Micro stuttering in most games 7970

[Gyochum]

Hello all,
I recently purchased a gigabyte 7970 and have had a lot of problems with stuttering in most games that I am playing.
Most noticeably Skyrim (which seems well known) and in other  games like  ths simple "Smash Cars", or elaborate Crysis 2, etc.
I am running the most current catalyst drivers as confirmed by the auto-updater,processor i7-870 and 8gb Ram (more than enough to provide a smooth experience). This stuttering happens at any setting, maxed or min graphic settings/resolution.

Really just checking to see if there is any good solution out there that works across multiple titles, or if I would be better off exchanging the card.
Sadly this makes the games un-enjoyable for me, and my old Nvidia gtx-470 provided a net-net faster experience.

Thanks!

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

Have you tried checking for any latency issues ? It more often causes problems with sound but graphics is also a possiblity. If it is this the problem is easilly fixed but finding the culprit can be more troublesome. Latency is caused by bad programming generally. There are various rules for how a program should access the core and if it doesn't follow these rules it can result in the core not being released for the next operation and this causes a bottleneck that backs up. The biggest headache from our perspective is that we have to find the rogue program/driver.

You can download  a test program here : http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

[Gyochum]

Fair enough. Can you elaborate on what latency issues might be at play here?
The critical thing to me is that I came from a Nvidia GTX 470, an inferior card by a good bit. As an example, the game "smash cars" a simple silly title availbe on steam ran flawlessly on that card, but with the 7970 suffers major skipping. That to me would indicate that the programming issue deals with calls to the card specifically, which points the blame at drivers if I am not mistaken?

I ran the application you linked to for approximately 5 minutes. After little variation I began doing other activities while allowing it to continue running.
The current latency seemed to hover between 67 and 120 most of the time.
The absolute maximum according to the app was 241.

As a PS, another application to add to the list I am having trouble with is Battlefield 3.
It is a MUCH more subtle effect in this title, nothing like skyrim (please note that in skyrim the typical fix of running in borderless windowed mode DOES correct this stuttering), and in Smash Cars.
In BF3 it seems more like it only occurs whenever there is mouse input (yes I have tried both eliminating and enabling mouse smoothing options in WIN7 and in the game itself).

Really appreciate the input!

[Hippie Tech]

Hi

Did you manually reset/ clear the CMOS after the gpu upgrade ?

and/ or

Did you reinstall windows ?

pEACe