Asus K8N stuttering problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter skytwin
  • Start date Start date
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skytwin

Hi,

I have an issue with the K8N board.

When I play games (i've only noticed with this), the game will freeze
for around 4 seconds and then carry on. This will reoccur randomly but
generally it is within 30 seconds of the last stutter.

Is this a known problem and has there been a solution found. I have
scoured both groups.google and the asus forum and can't seem to find
anything.
I've updated all drivers and the board bios with no luck.

Anyone any ideas?

Sys spec...
Athlon 3400XP 64
Asus K8N moboGb kingston ram
Nvidia 6800 Pro 256Mb
2 x sata drives (both wester digital raptors)
Onboard sound.

Cheers
 
Thats should read

Athlon 3400XP 64
Asus K8N mobo
1024 Gb kingston ram
Nvidia 6800 Pro 256Mb
2 x sata drives (both wester digital raptors)
Onboard sound.
 
Thats should read

Athlon 3400XP 64
Asus K8N mobo
1024 Gb kingston ram
Nvidia 6800 Pro 256Mb
2 x sata drives (both wester digital raptors)
Onboard sound.
Click to expand...

I suspect that it is the onboard sound that is th eproblem, it is a real cpu
hog. I replaced mine with a cheap soundcard and the problem went away on
mine, half life 2 was the worst for it.
 
On further notice it appears to be related to the AGP slot.

I guess this as the problem really flares up when using 3D mark (no
sound) although it still leaves a lot of room for error in that guess.
 
that makes sense. I'll give this another go.

On my first few attempts there was a soundcard insralled and the
problem still arose.

Looking though the bios, I couldn't see any setting to completely
cancel the onboard sound. I presume tho i can just use windows to
select which soundcard to use.

Cheers for the help
 
On further notice it appears to be related to the AGP slot.
Click to expand...
Sounds like an IRQ problem.
Have you got a PCI card in the slot next to the AGP ? (In the past this was
known to give IRQ problems - don't know if it's still true, but worth a
try).
Another trick is to go into the Bios and deactivate the COM and LPT ports if
you don't use them, this frees up 3 IRQs and reduces IRQ sharing. Try also
setting the BIOS "Plug and play OS installed" to YES. If it's already on
yes, set it to NO, reboot and let Windows load. Then shut down and reset it
to YES.
Try changing your mouse (and keyboard if applicable) from USB to PS/2, or
vice-versa.
As others have suggested, try a different sound card.

Clive
 
This is the known "nForce3 series chipset with nVIDIA 6800 series GPU"
stuttering problem when using Direct 3D mode. It does not only happen with
ASUS' nForce3 series boards. You'll find that the problem usually doesn't
happen with OpenGL games.

One solution that worked for me was to underclock the video card, by 15MHz,
with my 6800GT before the stuttering disappeared completely. This really
isn't a solution in my books sinced I've paid for a video card that is
specified to run at 350MHz for the GPU and 500MHz for the DDR3 RAM.
Underclocking to 335MHz in an attempt to solve this problem really isn't a
solution.

Another solution was to revert back to the nVIDIA ForceWare Version 66.93
driver. It seems that any driver version beyond 66.93 has shown this
stuttering problem.

Another thing to try, is to disable AGP Fast Writes in your motherboard's
BIOS. This might stop the stuttering, but you will incur a video
performance hit when you do this.

Hope one of these suggestions is of help to you.
 
Right, well tried some suggestions.

I disabled the com and lpt ports and set the plug and play bios to no.

This greatly helped and it would appear I only freeze about once every
thirty minutes.

Soundcard change sadly hasn't helped but I've left an audigy 2 sat in
the 3rd pci slot. there is nothing in the 1st slot next to the agp
port.

As for the OpenGL issue. That makes perfect sense. I had suspected it
might be related as I ran 3dmark and well, the first test works (direct
3d) but test 2 fails, guess this might be openGL.

I'll underclock the graphics card tomorrow and post my results.

Thanx all for the suggestions :)
 
Well so far not so good.

I;ve tried the forceware drivers suggested and that hasn't made a
difference.

My graphics card is an overclocked 6800GT and therefore reducing the
clock speed down means quite a substantial drop. However, I tried it
anyhow and again no luck.

Fast write AGP and the other option makes no difference either.

Sadly, I think I'm just gonna give up for the time being and replace
the board with a sensible make (had issues with asus boards many times
before).

Thanks for everyones help nonetheless.
 
If you're keeping your AGP 6800 video card your only other option for a
stutter free motherboard would probably be VIA chipset based. Others that
have had this problem with a K8N switched to an A8V and reported that they
had no stuttering problems anymore with the same video card.

The problem doesn't exist with the new nForce4 based motherboards, but that
would require that you get rid of your AGP video card and buy a new PCI-E
video card.
 
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