Get an SSD for your OS and TF2, doesn't need to be very big.

edit: at 4 years, yes your HDD will need to be replaced. You don't want it to fail and you lose a bunch of shit. SSD is generally a better choice for a primary drive though, so you might wanna do that first

It's a good idea really. If you can't afford a SSD you got have a look to seagate SSHD drives.

How would I set that up? Just install my OS/tf2 onto the SSD drive and set everything else up on C:/ (i'd assume HDD would be C:/ and SSD would be D:/)?

if you install your OS on your SSD, then the SSD is C:\ and your other disk will be seen as D:\.

Then in steam, you can choose to create a SteamLibrary folder elsewhere than where steam is installed to download your games into, this way you can manage where you want your games

Yeah, having TF2 on an SSD makes more of a difference than one would think. I have my 120GB. SSD split into two partitions, one for Windows, and one for Steam and TF2, and the boot times and connect times on them are much faster than they would be on a mechanical drive. Having a separate drive for mass storage as well is always good, I have all my other steam games installed on my 2TB. HDD.

An SSD would definitely boot faster, programs would start faster, maps would load faster. Although there are other ways to get rid of the "general slowness" and come close to a fresh install again, an HDD will never be as fast as an SSD in those tasks.

However your HDD definitely isn't responsible for stuttering and screen tearing. Neither a new HDD nor a new SSD will fix this.

depending on when stuttering happens, a failing hard drive might be the cause of some stuttering thanks to absurdly high seek times when loading new assets. not screen tearing though.

edit: probably also wouldn't cause stuttering in tf2 thanks to how source 1 loads assets on map connect/bootup. might cause extra stuttering with skins though.

How old is your motherboard?

My mobo is like 2 years maybe? I replaced it some time back and that didn't help.

Here's my current setup. The only other thing I can think of would be my mobo bottlenecking me or something with my graphics card (since I believe it was used when I got it). The reason I thought my HDD had something to do with it is because this started happening when I reverted to windows 7 and got worse every time I changed OS's or reformatted.

OS - Win8
CPU - i5-3570k
RAM - 6gb
Mobo - ASRock H61M-HVS
GPU - AMD Radeon 6770
HDD - 500gb Hitachi HDS721050DLE630

And I guess stuttering isn't exactly what I mean, just...not smooth. It feels like I'm playing with 40fps when I'm getting 100-140.

If you're getting screen tearing and micro-stutters, yet your FPS isn't impacted, then it could be GPU related. The Radeon 6770 is an older GPU. I would consider upgrading if I were you.

Yeah, and it's used, and I've had it for 2 years. I should probably swap it out (although it's weird that stuttering and the like would happen when I changed OSs).

What'd you recommend for a good Radeon card in like the 100 dollar range? I'm not looking to go too overboard because my 6770 does give me some good FPS and I don't play crazy intensive games

Good R7 cards run from about $90 to about $130. Anything from an R7 265 to an R7 360 would more than outperform your 6770.

#10
Mobo can't bottleneck.

#11
New OS -> new drivers
Which driver version are you using atm?

Currently i'm on catalyst version 13.12 and driver packaging version 13.251-131206a-166389C-ATI (driver version 13.251). I tried updating to the newest drivers but they gave my screen this odd yellowish tint.

That's pretty old, almost 2 years.
At least try 14.12 if 15.7.1 didn't work. You did try 15.7.1 not 15.7?
Yellowish tint?

I can't quite remember, it was a bit of time ago.

Gonna try 15.7.1, then 14.12.

Edit: 15.7.1 doesn't say it's compatible with win8 (just win8.1). When I do the "driver search" the best result I get is 14.4.

You should be able to get the latest drivers working. Up until recently I had a 6870 in one of my systems and it had no issues with them.

Otherwise:
-If windows 7 try disabling aero
-Try closing everything but the game you're playing, I often notice web browsers running videos triggering odd vsync issues

So what version should I DL if it only has 8.1/7/10? I would assume 8.1.

I would assume that it'll work on 8 just fine too, since 8.1 is just a service pack.

Why don't you install the .1 update anyway??

8.1, yes.

8.1 is more than a service pack. It's actually an entirely new kernel version, and it's counted as its own release. It even uses a new WDDM version (1.3 as compared to 1.0 for vista, 1.1 for 7, 1.2 for 8 and 2.0 for 10) and uses its own license keys; a key for 8 will not work for 8.1, which is different than how service packs used to work (a 7 SP1 key couldn't be used to install plain 7 but a 7 key could be used to install 7 SP1 fresh).

Because I'm a stubborn person who's paranoid about installing new OS's.

It improves desktop usability, you'll like it :)

Well, I went ahead and installed 15.7.1 but it didn't change anything. My driver version is still 13.12. I don't know if I have to restart but I've installed drivers before and it didn't even flicker the screen or anything.

I did do custom install to get rid of the AMD Gaming Evolved app but that's all I unchecked.

It tells me that 13.12 is the most updated version of my driver (which obviously isn't true)

I'm gonna go ahead and try 14.12 then.
(Or should I try 14.4? that's the most recent version according to AMD's manual-selection page)

I got a new HDD + SSD a few days ago (WD Black, EVO 850) and did a clean install of steam / TF2. Installed TF2 on the SSD and the framerate and general performance is the same apart from the faster loading time.

14.4 is installed. It seems like the colors are slightly different, but I'm testing performance now.

Yeah, the contrast seems a bit higher. And my fps was a lot more variable on 14.4 (and generally worse). Gonna try to look for 14.12, but if not 13.12 has been working fine for me.

...and now the uninstaller is stuck.

This is why I don't like messing with drivers.
It won't even let me kill the uninstaller through task manager (although that's probably a bad idea).

Use display driver uninstaller, it is the best thing to get rid of graphics drivers

Well, I managed to kill the process and thought I'd just try to install 13.12 again but now it's hung on "enumerating source media for installable packages".

All right. God damnit. Uninstalled everything through 13.12 uninstaller and now it won't even detect having to install the actual display driver. I even went to device manager and completely uninstalled the card and it still won't show up. The uninstaller is telling me that there's nothing to uninstall and the installer says that there's nothing to install.

Progress.

Completely uninstalled everything using CCleaner. Restarted. Currently installing 13.12.
...and now it's hanging on installing the Catalyst Install Manager.

edit: completely uninstalled the driver with DDU. Going for the reinstall.

Well, after that the install went through, but of course the driver didn't actually install. Still on the base microsoft driver.