Half-Life 2 stuttering issue

[Firestorm_ATI]

Not sure what happened to all the threads, but I think we need a thread to keep track of the issue so that everyone can know any progress and also so we can all know when a fix is found.

What we do know:
Hardware independent - the problem is found from onboard sound to audigy 2 to high-end studio sound cards, from Radeon 7000 to X800XT PE, normal HDDs to Raid arrays, 256 mb of ram to 1.5 gb of ram, etc.

Defragging, getting more ram, and using tweaks can improve the problem, but usually doesn't fix it. Just sometimes makes it less noticable. People with cutting edge computers with lots of RAM and a defragmented, clean HDD still have the problem.

It is NOT an autosave issue. It happens to most people with the problem every few seconds, even while G-Man is talking during the intro.

Cache size in HL2 and the aperture size don't matter.

It IS a bug with the game.

Some of the tweaks that have improved stuff for some people -

autoexec.cfg:

snd_mixahead 0.7 [ default is 0.1, increasing gradually from .2 to 1.0 has seemed to fix the problem ]
cl_forcepreload 1
sv_forcepreload 1
cl_smooth 0
snd_async_fullyasync 1 [sounds are played whenever the computer gets them and the graphics won't slow down to wait]

In launch options in Steam:
-heapsize 262144 [set it to half your ram or however much you want. defaults to 64 mb]

On second thought, before lowering the texture detail, lower your sound quality. This has fixed the skipping problem for a lot of people without a noticable loss in sound quality. The loss of texture detail will be much more noticable.

-Gary McTaggart (Valve)

Lowering detail IMO is an unacceptable way to fix this for people whose framerates are great bar the stutters.

[panickme]

AFAIK the G-Man's speech at the beginning is supposed to stutter like that. I dropped the texture quality one notch (which is all but unnoticable when you're playing the game) and all the gameplay stutters went away. It's not that big a deal.

[dawdler]

Originally Posted by panickme

AFAIK the G-Man's speech at the beginning is supposed to stutter like that. I dropped the texture quality one notch (which is all but unnoticable when you're playing the game) and all the gameplay stutters went away. It's not that big a deal.

No its not supposed to do that. The way he talks and the stuttering is two completely different things.

[armagedon]

HL is pushing the hardware more then anything before. So while you are progressing even with this huge system load, it has to fish out enormous amount of data from this dynosaure piece of equipment called hard drive. I say Valve did pretty well. So get the fastest one you can buy or build a RAID like i did.

I also switch from 512 to 1G RAM and it does reduce stuttering substantially.

[Rippthrough]

defrag - it solved all my issues.

[Lukin23]

No problems for me, the only place I notice a slight stutter is at quick save points. I defragged after install, and here is my less than amazing comp:

P4 2.7
XP Home SP2
9600XT 128 MB with Cat 4.11s
1G RAM

Game settings: 1024x768 ; 4xAA 4xAF (plan on jacking AF up tonight)
All settings HIGH; Reflect all.

I've only made it to the save point after I meet Alyx (just started the game this morning before work), so maybe problems will develope later, but right now, all is good.

[OnceBitten]

Originally Posted by Rippthrough

defrag - it solved all my issues.

Not exactly considering I just reformatted last night and installed HL2 and it still does it.

[stiff~meister]

Originally Posted by Rippthrough

defrag - it solved all my issues.

It does not solve all but works pretty fine. Use diskeeper not norton speedisk

[ScottDoom]

I don't have any issues. I'm just past the part where you first get the gravity gun.

My sig is up to date with my current specs.

I run at 1024x768 with everything set to High, Reflect All on, and 4x AA with 16x AF.

[the_sextein]

I have and AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 with 2048MB of 400MHz dual channel DDR RAM and an X800XT-PE and a soundblaster Audigy 2. I have 2 120GIG SATA drives in a 240GIG RAID 0 config. I am running Windows XP service pack 1 with Direct X 9.0c. I have the stutters and turning the resolution down from 1600 X 1200 to 1280 X 960 did not help. I have tried dissabling the AA and AF settings and it doesn't help either. Changing the sound seemed to change the severity of the problem but it still happens all the time. I defraged my hardrive right after I installed the game. Then I did it again after STEAM added a bunch of stuff to get the game working. Everything is up to date with the latest drivers and everything is intalled clean as a whistle.

This game has a problem. When I first experianced it I was sure that it was my soundcard because all the problems would occure when the sound would stutter or repeat. Now I am not so sure. Maybe the sound is stuttering because it is waiting for the game to catch up with it or something. It seems like fog and smoke will stop moving and the whole screen jitters. Whenever the problem occurs it sounds like my hardrives have to think hard for a second and then everything is cool. My hardrive config is very fast though so it doesn't make sense that they would be the problem. I imagine they have double the cache and a faster response time then most hardrive setups.

Just adding my config and more assurance that the game does have a problem. The game is fun and I can enjoy it with the stutters but they are very annoying. One thing I did notice is that the base that you reach soon after the LONG hovercraft ride through the canals does not seem to stutter on my system at all. the intro stutters and a few rooms stutter at the beggining. The canal ride stutters and the game stutters everytime it gets done loading which seems to be every couple of minutes or so. I am at the church with the strange priest and the stutters are gone for now. Probably because the area is not so large. My framerates are high but the game stutters. Doom 3 had tiney little stutters that where hardly noticable every second or so. Changing the tick rate fixed the problem with the stutters but made the people walk slow at times. Halflife 2 has large stutters every 5 to 10 seconds. Farcry used to stutter but the 4.11 drivers fixed the problem. All of my other games work flawless so it is down to Doom 3 and HL2. Doom 3 is very small but HL2 is kinda annoying.

[CurrentlyPissed]

Hmm I had 0 problems throughout the whole game.. even the begining speach was fine. Not much of a helpfull post but just something to point out that not everyone is getting this prob.

[armagedon]

Well since it's a common problem, i bet you a patch is on his way very soon. I am pretty confident that we will see major improvement on performance now that the game is finished (and the money is flooding in...)

[dawdler]

Originally Posted by armagedon

Well since it's a common problem, i bet you a patch is on his way very soon. I am pretty confident that we will see major improvement on performance now that the game is finished (and the money is flooding in...)

Well we can always hope... The thread in the steam forums now list almost 50 pages, 700+ posts and 122,000 views. Its increasing with about 200 posts per day.

[JTF2]

autoexec.cfg:

snd_mixahead 0.7 [ default is 0.1, increasing gradually from .2 to 1.0 has seemed to fix the problem ]
cl_forcepreload 1
sv_forcepreload 1
cl_smooth 0
snd_async_fullyasync 1

In launch options in Steam:
-heapsize 262144 [set it to half your ram or however much you want. defaults to 64 mb]

Ok, could you explain some of these things. Is the autoexec.cfg file only supposed to have one line before I put those other things in as mentioned above? Where can I get to these launch options in steam? Is it in the console? How do I get to the console? But I really wanna try these things, I can't stand the stutters!!!

[IllestOne]

make a file called autoexec.cfg w/ notepad...put all of these in there....and wa-la, ur done (put the .cfg file in ur cfg folder also)

To get to launch options (where u enter heapsize), go to play games, rightclick hl2, go to properties, then go to launch options

And to get the console, open hl2, go to options, keyboard, advance (button on the bottom), and there it is

The heapsize command made me lose 2fps in vst, btw (512000 and 256000)

[JTF2]

Originally Posted by IllestOne

make a file called autoexec.cfg w/ notepad...put all of these in there....and wa-la, ur done (put the .cfg file in ur cfg folder also)

is the folder called config, and not in steam apps?

[IllestOne]

Originally Posted by JTF2

is the folder called config, and not in steam apps?

no, the folder is called cfg

steam, steamapps, urname, half-life 2, hl2, cfg <-- there

Ur config.cfg and valve.rc files should be in this dir already...make a autoexec.cfg and put it there

[the chase]

what does it mean when you get the box in the Launch options .. it says for Advanced users only .. with a text box and a ok/cancel button .. do i put 262144 in that box

[efilflah]

-heapsize 262144

Is what you put in.

[thewall]

Something is strange is up wih the defrag thing. I loaded up Perfectdisc defrag program and it has a function that shows most fragged files. Top 5 on my system was HL2 soundcache files. I actually don't have stuttering problems but I just wanted to share because I thought it was kind of interesting.

[smthmlk]

i am also experiencing the stutters everyone speaks of with my setup:

amd xp2500mobile @ 11x200 (2.2ghz)
asus a7n8x-e deluxe (bios 1011)
2x512mb mushkin blueline pc3200
bfg 6800NU oc 128MB (stock 350/700)
sb audigy 0090
seagate 7200.7 120gb 8mb
winxp sp2 / forware 67.02beta / nforce 5.10

I play at: 1280x1024@Highest video settings, 2xAA & 8xAF, High audio quality. apart from the bouts of stuttering, it runs perfectly.

I read a lot about the problem at nvnews and was referred to http://tweakguides.com/ ... I'm defragging and going to try out the tips they list (heapsize, autoexec.cfg stuff, etc). It looks like it is indeed a problem with the game and it is very widespread, ranging over all hardware. I guess it's hit or miss if you experience it or not hehe.

I will edit this with my results EDIT: hehe, no fix set heapsize to 512000 even, no change. I guess ill mess with the no-auto-save stuff.

* Anyone check this out? http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news&id=351

[Mike89]

HL2 doesnt use much memory either (default heapsize is 64mb)

All wrong.

HL2 uses about 850 megs of ram (on my system). This can be easily checked by viewing Task Manager and looking at the "Commit Charge - Peak" number.

You guys that are trying to play HL2 with 512 megs are going to have Virtual Memory hit and that will cause hitching (unless you turn stuff down to use less memory).

Now Vampire is using like 1.32 - 1.36 gigs of ram! Even with my 1 gig, my swap file is being hit. Time for some more memory. People are not paying enough attention to the amount of ram being used for a game and wondering why it's not playing smooth.

Get used to it, most good games are going to require more ram, no way around it with what's coming out visually.

Far Cry - Over 850 megs
Doom 3 - Over 800 megs
HL2 - Over 800 megs
Vampire Bloodlines - Over 1.32 gigs

[catalyst4518]

Like many of you I had severe sound stuttering. I tried everything under the sun and nothing worked for me. I finally gave up and started playing other games. Then i had an idea maybe if i try all the fixes at once one of them is bound to work. Maybe one fix by itself wont work. Maybe a collection of 1 or 2 or maybe 3 will? So out of desperation I put every fix I could find on the net that I was willing to use (lowering graphical details is not a fix in my book). Low and behold it worked!!! This is what i did:

1. Made sure all drivers for soundcard are up to date

2. Moved soundcard to PCI slot 2 (the videocard takes up the AGP and PCI slot 1)

3. Used 67.02 drivers for videocard and set it for max performance.

4. Used this launch option "-heapsize 512000".(half of installed ram). I have 1 gig of ram.

5. Created an autoconfig.cfg and put this in it:

mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware 0
snd_mixahead 0.4
cl_forcepreload 1
sv_forcepreload 1
cl_smooth 0

6. Lowered sound quality in game to low

7. changed speaker set up to "2 speakers"

8. disabled autosave by making read-only these files:
- autosave01.sav
- autosave.sav
- autosave01.tga
- autosave.tga

With these tweaks I still get stutter but it is very VERY small and the game is extremely playable. Plus I dont turn down any graphics to play. i run at extremely high resolution with af and aa set at max. Personally I think this is a soundcard driver problem. I have had a few issues with the soundblaster audigy series in the past. Also when was the last time Creative updated their drivers?

My rig:
Athlon 64 3400
1 gig 433mhz ram
Asus K8V SE Deluxe
geforce 6800 ultra (using 67.02 forceware)
soundblaster audigy 2 ZS (latest updates)
2 160 gig maxtor HD in RAID 0 array
WINXP pro SP2 (latest updates)

[DeadmanINC]

Hi, I've been reading many posts on this forum for some time now but haven't found a good enough reason to register until now. Like almost everyone else I've also experienced the stuttering problem after quicksaves, after the level loads and randoms spots through out the game. It wasn't too bad until I got to the Anticitizen One level and then it became unbearable. Here's what I've done to virtually eliminate them problem (not completely though).

1) Upgraded to 1GB of memory
2) Added -heapsize 512000 to the properties of the HL2 shortcut
3) Ran Diskeeper on all my partitions, including doing a boot time defrag for the pagefile.

What I have noticed now is that there's almost no lag after an autosave or quick save and very little lag after a level loads. The memory upgrade seemed to have helped the most.

Hope that helps.

[stiff~meister]

Originally Posted by DeadmanINC

Hi, I've been reading many posts on this forum for some time now but haven't found a good enough reason to register until now. Like almost everyone else I've also experienced the stuttering problem after quicksaves, after the level loads and randoms spots through out the game. It wasn't too bad until I got to the Anticitizen One level and then it became unbearable. Here's what I've done to virtually eliminate them problem (not completely though).

1) Upgraded to 1GB of memory
2) Added -heapsize 512000 to the properties of the HL2 shortcut
3) Ran Diskeeper on all my partitions, including doing a boot time defrag for the pagefile.

What I have noticed now is that there's almost no lag after an autosave or quick save and very little lag after a level loads. The memory upgrade seemed to have helped the most.

Hope that helps.

Upping to 1 gb ram helps alot. Defragging is also doing the trick. This show that it must be a paging issue..

stiff

[Spencer]

Originally Posted by DeadmanINC

Hi, I've been reading many posts on this forum for some time now but haven't found a good enough reason to register until now.

Someone who posts with something useful to say. You would be a much needed additon over in the Rage3d off topic forum if that subject matter is to your tastes. Maybe you could visit it in addition to this one and the other forums. I'm late with this reply, I've been on a non posting binge for weeks but viewing many posts about gaming, the latest Radeon cards and their availability, sli possibilities, etc. And it's my belated way of saying welcome.

Originally Posted by DeadmanINC

Like almost everyone else I've also experienced the stuttering problem after quicksaves, after the level loads and randoms spots through out the game.

I'll eventually try your method for getting rid of the stuttering in HL2. Btw I'm afraid to upgrade my Cats (shown below) because right now the image quality in the game is so good I'm afraid to mess with it. And some say don't upgrade Catalyst drivers unless there's a problem.

----------
P4 3.0e (so so) no o/c, 1 gb pc3200 ddr400 ram (so so),
Asus P4P800 Se mobo (so so), Asus AX800XT PE (excellent) no o/c,
Catalyst 4.9 (excellent), Win XP Home SP1 (so so)

[Itchiee]

From what i've noticed on my machine is there is a slight stutter due to the sound. When I quick save certain times and restart at that point I get a quick 1-2 second sound stutter (more of a repeat) then it plays thru fine. Also when certain new sounds are introduced I get the 1-2 second stutter. All the other games I play dont exhibit this behavior, just HL2. One good thing is its a widely know issue which should be fixed whenever Valve is done celebrating the release...lol

[mr_muz]

Ok this problem seems to severely affect HL2 on my pc. My comp was brand new out of the box yesterday so there are definately no defrag or historical issues. Using 7.1 sound made the game unplayable. The only way round it Ive found thus far was to lower all the graphics settings, select 2 speaker sound and set the resolution to 800x600 (not really ideal since I shelled out a load of cash for a top end pc!). I wondered if the problem was down to using on board sound, but seeing as ppl with audigy 2's and the like are having the same issues then I aint so sure.
Hopefully valve will find a fix soon.......


My sys specs are:

Intel P4 3.6GHz
1024MB RAM
256 MB PCI Express Radeon X600pro
~500GB available HD space
on board 7.1 Realtek sound
Win XP home ed.

[voodoo1]

Originally Posted by mr_muz

Ok this problem seems to severely affect HL2 on my pc. My comp was brand new out of the box yesterday so there are definately no defrag or historical issues. Using 7.1 sound made the game unplayable. The only way round it Ive found thus far was to lower all the graphics settings, select 2 speaker sound and set the resolution to 800x600 (not really ideal since I shelled out a load of cash for a top end pc!). I wondered if the problem was down to using on board sound, but seeing as ppl with audigy 2's and the like are having the same issues then I aint so sure.
Hopefully valve will find a fix soon.......

Those onboard soundcards eat up alot of CPU cycles so that is the reason for the slowdown on 7.1 I would think.

[Dred]

Guys guys come on. Its not hard to figure out. Look at your HD activity light while the stuttering is happening. If the the light is on there is hard drive activity and any game would stutter. If you think its the sound card. Try and disable the in game sound and see if the stutter goes away. That will tell you it has something to do with sound.

Defragging should make zero difference if its a sound issue. If defragging helps at all its just telling you the HD is writing or reading during the game and that will make it stutter.

set the swap file to a fixed size for max and min. Or disable it if you have the enough ram.

Ideally you should see zero HD activity while playing the game. The only time its needed is when loading a level or room. If its lighting up at times other than that it may mean that the system is swapping or resizing the swap file. Set the min/max to a fixed number like 512/512 will stop any resizing of the swap file. It will not stop swaping in cases of low memory.