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Perplexing Frame Rate Issue
Dienekes
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi, all. I am cross-posting this from the stickied computer thread where my original request for help was, understandably, lost in the ongoing conversation there. Hopefully I will have more luck with this thread.
I have been having a frame rate issue lately that has me stumped. If this particular issue has been addressed somewhere else, I apologize; I have searched various boards in an attempt to find a solution but any search criteria I am able to articulate leads to general frame rate fixes like upgrading hardware and updating drivers. For me, as far as I can tell, neither hardware nor drivers are the problem.
For a long time I was able to play any game at reasonably high settings and many recent games at maximum settings. Recently I have been unable to play any game on any settings. I have tried several games (HL2, Beyond Good & Evil, FEAR, Myst 4, Rome: Total War and even 2D sprite based games). In all cases, including the 2D games, the game will run fine for 20-30 seconds and then drop permanently to about 1-2 fps.
I have not made any changes to the hardware. It started after I brought it home from school for Christmas, so I thought something might be loose. However, all hardware is securely installed, undamaged, and recognized by the system. The inside of the case is clean, fans are running fine, and the temperature is not abnormal. All drivers, whether the most recent or previous releases that I previously found stable, are producing exactly the same results. As of now, my video card and motherboard chipset drivers are up to date. So is DirectX. The HD has 62 GB (43%) of drive space remaining. 1.5 GB is used for virtual memory.
I am running Zone Alarm for virus protection and regularly use Spybot and Ad-Aware. I use Process Explorer in lieu of Task Manager to find out what programs processes are associated with and have tried running games with as few non-essential processes running as possible. I defrag regularly.
Since I haven't changed the hardware and the computer ran games very well previously, I don't know if listing any specs is necessary, but here are some anyway:
Windows XP
Single 3.2 GHz P4 w/ hyper threading
Intel Desktop Board D865GLC
2 512 sticks of Kingston DDR RAM (not sure about the latency)
BFG 6800 GT OC (APC) (as stated all drivers tried produce identical results)
If anyone has some idea what the problem is and could help me, I would greatly appreciate it.
I have been having a frame rate issue lately that has me stumped. If this particular issue has been addressed somewhere else, I apologize; I have searched various boards in an attempt to find a solution but any search criteria I am able to articulate leads to general frame rate fixes like upgrading hardware and updating drivers. For me, as far as I can tell, neither hardware nor drivers are the problem.
For a long time I was able to play any game at reasonably high settings and many recent games at maximum settings. Recently I have been unable to play any game on any settings. I have tried several games (HL2, Beyond Good & Evil, FEAR, Myst 4, Rome: Total War and even 2D sprite based games). In all cases, including the 2D games, the game will run fine for 20-30 seconds and then drop permanently to about 1-2 fps.
I have not made any changes to the hardware. It started after I brought it home from school for Christmas, so I thought something might be loose. However, all hardware is securely installed, undamaged, and recognized by the system. The inside of the case is clean, fans are running fine, and the temperature is not abnormal. All drivers, whether the most recent or previous releases that I previously found stable, are producing exactly the same results. As of now, my video card and motherboard chipset drivers are up to date. So is DirectX. The HD has 62 GB (43%) of drive space remaining. 1.5 GB is used for virtual memory.
I am running Zone Alarm for virus protection and regularly use Spybot and Ad-Aware. I use Process Explorer in lieu of Task Manager to find out what programs processes are associated with and have tried running games with as few non-essential processes running as possible. I defrag regularly.
Since I haven't changed the hardware and the computer ran games very well previously, I don't know if listing any specs is necessary, but here are some anyway:
Windows XP
Single 3.2 GHz P4 w/ hyper threading
Intel Desktop Board D865GLC
2 512 sticks of Kingston DDR RAM (not sure about the latency)
BFG 6800 GT OC (APC) (as stated all drivers tried produce identical results)
If anyone has some idea what the problem is and could help me, I would greatly appreciate it.
Dienekes on
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t Rohaq: Unfortunately I don't have another PC available to test my card in.
1. Check for newest Video card AND the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard.
2. Update or reinstall DirectX.
3. Make sure all the fans are clear of dust and spin freely, especially the video card fan, unless it happens to be fanless.
This would be my suggestion. In XP DirectX is linked in with way to many things, and sometimes a file can get corrupted. By adaware, or a virus, even if it was taken care of by Windows or or AV software. Even if you have the latest version of DirectX you should be able to reinstall it by installing the latest DirectX sdk, available at www.microsoft.com/directx. You can also try going to Windows update and installing the latest .Net framework. It should be under the optional upgrades.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
Although I haven't done this myself with these tools, it is possible to resize partitions without destroying them. To resize the system partition you'd probably need a boot-disk; in another thread qtparted, that comes on the Knoppix live CD (or DVD), was mentioned as being able to do this.
It's free.
At night, the ice weasels come."
Do be aware that resizing isn't guaranteed to not completely screw up your files. I've never had any problems with qtparted, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. You should always backup your files before attempting something like that.
Hmm, alright. Downloading the sdk right now. Will take a while as my connection is rather low bandwidth.
What I find weird about this is that I could run games fine for the longest time, I didn't change anything, and then I couldn't run them anymore. Searches for viruses, spyware, an malware turn up nothing. Perhaps something is going under the radar. I dunno.
That's a bit of a problem for me then. Maybe I'll do it later when I have money, assuming I can't get this fixed in the meantime.