"DrWho" wrote in message
...
Dave said...
I hate to point out the obvious, but why don't you just shut down all
that
buggy IM crap while playing games? How tough is that? A mile-long
systray is
a perfect recipe for lack of system performance. Especially if
RealAnything
is running tin the background. They're too busy mining all your personal
info to care about your reduced system performance...

Of course. If I kill every other app during games, that solves the
studdering problem. But why should I have to?

I dunno, because it will release memory and other system resources to then
be available to run the game at full speed? A lean OS is a mean OS. I
recommend not having all that junk load on startup, then use it as needed,
then close the app when you don't need it. Hey, why should you have to?
Bottom line: because things sometimes don't work properly if you don't.

My GeForce4 card did not
have this problem. Same machine, same OS.

So switch back if it bothers you all that much to have to kill a few apps...

The studdering occurs ONLY when a one of the icons in the system tray
becomes animated. Just having the programs running does NOT cause the
studdering - ONLY animation of one of the icons does it. This is
obviously a driver problem. ATI has even admitted to the "studdering"
problem in their forums.

Yep, it's a known driver bug alright. Doesn't bother me any because I have
no use for IM proggies. You could submit a report to the Catalyst Crew and
see if any solutions are forthcoming.

I have not tried the 3.5 Cats yet. But ATI claimed to have fixed this
issue with the 3.4 cats.

You could try 3.5 and see, perhaps? At any rate, you should fully uninstall
the previous drivers before changing them, making sure your display adaptor
is listed as "standard VGA" etc. (or roll the video drivers back to day one
first boot), then installing the new ones. Least one can do, really...