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    Sorry if I'm getting into egg-sucking country, but if the stuttering's happening consistently in the same places, it might be because the sound files are fragmented. Have you tried defragging your hard drive recently? Though since you've done a fresh install in the last week that shouldn't really be an issue, unless you've been running quite close to the maximum capacity of your hard drive...

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      Yeah, I've de-fragged previously before the fresh install. I've also still got 72.9GB left on my hard drive. I've tried pretty much all everything bar a fresh reinstall of XP, which on principle of one game, I just refuse to do.

      It's not as bad as it is for some people. The middle third of the game, from Black Mesa East until the end of Nova Prospekt, the game runs pretty much fine. It's just the parts in and around City 17 at the start and end (which unforunately are in my view some of the best chapters) when the stuttering becomes too noticeable in the gameplay. It's never random either - Always at the same points.

      I'm sure it'll get fixed at some point, I just believe Source seems to inexplicably struggle on some configurations, hence why it's a nightmare for Valve to solve.

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        It's certainly not worth reinstalling XP, it does sound more like a hardware glitch than anything else. What soundcard do you have? Have you tried things like turning down the sound quality or turning off EAX (if you have it)? I had to do that on the PC version of Halo because the sound kept dropping out...

        Touch wood - I've not had a single problem with either Steam or HL2, and after hearing all the horror stories, I can't help thinking about how lucky I've been.

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          It's the AC97, which works fine with everything else I throw at it. I've tried installing different driver versions and played about with the sound settings, but in all honesty, I don't think it is strictly a sound issue per se. It seems to be with the way in which data is moved or cached in Steam which doesn't like something about my system. No doubt later builds of Source will remedy this however.

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            Interesting - I didn't know Steam kept mucking about with the files like that; since I've not had any problems with it I've not had any reason to find out how it works. :-/

            Source does seem to have all sorts of potential to be buggy - having seen some of the bugs in Vampire Bloodlines, I'm not that surprised that even Valve are struggling to get it right...

            You might want to think about ditching the onboard sound, particularly since you can pick up an SB Audigy 2 for less than ?40 these days, which is staggeringly good value. More and more games are really using EAX well these days, and you really do notice the difference in quality between onboard audio chipsets and dedicated cards. EAX and directional sound makes a huge difference if you play online, too. I swear by Soundblasters, ever since I had my first SB16.

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              I probably will pick up an Audigy 2 in the new year come January, so thanks for the link. I've been hearing nothing but good things about them. Before I recently got back into PC gaming, my old rig used to have a soundblaster card in, and I do agree, their quality is usually supremely solid.

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                I haven't tried the patch, and I also have onboard. My only problem is I also have a Soundblaster 128, as I still use my gameport joystick. I doubt I have room to try another sound card. You never know, the patch may work.



                Sorry, couldn't resist.

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                  Originally posted by IainMcC

                  Source does seem to have all sorts of potential to be buggy - having seen some of the bugs in Vampire Bloodlines, I'm not that surprised that even Valve are struggling to get it right...
                  The bugginess of Vampire Bloodlines can also be attributed to the fact that it's developed by Troika a company renowned for their buggy releases.

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                    Well, the patch semi works. It's a lot better, but there is noticeable stutter during some sections. However, the action parts seem reletitively unaffected. I'll have to try it on CS, see if it's any better.

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                      Nothing for me.

                      I hate my system. Why does every other game work fine apart from Half-Life 2? Maybe sometime next year...

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                        Upgraded on my work PC and it still stutters, so this patch has done bugger all tbh.

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                          Originally posted by Zapp$ter
                          The bugginess of Vampire Bloodlines can also be attributed to the fact that it's developed by Troika a company renowned for their buggy releases.
                          There is that as well, yeah.

                          I particularly like the way Troika try and blame publisher pressure every time, too, despite the fact that they've switched publishers for their last three games. It's a damn shame, too, because at its best, Bloodlines is right up there with the very best RPGs. I think Troika need to watch an episode of Sesame Street brought to them by the episodes "Q" and "A"...

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                            Just wondering, how widespread is this stuttering problem?

                            I've just played and completed the game for the first time a couple of days ago. I basically didn't have any problems at all. I had very minor stuttering, lasted for less than a couple of seconds when a new area was being loaded, but that was it.

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                              You'd notice it in the opening areas A LOT if you were having the issue...

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                                The latest patch includes :

                                Weapon script files are preloaded at startup, instead of when they are accessed. This will reduce some hitches while playing Half-Life 2.
                                Improved the performance of writing out save games. This will reduce the pause when you pass over an autosave trigger in Half-Life 2, or when you press the quicksave button.
                                Improved the performance of writing out the thumbnail image for save games. This will also reduce the pause when passing over an autosave trigger or pressing the quicksave button.
                                Increased cache memory usage for machines that have greater than 512MB of physical memory. This will reduce hitching due to cache thrashing.
                                Optimized the sound cache manager, which will reduce hitching as a result of sound cache thrashing.
                                Minor optimization to the world renderer and world collision.
                                Minor optimization to the way that asynchronous sound files are loaded.
                                Optimization to the way that sounds were loaded that are trigged by acting sequences.
                                Optimization to reduced the number of times model sequences are iterated on per frame.


                                Could this be the one to sort things out ?

                                Also and this video made me laugh. Seems there's some interesting `effects` when you get characters to voice other peoples lines



                                Last edited by Spatial; 11-01-2005, 21:28.

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