UT 2004 stuttering

[GNEP]

OK, so last night I installed UT2k4 with patch 3355 on my new machine - an A64/nForce4 and PCIe 6600GT combo. And it just doesn't quite feel right - generally the framerate seems pretty high, but fairly often there will be a stuttering where it all stops for a second or less before carrying on smooth as before. Haven't played it for long enough to establish a pattern of when the stuttering is happening but it's fairly often.

Now I'm used to running this on a Parhelia and slightly slower processor, and whilst the framerates were never headline-busting, it always felt completely smooth and playable - much more so than this card.

OK I've got the resolution up to 1600x1200 to match the 2001FP display natively, but if it can cope between stutters then surely the resolution is not a problem. Not running any AA.

Also the game reboots the machine on exit, but apparently this is due to the DEP settings and I've done a fix which apparently sorts it out. Didn't get a chance to find out if it does yet though.

I'm new to this nVidia stuff - but I am running the 66.93 drivers which were on the install disk and I think are the latest on the nV website.

So maybe it's the onboard sound? Or something else? Any ideas at all? Maybe something in the in-game settings? Otherwise I may have to resort to playing it on the trusty old Parhelia

TIA

Gnep

[SitFlyer]

It could be the onboard sound.
Maybe you could disable it and see if the stuttering is still present.

Is CP running in the background? This is probably not an issue. I have mine set to run all the time and rarely have problems. I do have stuttering problems though, with xFire running.

<hr>
This is what I would do first. Experiment with changing some of the settings in your UT2004.ini

In the section [D3D9Drv.D3D9RenderDevice] play with these settings
DesiredRefreshRate=60 (Set it to whatever your desktop is set to. Default is 60)
UseVSync=True (Default is False)
OverrideDesktopRefreshRate=True (Default is False)

[GNEP]

I've got rid of the crashing the machine on exit, UNLESS I've been playing for a long time... could be indicative of other instabilities; I haven't played around with this machine enough yet to find its weak points.

And yes, CPDN is running in the background - stopping it altogether makes no difference though - it's quite well behaved.

Turning the sound to "software" in game helped a lot - seem to remember doing this way in the past on the old machine as well . Still not feeling "right" though.

Also only got 512 RAM at the mo (found a bad stick in my random store of ram ) - used to using a gig, so might swap some sticks around machines...

thanks for the tips on ref rate - will give that a try too.

[SitFlyer]

That lack of RAM is part of your problem

[UtwigMU]

Yes, I was demoted to 256 from 512 for a while and stuttering and slow loading times were night and day difference.

Especially with 16x12 resoution, you should have a GB.