Thanks Guys for reading through all that and for the kind words. I'm glad you find it useful. At one point last week I was saying to myself "stop this benchmarking instanity and go practice dropping bombs and shooting", because I wasn't getting anywhere.
I thought on Sunday morning, sheesh - relook at the results and see if there's anything in this that would help anyone and I noticed then the GPU/CPU timing in the ATITrayTools graphs.
As an aside - here's a dump of one of my high level logs where I've complied results and differences in settings from the initial baseline - these runs reflect about 1-2 testing days:
Look at the variabilty throughout the multiple pass runs. Always there. Once time it's not but repeat the same settings and the hard stutter will find a way to come back. You can only see this type of behavior in multiple iterations - 3 of 5 track runs - etc.... this is just Sat and Sun's runs
AAOFF-Ap-Morphon
1.00.14101
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8884, 210143, 10, 82, 42.276
1.00.14214
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6281, 213048, 0, 83, 29.482
AAOFF-AP-MorhOFF
1.00.14101
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
9188, 213827, 6, 110, 42.969
1.00.14214
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8688, 213767, 0, 87, 40.642
4XAA in AP - Morphon
1.00.14101
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
5750, 211313, 0, 108, 27.211
1.00.14214
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
5925, 213186, 0, 69, 27.793
4XAA in AP - MorphOFF
1.00.14101
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
5766, 217886, 0, 108, 26.463
1.00.14214
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8465, 214107, 0, 88, 39.536
1.00.14305 GrassOFF 4XAA AP/ED - AF Appcontrolled - Grass OFF|Tesselation 64X|Texture Filter High Qual - NO Surface Format Optimization - Adaptive MS
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8893, 212102, 15, 98, 41.928
Same as above - now add 8X AF
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
9010, 215613, 15, 97, 41.788
AF to AP - 0XAA in APcontrol - all other settings the same
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8659, 213278, 0, 89, 40.600
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8789, 213669, 2, 89, 41.134
2XAA in AP
Consecutive runs taken after previous runs with many screensnaps
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
7956, 210537, 0, 91, 37.789
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
7780, 212982, 0, 88, 36.529
Post reboot
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8672, 211015, 0, 95, 41.097
8XAA in AP
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
9136, 213765, 16, 98, 42.739
8XAA in AP - Tesselation = 64
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8953, 212338, 18, 99, 42.164
8XAA in AP - Tessellation = OFF
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8478, 212003, 0, 94, 39.990
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8731, 212338, 0, 94, 41.118
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8732, 213975, 0, 97, 40.809
8XAA in AP - Tessellation = 64X
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8953, 212338, 18, 99, 42.164
8XAA in AP - Tessellation = 64X - ATITrayTools Running
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8787, 211340, 0, 96, 41.578 2 big pauses
8830, 211417, 7, 95, 41.766 2 stutters
8569, 211280, 0, 94, 40.558 pauses
8043, 211964, 0, 92, 37.945 8 stutters
8578, 211848, 0, 91, 40.491 pauses
8XAA in AP - Tessellation = 64X - ATITrayTools Shutdown
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
9114, 212280, 17, 98, 42.934 Smooth
8994, 212468, 16, 96, 42.331 Smooth
9093, 212634, 17, 96, 42.764 Smooth
9000, 212428, 15, 97, 42.367 Smooth
9007, 212326, 17, 97, 42.421 Smooth
8xAA in AP - Tessellation = OFF - ATITrayTools Shutdown
9012, 212089, 16, 97, 42.492 Smooth
8905, 212175, 17, 93, 41.970 Smooth
8784, 208758, 17, 95, 42.077 boringly smooth
8822, 212061, 16, 93, 41.601 Smooth
8XAA in AP - Tessellation = OFF - ATITrayTool Running
8754, 212337, 0, 96, 41.227 large pauses
8892, 212400, 18, 97, 41.864 smooth!
8839, 211994, 14, 93, 41.695 smooth
8414, 212259, 0, 93, 39.640
8614, 212233, 0, 95, 40.587
8605, 212233, 0, 92, 40.545
8562, 212274, 0, 89, 40.335
8688, 212419, 9, 91, 40.900 some jerkyness
8768, 212443, 16, 95, 41.272 smooth
8571, 212186, 0, 95, 40.394
OK now - everything same. ATITrayTool Shutdown. HP Button Manager ON
8XAA in AP Catalyst 11-4
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8986, 210598, 16, 97, 42.669 couple micro-stutters
8767, 211908, 0, 97, 41.372 1 micro-pause + 1 Huge Pause
8579, 213074, 0, 99, 40.263 2 large stutters and a pause
8297, 212141, 0, 94, 39.111 Pause X 3
8725, 212464, 0, 99, 41.066 Pause X 3 + 1 Huge Pause
1 run with HP Button Manager off after reboot - first run had to be aborted due to severe pausing at start of 2nd (monitored) run of track. No change.
9042, 213308, 0, 98, 42.389
8XAA in AP - ATITrayTool Running - Process Affinity Mask = 15 in /Softclub path conf.ini
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
9042, 213308, 0, 98, 42.389 Initial Load
9351, 212584, 0, 101, 43.987
8439, 212245, 0, 90, 39.761
8712, 212537, 0, 96, 40.991
8704, 212117, 2, 95, 41.034
8XAA in AP - ATITrayTool Running - Process Affinity Mast = 14
8601, 212202, 17, 91, 40.532
8550, 209688, 0, 91, 40.775
8682, 212022, 16, 92, 40.949
8575, 211675, 0, 92, 40.510
8XAA in AP - ATITrayTool Running - Process Affinity Mask OFF
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
9333, 211847, 18, 106, 44.055 - Initial Load Run
8831, 212286, 15, 98, 41.600
8819, 212457, 16, 98, 41.510
8710, 212362, 13, 95, 41.015
8713, 212642, 15, 95, 40.975
Same exact configuration as above - reboot to confirm next runs
9538, 212237, 6, 106, 44.940
9119, 212725, 15, 101, 42.868
9001, 212589, 18, 98, 42.340
8901, 212659, 0, 95, 41.856
8902, 212663, 17, 99, 41.860
8968, 212485, 3, 100, 42.205
Process Affinity Mask set to = 15
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
9392, 212447, 0, 106, 44.209
9009, 211982, 0, 99, 42.499
9047, 212045, 15, 96, 42.665
8920, 212004, 18, 93, 42.075
8999, 213199, 18, 95, 42.209
8807, 212720, 0, 97, 41.402
S!
Gunny