I've tried to tweak the garbage collection adjusting the parameters of heap size, new heap size, using parallel GC, etc. but my animations remain abrupt (I just use Java2D for some scrolling sprites). I have also noticed that the -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis doesn't seem to apply to full GC so, in my case, it's part of the problem.

Anyway thank you Andrew for the document, it has been a valuable help.
Guillaume