FPS Issues: Possible CPU Damage?

Yilias

Hey folks, I had a power out a few days ago and ever since my PC has been very sluggish and my FPS in games is so low they're unplayable. I ran through the simple stuff; updated drivers, ran all the antivirus programs, no dice. @Dhalphir suggested running a CPU benchmark at SilverBench. I scored an 860 after taking half an hour to render, which seems to suggest it's taken some kind of surge damage. I'm not very hardware literate though, so I'm looking for more advice and insight on what else the issue could be before I go out and get a new CPU.

Here's my specs (a little under 2 years old):
Windows 7 64 bit
i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core CPU
2x 8GB DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 RAM
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Motherboard
XLR8 VCGGTX660TXPB-C GTX 660 TI Graphics Card
AZZA Dynamo 500 500W ATX 21V V2.2 PSU

He also suggested this deal as a good deal for a replacement and upgrade, but I don't know enough to figure out whether or not they're compatible.

LD50

Well, if your cpu is damaged, I'd be surprised if your computer actually worked at all. It's possible that there's something else that was damaged; your gpu perhaps?

tsmvengy

Maybe your PSU is just dying/dead from that. I would start by replacing it with something from SeaSonic, like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151119

Other options to test things - try with a completely fresh install of Windows and test using integrated graphics, with your GPU out of the system.

LD50

Also, make sure your system is still recognizing your gpu. Look in the device manager and make sure it's showing up. It's possible that your computer has fallen back to using integrated graphics and that's why your fps is so low.

LD50

Oh, also, make sure nothing else is running when you're trying a game. Especially chrome.

molleh

LD50 wrote: »

Also, make sure your system is still recognizing your gpu. Look in the device manager and make sure it's showing up. It's possible that your computer has fallen back to using integrated graphics and that's why your fps is so low.

If it wasn't recognizing his GPU, wouldn't he not be getting any display at all? His monitor cable would still be plugged into the GPU, so if it defaulted to the integrated his monitor would just turn off or show "no signal."

I'm with tsmvengy - I'd lay odds that it's the PSU.

jinkumabuta

Also worth checking: is your cpu fan still spinning?
If the fan stopped spinning, your cpu would be throttling itself down to keep the temperature just shy of tjunction which would result in awful performance all around.

As others mentioned, it's pretty farfetched that a cpu that was damaged from a power surge could still boot, let alone complete benchmarks.