tanksimpson

<Depression sets in> I just read through two months of posts at the forum on www.viahardware.com and although I have come across several references to the problem, nobody seems to have *the answer*. I always prefer a "fix" to a "workaround", but a workaround is all I've got for now. I found a cheap Ultra66 card (about $30) to put on the Soyo 7VCA, and it runs smooth now, too. BTW, when I emailed Soyo about this issue, they just sent me a friendly, but canned, "Check your connections and reboot" type of reply - lame! I can't wait for M$ to kill off Win9X completely so us NT/2000 users can get some proper support.

EddiE314, I feel your pain! I just checked out the specs for the VH6 at www.abit-usa.com and sure enough it uses the dreaded 686A southbridge. VIA has been using this southbridge for both their AMD and Intel chipsets. Unless we find a fix, all I can recommend is that you swap the VH6 out for a motherboard based on the Intel 815E chipset such as the Asus CUSL2 or the new Abit SA6R, or you can try what I did and put your hard drive on separate PCI controller like the Promise Ultra100 (about $30-$40). Like iGGy says, this problem does not exist on the Asus CUSL2, and I suspect that other 815E boards will be fine, too. iGGy seems to think that its still an AGP related problem, and he might be right - there are so many variables in this kind of problem its hard to say with any certainty. iGGy, thanks for the heads up on the VP6. I am sad to hear this board is a dud, but I am not surprised.

Aragorn, I think you are definately right that if I put my Duron 650 on an Abit KT7-Raid's Highpoint 370 controller, the problem would disappear, just as it did when I installed the Promise Ultra100 on my KT7 Pro. Also, I do remember reading about a problem when playing SOF with Admin status; I don't remember the details, but I do know that they fixed it a while ago with a patch. I have tried upping the memory on the Soyo 7VCA (P3-667EB) and the KT7 Pro (Duron 650) to 192MB but it didn't make one bit of difference. Remember that I've also got Win2K running on a CUSL2 with only 128MB and P3-700E that runs these games as smooth as silk, all the other hardware being equal. I should point out that although the 7VCA and KT7 Pro have different northbridges (Apollo Pro 133A and KT133 respectively), they have the same exact southbridge, the 686A. I should also mention that when I run CPU, memory, hard drive, and 3D benchmarks with Sisoft Sandra and 3DMark2000, all three machines perform quite well, as expected. Since the only times I notice anything wrong is when I play games, maybe what I need to do is contact tech support at the game companies - who knows, maybe they'll know what's up. As soon as I have time, I'm going to reinstall Win2K on the Soyo box, and try out the games as a normal user, rather than admin. I'm curious to see if it makes any difference.

Thanks for the post, EddiE314 - unfortunately this is a solution for a different problem. This patch was what I referred to as "Microsoft SP2 hotfix for VIA chipset" in my first post. It will apparently be included in Service Pack 2 when it comes out. While it does solve certain AGP related issues that can cause a 3D application to freeze up completely, it does not seem to have any effect on the "stuttering" problem, which I believe (perhaps wrongly) to be a bus mastering issue. Thank you for the link, however, as I DO believe this patch should be applied as a matter of course until Service Pack 2 is released. Here is the other "LargePageMinimum" patch I mentioned, which is specifically for AMD processors on Win2K, and should also be applied, particularly if you have problems with 3DMark 2000 crashing. Shame on me for not including links to begin with.

I read your post isaacg, and you bring up a good point I did not address - sound. Yes, without a doubt when I experience this stuttering in the frame rate of a game, I also experience "hiccups" in the sound! For example, I am running along in a Counter-Strike map and I fire a shot - the frame rate seizes up and I will hear the shot replay 3 or 4 times, even though I only pulled the trigger once. I experience this "hiccuping" with SBLive! Value, Ensoniq AudioPCI, and VIA onboard sound - I do not think the sound card is to blame. A question: at the moment that your sound burps, do you notice the hard drive LED blinking briefly, as if the hard drive was being accessed?

Addendum: my memory was faulty regarding the FIC SD11 with AMD 750 hybrid chipset, it stuttered with Geforce, but not with Voodoo3 3000 - weird.

Ever since Win2K came out, I have noticed stuttering problems in 3D games (e.g. UT, SOF, Counter-Strike) that only afflict Win2K systems with VIA motherboards (Soyo 7VCA, Abit VT6X4, MSI KT7 Pro), but not on systems with Intel BX or 815E mobos or AMD 750 mobos(Abit SE6, Asus CUSL2, Abit BX6r2, FIC SD11). The stuttering, which is worst when a new level/map has just been loaded, does not surface at all when running Win98 or WinME on any of these boards. All systems have fast CPU, fast hard drive, and 128MB RAM. Solutions that I have tried that failed: 1) Switching video cards - Geforce 256, GF2 MX, and Voodoo5 5500 (with too many driver versions to list here) all stutter; 2) Fresh Win2K SP1 installs with various versions of VIA 4in1 drivers - 4.24, 4.25a, 4.26, (even NO 4in1) all stutter; 3) Installation of Microsoft SP2 hotfix for VIA chipset - actually solves a different problem, but still stutters; 4) Installation of MS/AMD LargePageMinimum registry patch - still stutters, but at least 3Dmark2000 works now; 5)Installation of DirectX 8 - still stutters + new problems too; 6) Adjustment of myriad BIOS settings - including AGP4X/2X, AGP aperture 16MB-256MB, fast writes, AGP driving value, memory bank interleaving, VGA palette snoop, video/system BIOS cacheble, memory hole and many others - no effect on stuttering; 7) Enable/disable DMA - no help; 8) Increase swap file size by various amounts on all partitions - no effect. The ONLY thing I've tried that completely FIXES the problem is moving the hard drive off the VIA on-board controller and on to a seperate PCI controller such as the Promise Ultra100 or Ultra66. This leads me to believe that the Bus Mastering (?) driver for VIA chipset, both what comes with Win2K and VIA's 4in1, is BUGGY and sub-optimal on Windows 2000. Buying a 3rd party HD controller for every VIA system I build is not a convenient option. BTW, I have seen this problem referred to elsewhere, specfically a review of the ABIT VT6X4 on a hardware review site, but the reviewer didn't know what caused the stuttering and didn't care because "Win2K is not a gamer's OS" blah blah blah! Screw that! I have sent emails to various mobo manufacturers and they were not forthcoming with solutions. I suspect that the only way this is going to get fixed is if VIA fixes it (hold breath - not). I am posting this hoping that someone out there knows of this problem and has some miraculous registry patch (or something) they can share!