Maybe an easy answer...

[southpaw13]

I have an LCD monitor that is set at a frequency of 60.  So when you play simple games like pacman, the video sort of hiccups.  Pacman has a higher frequency than 60 which causes the hiccup.  So to keep this short, and yes I did my searches, will Powerstrip fix this issue?  I have tried Powerstrip before and matching Pacman's frequency but it still does the same thing.  Am I missing something simple or should I try it again or will I always have to deal with this on an LCD monitor?

Thanks gang...

[lilshawn]

i guess i'll stab at this...


the issue you're thinking of isn't going to cause a "hiccup"

what it will do is cause a horizontal line, where the top of the video screen and the bottom portion doesn't quite match up properly... quite noticeable in horizontally scrolling screens. it's mainly because the game screen changes while the monitor is drawing the screen. (IE the game screen refresh rate and the monitor refresh rate is not the same.)

i believe what you are experiencing is something having to do with the computer itself, your having an issue with something bogging down the computer causing the video to be choppy or stuttering.

i would suspect an IRQ (interrupt request line)is being shared with something else that is causing the computer to have to "wait" until the line is free to use it.

A FINE EXAMPLE:

your old dial up modem and your soundcard are sharring IRQ 3 (as often they do there's nothing wrong with sharing) if you where to play an MP3 file through your soundcard and then attempt to "dial out" to the internet, your sound would stutter or hiccup while the computer attempts to grab the attention of the modem. this is simply because the hardware listens on the bus line for it's assigned IRQ while it's busy doing other things...if it hears it's IRQ announced on the line, it stops whatever it's doing and listens for further instructions. (to use an analogy... it's the equivalent of yelling STEVE in a crowded room at a party, although you will grab the attention of ALL the stevens in the room you only require the attention of one. so the other steven goes back to doing whatever he was doing after seeing you didn't need him) in this case, while normally not an issue with non-time sensitive information (data) stuff like sound information and video information are VERY time sensitive since that is what your experiencing. perhaps the other steven is in charge of receiving and then passing glasses of water to another person, yelling steven to catch the attention of the other steven causes the steady stream of "glass passing" to stop while steven looks to see who was yelling his name... changing the IRQ of one of the hardware items will fix the problem. the computer equivalent of only having one person of each name at your party.

therein lies a problem, your party wouldn't be very big since there would only be 15 people. (actually 6 but that's another story) so we have to share.

a simple probe into your "system info" program supplied with windows will give you a list of IRQ's and DMA's and other shared things in your system.

you would be surprised how many items are sharing it's a wonder some computers run at all.