Game Stuttering in Sager 9890

Everyone. I have experience game stuttering on my sager 9890. It was originally a 9860 however board fried on last one I had to send to Sager to have a new board and video put in it.

I have as follows

3.6 Pentium 4
9890 board
Realtek audio
2048MB of Ram
Geforce go 7900 GTX 512MB
two 60 gig harddrives in RAID 0
Windows XP Pro

I have stuttering in all kinds of games, Far Cry, Half Life, Worlds of Warcraft. Im trying to isolate a problem. I thought maybe its because hardware is so new maybe needs driver update. I got the latest driver from Nvidias Site.

I thought maybe CPU heat up, reason for this is I ran 3dmark 2005 and it would always lock up on cpu test. So I ran 2 sessions of prime 95 to max out cpu ran it for 9 hours straight no issues... odd.. so I dont think its cpu or RAM.

Next I figured I would try setting affinity at 0 for 3dmark 2005 so it doesnt use HTT when I do this 3dmark 2005 finishes just fine... hmm odd again.

So I downloaded and ran 3dmark 2006... left everything on.. finishes fine.

Now when the 3dmarks run I see no graphic stuttering at all only the 2005 with HTT on locks up but thats on CPU test.

So If the graphics smooth in 3d mark which I can run over and over and over 2006 version, and prime 95 is running great for 9 hours. I have a feeling this is going to get narrowed down to software.. ugh

hardest problems to fix. I tried swapping around other drivers chipsets, audio, lan, bluetooth just to see if anything would create a fix.. no luck yet.

Any input from anyone here?

I actually dont have my notebook. I think my problem was more severe I started to get blocky artifacts. I attempted to add some silver compound to the ram chips and reseated the GPU with silver 5 didnt have any luck however. I sent it back to SAGER and before doing so I let them know I tried the silver compound. Now they refuse to fix it. Think that bothers me is I had in email that I tried to fix it before I sent it to them.. also .. up to that point I had a ton of emails back and forth with my stuttering issues. I just dont have the money to keep up these notebooks anymore. They are nice if you have the money.

I thought mine might need another XP reinstall so I tried that. I did it because of the 3dmark cpu lockups and also in microsoft word when sorting a table alphabetically the document would lock up.

The reinstall had done me no good but again I think my issue was a bad card.

I got my SAGER back and did a fresh install of windows. Same deal stuttering in games. I havent tried to turn off wireless features maybe that would help. I wanted to ask Wussy_Smurf, where you having problems with offline games with it on as well? I may install Far Cry again and shut off wireless and see what happens. If fixes it then when I game I could just use my USB dlink adapter for wireless gaming.

I have the latest drivers for my geforce card 84.78.

Has anyone else had any issues with games. I get pauses in WoW not like lag because I have desktop machines but pauses like for a second even stops chat. Doesnt matter what resolution or video settings I use.

Im trying to sell notebook anyway but just curious.

I was browsing around today actually read a guy with a dual core duo that bought it this august with same problem. Had a geforce 7600 in it. He never found a resolution but was exactly the same problem. He said his CPU was dropping to zero when it did it in game. I tracked my cpu and it barelly goes above 60% when playing the game. I also tried using coolbits to underclock my gpu by 125mhz and my ram as well. Although it feels the system runs cooler WoW and other games do the same stuttering. Just so odd.

Sager had just sent it back and said temps were fine but I can try it. How did you solve yoru problem then?

I dont think thats it for me because mine will stutter when the cards cooled also I can use coolbits and put the card at like 1/2 speed and using cntrl f2 turn my fans on full blast it still does it. Im starting to think its related to my RAID or RAID driver or sound.

I think sound because I think sometimes the stutter happens when new sound is introduced that hasnt been played or used in a while. I tried disabling sound and using external audigy 2 yet it still happens.

such a tough one.

I tried changing out a few more drivers figured would update my post. When playing WoW when I group with people the stutter gets severly worse. I dont understand it It seems more sounds being made more it pauses. Happens with my Realtek or my Audigy 2 external.. ugh.

Im not gonna swear by it just yet but for some reason I think turning down hardware acceleration on audio helps no matter which card Im using. I wonder if there is a resource conflict with the new geforce 7900 and the sound onboard. I would think if that was an issue tho more people would be reporting it.

Well it happens in almost all my games and I have 2 gigs of ram so rams not the issue. I also tried using only certain chips in case of bad ram.. of course prime 95 should have isolated. I did do a search and found someone with similar issue with a dell dual core with 2 gigs of ram and geforce go 7600 but he didnt get a resolution either.

Looked at IRQ's some of them share with USB and sound and wireless share, but they are built on board with ACPI you cant change the IRQ others own these notebooks and we arent all havin issues so I dont think thats it either. I thought I had it licked with sound turned down turns out it still does it. I may sell mine for parts since I dont have any buyers for the working pc.