Have you tried v-sync with triple buffer through NvCP?

I've just tried that. It doesn't eliminate the problem completely, though now the stuttering is much less frequent in NFS3 and SLRR. In Motor City Online, however, there's no improvement.

EDIT: I've also noticed some stuttering (though on much lesser scale) in NFS Most Wanted (2005). That's strange, considering that some newer games (like NFS Most Wanted 2012, NFS Rivals, Just Cause 2, Shift 2 Unleashed) don't have this problem at all.

Maybe bad optimized drivers from Nvidia in terms of DX8 support.
You could try ENB's DX8>DX9 converter, though this might cause games to crash and if it does work it does strain the system more so they may stutter even more.

http://enbdev.com/download_convertor_dx8todx9.htm

I've noticed some stuttering even in newest games (e.g. DIRT Rally) with my 980 at 144hz 2560x1440. Dropping to 60hz makes it much better. It's odd, as I run GSYNC too, so not sure sitter should happen much!

Welcome to the club.

I've had this happen to me with other pre-DX9 games such as "Carmageddon II", "Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption" and "Severance: Blade of Darkness".

There appears to be no fix other than going to back to Win9x (I'd dual boot with both XP and ME, and running it from ME solved it, so it certainly isn't a hardware issue)

Something else I noticed, particularly in BOD; if you launched a game, started a level, closed the game (so that it goes back to desktop) and launched the game again, most of the stuttering would be gone. Perhaps it's an issue related to inappropriate handling of video memory.

Whatever it is, I tried everything under the sun and it just wouldn't go away.

Single processor affinity? Disable threaded optimization in Nvidia drivers?

Nope, that didn't help 🙁

FIXED! I've set maximum number of pre rendered frames to 4 in Nvidia Control Panel, now the games run super smooth 😀

Keep in mind that the tradeoff there is that increasing that value is known to increase input latency. Good thing it can be set on a per application basis.

If your game is pre DX8 then you should use Application Compatibility Toolkit "NoGDIHWAcceleration" option against the game .exe to get >30fps.

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

If your game is pre DX8 then you should use Application Compatibility Toolkit "NoGDIHWAcceleration" option against the game .exe to get >30fps.

I know that. The games I have problem with are not DX1-7, they are DX8-9. There is no observable FPS limit, just a heavy stuttering. Anyway, the problem is already fixed by changing max number of pre-rendered frames. However, if anyone has a better idea, I'll be glad to know it 😀