Sombrero wrote on 2025-06-25, 06:16:

Hopefully they made the slim less annoying to open.

If anything, they made it even more annoying. 😁

I watched a few Xbox 360 S disassembly/cleaning videos on YouTube, and getting to those tabs can be tricky. And since plastic becomes brittle with age, I get the feeling that even a minor slip up would cause them to break.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-05-23, 09:57:

• MSI Z77A-G43 (MS-7758)

Do you have any noise on PCI ports?
I have same mobo (MSI Z77A-G43) and my Audigy 2ZS card make the background noise like cheap AC'97 codec.
I was afraid A2ZS was broken, but when I checked it on another computer (P4/i865PE) the noise was gone.

EDIT:
I tried to move A2ZS card to another PCI port, it didn't help.
PS: All analog/digital inputs in the mixer were muted.

ott wrote on 2025-06-25, 07:22:

Do you have any noise on PCI ports?
I have same mobo (MSI Z77A-G43) and my Audigy 2ZS card make the background noise like cheap AC'97 codec.

I don't currently have any PCI sound cards in this system, as I have no use case for them.

However, about 5-6 years ago, when I was just getting back into retro PC hardware, I did briefly put a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 (SB0100) in this rig. From what I recall, it worked fine, and I don't think there was any excessive noise. In case it matters, my motherboard revision is 1.3.

I have the exact same motherboard and used PCI X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro with it for a while with zero issues. I may have also had PCI X-Fi XtremeMusic in there for a moment, not sure, but if I did it also worked fine.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-06-25, 08:25:

I have the exact same motherboard and used PCI X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro with it for a while with zero issues. I may have also had PCI X-Fi XtremeMusic in there for a moment, not sure, but if I did it also worked fine.

I have first revision Audigy 2ZS with golden jacks, maybe it is too sensitive?
Anyway, I got such noises on the ASRock Z77 Pro3 mobo. Then I tried A2ZS on the Gigabyte GA-B85-HD3-A mobo and didn't detect any noise.
So I think the noise issue related to ASMedia PCIe-PCI bridge, which is used on MSI Z77A-G43 and ASRock Z77 Pro3 mobos.
GA-B85-HD3-A has another iTE PCIe-PCI bridge.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-25, 05:41:

But I'm certainly not looking forward to opening up my Xbox 360 S or my PlayStation 4 Pro when the time comes. The latter is almost 10 years old now, and the fan has started to get pretty loud, despite being cleaned regularly.

I just cleaned and repasted my PS4 Pro using this video as a guide. While my console wasn't nearly as filthy as the one from the video, it did have considerable dust buildup between the heatsink fins. I got that new Duronaut for the repaste job, and also some 1mm thick strips of Minus Pad 8 for replacing the old thermal pads on the memory chips and the VRM. Lastly, I took this opportunity to replace the CR2032 battery as well.

Anyway, it took a couple of hours to do all this, but the results exceeded my expectations. With around 25C room temperature, my launch model PS4 Pro (CUH-7016B) is now nearly silent while playing Horizon: Zero Dawn in its 4K mode. Previously, the fan would ramp up to very loud levels under similar circumstances. All in all, this was definitively worth it. Hopefully, I'm good for the next five years or so.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-03-25, 18:02:

I researched this a bit, and eventually realized that there's a setting which can smooth it out. It's called "Maximum pre-rendered frames" in older Nvidia drivers, such as 355.98 which I'm currently using. You want to set this to "1" then enable V-Sync in the Nvidia drivers, and lastly disable V-Sync in the game's video options.

Do you do this for every game? Or just the ones that exhibit frametime spikes?

You mentioned turning off V-Sync in the game's video options. What if the game automatically V-Syncs with no option to turn it off? NFSU1 and Midnight Club 2 work like this. They are automatically locked to the monitor's refresh rate.

Thank you. Your posts have helped me a lot in optimizing my Windows XP rig (RIVE, i7-4930K, GTX 980 Ti, Asus ProArt monitor).

Barley wrote on 2025-09-05, 20:23:

Do you do this for every game? Or just the ones that exhibit frametime spikes?

Just for the ones that have frame pacing issues. Basically, I fire up a game, look at the frametime graph via MSI Afterburner, and if I don't see a flat line, I try this. By the way, there are some modern games with uneven frame pacing where this method is applicable as well. However, the setting has been renamed to "Low Latency Mode" in newer Nvidia drivers.

You mentioned turning off V-Sync in the game's video options. What if the game automatically V-Syncs with no option to turn it off? NFSU1 and Midnight Club 2 work like this. They are automatically locked to the monitor's refresh rate.

In such cases, I try forcing V-Sync on via Nvidia drivers together with setting "Maximum pre-rendered frames" to 1. Sometimes, this can override the game's own V-Sync settings. And if that doesn't work, manually limiting the FPS to 60 via Riva Tuner Statistics Server can help in some cases.

Thank you. Your posts have helped me a lot in optimizing my Windows XP rig (RIVE, i7-4930K, GTX 980 Ti, Asus ProArt monitor).

Cheers! As mentioned elsewhere, I too have picked up most of these tips from other people. Usually from this forum, but also other places like Anandtech and such.

Thanks for the responses!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-06, 03:31:

Basically, I fire up a game, look at the frametime graph via MSI Afterburner, and if I don't see a flat line, I try this.

What is your threshold for "flat line?" I did some experimentation last night, and no game ever had a completely flat line. Most had miniscule wiggles (not enough to notice unless looking very closely), or periodic blips that were nowhere near as high as your example. Using the NVIDIA driver fix did not improve on these results. Does that mean I'm ok, or is there something else going on that I need to address?

Barley wrote on 2025-09-06, 13:53:

What is your threshold for "flat line?"

Literally a completely flat line, as can be seen in my Mirror's Edge screenshot after applying this tweak:

I did some experimentation last night, and no game ever had a completely flat line. Most had miniscule wiggles (not enough to notice unless looking very closely), or periodic blips that were nowhere near as high as your example.

Some of the frametime spikes are the result of the game streaming in data, and they can't be fixed. But generally, those only show up if you're rapidly traversing the world. If you're just standing still and looking at a wall or something, your frametime graph should be completely flat.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-06, 15:24:

Some of the frametime spikes are the result of the game streaming in data, and they can't be fixed. But generally, those only show up if you're rapidly traversing the world. If you're just standing still and looking at a wall or something, your frametime graph should be completely flat.

Ah! That's the missing piece. I have to stand still and do nothing. I will do that. Thanks!

Barley wrote on 2025-09-06, 15:31:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-06, 15:24:

Some of the frametime spikes are the result of the game streaming in data, and they can't be fixed. But generally, those only show up if you're rapidly traversing the world. If you're just standing still and looking at a wall or something, your frametime graph should be completely flat.

Ah! That's the missing piece. I have to stand still and do nothing. I will do that. Thanks!

Wow! Did some tweaking on my games, and although a lot of them did not need this fix, the Half-Life 2 games and Portal 1-2 really benefitted! Thanks again!

Barley wrote on 2025-09-07, 13:02:

Wow! Did some tweaking on my games, and although a lot of them did not need this fix, the Half-Life 2 games and Portal 1-2 really benefitted! Thanks again!

Have fun! For me, the main benefit of this tweak is that it provides more consistency to player input. So mouse (or controller) movement feel smoother overall.

That said, not everyone is super sensitive to frame pacing issues, and many people won't even notice the difference. The guys from Digital Foundry have been covering this for years (mostly on console titles) and that's how I became aware of it.

Since some people have been curious about the compatibility of this system with various games, I'm reposting this from another thread. Here's a list of games that ran well on this rig under WinXP, with the GTX 980 Ti using 355.98 drivers (modded). I also referenced a few issues that I had encountered, along with my notes on needed fixes/adjustments, if any.

2001

• Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal
• Deus Ex GOTY
• Gothic (inventory icons are slightly distorted)
• Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
• Max Payne (anti aliasing should be turned off)

2002

• Morrowind
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
• Neverwinter Nights
• Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2
• WarCraft 3

2003

• Deus Ex: Invisible War
• Freelancer
• Gothic 2
• Max Payne 2
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (needs ForceVSFog=1 InvertFogRange=0)
• Splinter Cell (needs ForceShadowMode=0)
• Star Wars: KOTOR (needs Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1)
• Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
• Unreal 2

2004

• Doom 3 (needs seta com_videoRam "1024")
• Far Cry
• Half-Life 2
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (needs fan made fix for shadows/lights)
• Thief: Deadly Shadows
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (needs unofficial patch by Wesp5)

2005

• Battlefield 2
• F.E.A.R.
• Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
• Quake 4 (needs seta com_videoRam "1024")
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

2006

• Battlefield 2142
• Gothic 3
• Neverwinter Nights 2
• Oblivion
• Prey (needs seta com_videoRam "2048")
• Tomb Raider: Legend

2007

• BioShock
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Colin McRae Dirt
• Crysis
• Unreal Tournament 3

2008

• Assassin's Creed
• Fallout 3
• Prince of Persia
• The Witcher

2009

• Mirror's Edge
• Risen

That said, my notes here are very brief. For a full list of potential issues with any game, I always recommend checking the relevant page on the PC Gaming Wiki. Lastly, I might update the list periodically, as I play more games on this system.

Ran into that maximum pre-rendered frames/frametime spikes thing you mentioned earlier on this topic, intended to start Thief II (with NewDark) and right away noticed something was off. Just looking at the manor right where the first level starts felt like the game was running at 15fps. Hopped back to desktop to check was there something funky going on in the NewDark config file and immediately remembered your posts about frametime spikes when I noticed a setting for limiting prerendered frames to 1 in there.

Started up RTSS, booted the game and the frametime graph looked like damn seismograph. Setting max frames to 1 through the conf fixed it completely, massive improvement. Then I went to check the NewDark installs of Thief 1 and System Shock 2, Thief 1 already had that setting on but I think it was flipped on by TFix which I've also installed since both Thief 2 and SS2 had it off by default. Implying the author of TFix felt this is a common enough issue to just have the patch enable it.

System Shock 2 also had fluctuating frametime, but it didn't feel anywhere near as bad as Thief 2 did. Hell, I even completed the game last winter never noticing anything about the mouse feel. But after flipping that setting on I did notice mouse movement got snappier.

Aww man, now I'm all paranoid and probably end up testing every game with RTSS. And I thought I was sensitive enough to not need any tools to tell me is the mouse as snappy as it should!

Also to your post above, my own experiences with a similar system are very alike, compatibility with WinXP+ games is high. From the top of my head I can add only Red Faction (2001) which needed a community patch to fix issue with too large VRAM and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002) which needed Win98 compatibility mode and manually killing MoHAA.exe in task manager after quitting the game. Also my success rate of getting Win9x era games to work has been like 99% with community patches and wrappers.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-10-07, 20:56:

Aww man, now I'm all paranoid and probably end up testing every game with RTSS.

Heh, that's been my standard practice for a while now, for both old and modern titles.

First time I fire up a game, I use its default V-Sync and frame limiter (if any), and then check the frametime graph while having my character stand perfectly still in-game. If I'm not getting a flat line, I try setting "Maximum Pre-rendered Frames" to 1 (under WinXP) or "Low Latency Mode" to On (under Win7 and up). If that alone doesn't help, I turn off the game's default V-Sync and use Nvidia's version instead. Also, on Win10/11 only, I found that it's sometimes necessary to use Nvidia's "Max Frame Rate" limiter on top of all that, but it varies from game to game.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-10-07, 21:14:

First time I fire up a game, I use its default V-Sync and frame limiter (if any), and then check the frametime graph while having my character stand perfectly still in-game. If I'm not getting a flat line, I try setting "Maximum Pre-rendered Frames" to 1 (under WinXP) or "Low Latency Mode" to On (under Win7 and up). If that alone doesn't help, I turn off the game's default V-Sync and use Nvidia's version instead. Also, on Win10/11 only, I found that it's sometimes necessary to use Nvidia's "Max Frame Rate" limiter on top of all that, but it varies from game to game.

I really appreciate you sharing all the knowledge you have gained over the years, and especially love the systematic way you do your testing, and how you explain everything.

Just now I learned that the way to get stable framerates differs between Windows XP and Windows 7 and above. This will be useful for me as I start testing XP-era games on Windows 7 64-bit to take advantage of widescreen mods and community patches. I also have a handful of more modern games (Wreckfest, NFS Heat) that I play on Windows 11.

Barley wrote on 2025-10-08, 12:58:

Just now I learned that the way to get stable framerates differs between Windows XP and Windows 7 and above.

Nvidia renamed/merged that setting at a certain point. I noticed that turning "Low Latency Mode" to On from the Nvidia driver panel automatically sets "Maximum Pre-rendered Frames" to 1 as well. This can be checked via Nvidia Profile Inspector.

That said, I assume that "Low Latency Mode" does something else in addition to that, but I can see why Nvidia wouldn't want two separate settings anymore. This rename/merge happened after a certain driver update, though I'm unsure in which version exactly. I'm using the latest official driver under Win7, so it has "Low Latency Mode", but I'm guessing if I were to install the equivalent of 355.98 there, it would have "Maximum Pre-rendered Frames" instead.

I took a look at my modern Nvidia Profile Inspector. Which Low Latency setting is it?

Barley wrote on 2025-10-09, 18:31:

I took a look at my modern Nvidia Profile Inspector. Which Low Latency setting is it?

I think it's "Ultra Low Latency - CPL State" in Nvidia Profile Inspector, but I simply set it from the driver panel like so:

The other setting is probably for the newer "Ultra Low Latency" mode. I haven't tested that one thoroughly yet. At the bottom of the window, you can see Nvidia's description of the different options.