A Little Tech Advice Needed

[ACLeroK212]

About a week ago a friend and I built a new computer for myself:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Soyo CK8 Dragon Plus mobo
512mb Ultra PC2700 Ram
ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128mb
Western Digital 80gb 7200rpm HD
Windows XP Pro w/ SP1

Anyways, the things been running great except for a few little bugs while playing some games. Basically, while playing, everything runs super smooth except for every minute or two I'll get a little lag, kind of like it pauses or is loading something for about 2-3 seconds. My friend also noticed this while I was hosting a 2 person battlefield 1942 lan. I've tried all different video settings, high and low quality, but the problem seems to remain consistent no matter what my settings are at. Anyone know what could be causing this?

The only thing I thought might be the culprit is the fact that I'm not using a sound card. I'm using the onboard sound from the Soyo CK8 Dragon Plus, which works well, but I was wondering if maybe the fact that all the sound for all these games is coming from the mobo and not a sound card is what is causing this little "hiccup" of lag periodically throughout my games. This is purely an assumption, as I have no idea what could be causing this.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[lePobz]

Sounds like some software you have running in the background using system resources - eMule does it all the time... as does some virus scanners and probably media player. If you close down all not-needed apps and the problem still occurs, i'd say its probably that sound thing you mentioned.

 

[ACLeroK212]

Sounds like some software you have running in the background using system resources - eMule does it all the time... as does some virus scanners and probably media player. If you close down all not-needed apps and the problem still occurs, i'd say its probably that sound thing you mentioned.

I'm almost certain it's not any programs running in the background. It's a fresh computer built from scratch and I haven't really put much of anything besides games and whatnot on it so far.

 

[Dedatorv]

About a week ago a friend and I built a new computer for myself:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Soyo CK8 Dragon Plus mobo
512mb Ultra PC2700 Ram
ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128mb
Western Digital 80gb 7200rpm HD
Windows XP Pro w/ SP1

Anyways, the things been running great except for a few little bugs while playing some games. Basically, while playing, everything runs super smooth except for every minute or two I'll get a little lag, kind of like it pauses or is loading something for about 2-3 seconds. My friend also noticed this while I was hosting a 2 person battlefield 1942 lan. I've tried all different video settings, high and low quality, but the problem seems to remain consistent no matter what my settings are at. Anyone know what could be causing this?

The only thing I thought might be the culprit is the fact that I'm not using a sound card. I'm using the onboard sound from the Soyo CK8 Dragon Plus, which works well, but I was wondering if maybe the fact that all the sound for all these games is coming from the mobo and not a sound card is what is causing this little "hiccup" of lag periodically throughout my games. This is purely an assumption, as I have no idea what could be causing this.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

When you say your friend noticed it too do you mean he could notice it on his computer as well?

Go to your task manager then processes and how many processes does it say are running? Whats your firewall and anti-virus?

Are you connected to the internet when this does occur? I was thinking it could be Windows is trying to download patches, which could be using a large amount of the bandwith.

 

[ACLeroK212]

When you say your friend noticed it too do you mean he could notice it on his computer as well?

Go to your task manager then processes and how many processes does it say are running? Whats your firewall and anti-virus?

Are you connected to the internet when this does occur? I was thinking it could be Windows is trying to download patches, which could be using a large amount of the bandwith.

my friends computer noticed the lag as a result of my computer (the server for our 2 man lan game) having this little problem.

I haven't installed a firewall or anti-virus yet, all i've done on the internet is install service pack 1, security updates from the windows update site and download current drivers. There is also very little processes running when this happens too. Like I said, it's a freshly built computer with very little installed other than games and the like.

I am also quite certain the problem has nothing at all to do with the internet. It produces the same type of lag no matter if it's a lan game over a network or just a straight up single player game while not even connected to a network or internet, which is why I'm thinking it's some type of hardware configuration problem. Other than that little lag every couple minutes everything runs perfectly smooth and very fast.

Another reason I think it may be the sound card scenario:
While playing Far Cry everything runs smooth (besides the little lag mentioned above of course), but the first time I shoot a gun after loading the game up it comes up with a lag that lasts about 4-5 seconds (a little longer than the usual problem) right when I hit fire. After the quick lag is over, the sound for the gun is played and then everything goes back to the way it should be. It only does this the first time I fire a gun, and afterwords it's fine.

 

[Dedatorv]

Well theres one thing I can think of but, its very odd how it can also affect someone else. Go start, run, type in dxdiag then go to Sound 1 and in the DirectX Features change Hardware Sound Acceleration Level to basic or standard. I also suffered from that Farcry sound delay whenever I would fire for the first time after a load. If you set it to basic and the sounds are delayed by a second or so put it up to standard.

 

[ailevation]

:frown: Nope, it's the 9800 Pro, drivers maybe. I've had the same problem when I first got it. It would run smooth then after awhile it would pause once in a while for a second, I managed to fix it somehow by accident. Someone else had the same problem on these forums, he also had a 9800 Pro.

 

[ACLeroK212]

:frown: Nope, it's the 9800 Pro, drivers maybe. I've had the same problem when I first got it. It would run smooth then after awhile it would pause once in a while for a second, I managed to fix it somehow by accident. Someone else had the same problem on these forums, he also had a 9800 Pro.

lol, well you need to remember cause it's pissing me off. :E

all my drivers are current btw

 

[ailevation]

:O What's your Power Supply?

 

[ACLeroK212]

:O What's your Power Supply?

450W, not sure on brand or anything, but it's plenty

 

[Asus]

I wonder if it has anything to do with Virtual memory, page files and basicly lack of memory for the use.
You have 512MB of memory but if any of the applications you run use more then it has to use the Harddrive as memory, which is much slower. That could be the loading sense you get when firing in farcry or hosting the lan game, with Bots possibly? That issue when firing the gun as been reported from a lot of users but usually it is because it's using a swapfile on the harddrive because they didn't have enough memory for the app. It puts the info that it will need later but not right now, on the swapfile and it swaps parts of that file out for what isn't needed in memory when something new needs to be loaded.

Your CD doesn't spin up, does it? That would be a different issue that I have had if it is accessing the CD. Everything would seem to pause for a moment but you would hear the CD spin.

 

[ailevation]

:x My last theory then, is that the 9800 Pro is getting a tad hot... oh yeah what kind of case you got? If heat is the issue poor ventilation could be it. Let's see, I got my new PC last summer, in October I bought the 9800 Pro... those in-game lag pauses started to occur. I read on forums the the 9800 Pro have heat issues, paranoid I was, I then got the Antec SOHO file server case as well as a new VGA cooler. I don't exactly know what solved the problem, the VGA cooler, the case or it fixed itself. By the way my old case was a mini tower OEM from Sony, so yeah.