have it installed:
It's possible even though you checked that store chain's supply numbers, the distribution center that feeds that region was still pulling from that same shipment - if you still have your receipts - check the serial numbers and see how close they are to each other.
hmscott wrote:
Northforge, if it is a storage access issue, and you are using the SSD that came with the G751 to host the game(s), it should be affecting others with the G751 as well. Perhaps you are too sensitive to the hitch induced when a game loads game data from storage??
You are saying the lag induced happens at the same points in the game - so it isn't lagging all the time, just at these specific points - so how often do you see that hitch in the FPS?
The PCIE/SATA SSD should be fast enough, I don't host the games on my RAID0 boot partition because there isn't enough room. I have my Steam library on the 2nd Bay Samsung 840 Pro 512GB, and I don't see game lag.
You might try installing Intel Rapid Storage Technology - the RAID software from Intel - some have reported faster response from that driver vs the standard Microsoft driver even though they don't have a RAID set up.
For the G750JH/JZ RAID and G751JY PCIE SSD, or if you have implemented RAID, the latest SetupRST.exe is currently 13.6.0.1002
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&keyword=Intel+Rapid+Storage+Technology+%...
Those that have found benefit find that driver reduces disk response lag, like when doing audio work - recording mastering. And, someone did report better throughput reduced lag for games.
But, if your G751JY came with a PCIE M.2 device, it likely already has the Intel RST driver installed, as it is needed for the PCIE M.2 device support.
Check and see if you have it installed:
It's possible even though you checked that store chain's supply numbers, the distribution center that feeds that region was still pulling from that same shipment - if you still have your receipts - check the serial numbers and see how close they are to each other.
hmscott, It does happen at certain points in Skyrim, as I'm moving it could happen once every 5 seconds, or once every 20 seconds, during certain action skills in Dragon Nest, when facing a busy direction in Aion, when using scope in Borderlands 2 (simetimes), some (but not always) when following target lead pip in Star Citizen (something else may be happening at the time that I'm not seeing, so I'm not sure what causes this one).
Not sure if I'm looking int he right place, but I don't have IRST anywhere. No RAID that I'm aware of.
Physical drive 0 (SSD) is;
C: (OS)
😧 Star Citizen, Steam and Steam games.
Physical drive 1(HDD) is;
E: Dragon Nest, Aion
F: downloads, temp files, movies, music, etc.
Note: All games have all at once been on 😧 and all at once on E: with same hitching/stutter.
Straight out of the box I haven't upgraded anything. The details of the product are here;
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?item_id=075938
Northforge wrote:
hmscott, It does happen at certain points in Skyrim, as I'm moving it could happen once every 5 seconds, or once every 20 seconds, during certain action skills in Dragon Nest, when facing a busy direction in Aion, when using scope in Borderlands 2 (simetimes), some (but not always) when following target lead pip in Star Citizen (something else may be happening at the time that I'm not seeing, so I'm not sure what causes this one).
Not sure if I'm looking int he right place, but I don't have IRST anywhere. No RAID that I'm aware of.
Physical drive 0 (SSD) is;
C: (OS)
😧 Star Citizen, Steam and Steam games.
Physical drive 1(HDD) is;
E: Dragon Nest, Aion
F: downloads, temp files, movies, music, etc.
Note: All games have all at once been on 😧 and all at once on E: with same hitching/stutter.
Straight out of the box I haven't upgraded anything. The details of the product are here;
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?item_id=075938
Northforge, ok, so maybe something installed background processes that are staying in sync in the background, very brief, too short to catch - and I can see a couple of candidates.
First off, when debugging stuff like this, it is best to have a mostly clean stock Windows install, and only install just the game that is affected, and don't install lots of other stuff.
I would start with an F9 reset, which erases everything and reloads the OS back to stock. Then do driver installs, all the ones you already downloaded, and do the Windows updates - not till you are blue in the face, but until the Check for Updates doesn't return any results - that shows you are done.
I didn't realize you had all that stuff installed.
You could try a subset of what I am suggesting, uninstall this list of stuff - instead of doing a F9 reset, hopefully it is enough 🙂
It sucks to have to do that, given you spent so much time installing so much stuff, but that is the best way to go about debugging - remove as much extraneous stuff and only focus on the basics. Then when you are satisfied with that performance, you install things back, one at a time, and test for throughput/lag again each time, until you find the culprit causing the interruptions/lag.
Aion (both entries)
Apple (all that crap, including iTunes - Boujour - all of it) - leave your Apple library installed, so when you reinstall it will all be there.
Asus Live Update
Asus Virtual Camera
NCSOFT Game Launcher => outmoded / replaced => http://us.ncsoft.com/en/launcher/ncsoft-launcher.php part of AION stuff.
You don't need these Nvidia Items, as you don't have 3D, the ability to use Miracast (Intel iGPU isn't activated),
Nvidia 3D...
Nvidia Miracast...
Teamspeak 3 Client - network stuff and background processes.
Voice Attack - input lag / installed stuff in the input stack.
Webstorage - anything that mounts network volumes can cause access lag.
Also, you have some cool Madcatz devices, but for debugging I would drop down to just a keyboard and mouse - so uninstall all the STRIKE/MMOTE stuff for now too.
You could uninstall some other stuff, I was trying to focus on things that were extraneous network, input/output device related, and anything that installed background processes over and above the Windows stuff.
3dmark
Asus Smart Gesture (or at least disable all the fancy multi-touch crap).
Asus Virtual Camera - video overlay interactions... not sure.
Cyberlink Media story - Asus bloatware? That is a new one for me 🙂
DragonNest - is this just a game, or does it install network/background processes?
Intel Driver update Utility - I uninstall this after using it... no need to keep it around
Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool - another use once, uninstall after use
Elantech Touchpad - Asus doesn't ship this does it? Asus Smart Gesture is their remastering of the naked Elantech Touch - you shouldn't want/need both installed.
Ok, so that is a lot of stuff to uninstall, but I think it will be a good alternative to an F9 reset, if uninstalling all this doesn't help, then go for the F9 reset and minimal install of just the new drivers, Windows updates, and 1 game to start.
You have nothing to lose at this point, since you are going to return it if you can't solve this 🙂
If uninstalling all that stuff results in an improvement in lag, then start re-installing 1 thing at a time, probably start with Apple iTunes, but leave out Bonjour - uninstall it if Apple installers install it - also uninstall the Apple Software Update app - or at least disable auto-updates. That is another key thing, never let software auto-install or even auto-download updates - do the checks manually under your control.
Good luck!
Update: for completeness, use an external keyboard/mouse (normal not fancy kind), and disable the "Internal Pointing Device" in BIOS
Haven't had a chance to go out today. In the meantime, I'm still trying to isolate the cause.
AS SSD test
Looks good?
Uninstalled
Nvidia 3D
Nvidia Miracast
Asus Webstorage
OneDrive (disabled all settings)
Apple (everything)
Asus LiveUpdate
Asus Virtual Camera
Cyberlink Media Story
Intel Driver Update utility
Intel Processor Diagnostic tool
3DMark
Tested
- Still exists
- And, new game used to test (Shadowrun Dragonfall)
- still exists
Continuing to work to resolving this. 10 hours of straight dedicated time.
Objective: Isolate source, or to just get a more precise description.
Wondering if it could possibly be triggered from a sound problem? Asus is carrying on the rich tradition of including multiple programs that handle the same audio at the same time on top of windows sound controls.
AS SSD test
Looks good?
Uninstalled
Nvidia 3D
Nvidia Miracast
Asus Webstorage
OneDrive (disabled all settings)
Apple (everything)
Asus LiveUpdate
Asus Virtual Camera
Cyberlink Media Story
Intel Driver Update utility
Intel Processor Diagnostic tool
3DMark
Tested
- Still exists
- And, new game used to test (Shadowrun Dragonfall)
- still exists
Continuing to work to resolving this. 10 hours of straight dedicated time.
Objective: Isolate source, or to just get a more precise description.
Wondering if it could possibly be triggered from a sound problem? Asus is carrying on the rich tradition of including multiple programs that handle the same audio at the same time on top of windows sound controls.
