Gaming performance poor

[MiccyNarc]

I have this problem in the UT2004, Half Life 2, Battlefield 2...pretty much any 3d game.

Whenever I view certain parts of maps in UT2004 or Half Life 2, I get horrible graphics lag. FPS drops to below 10. If I look away from the texture or scene the FPS returns to a playable level.

For example, the Face3 map in UT2004 if I look at the massive pyramid in the center of the map my FPS will drop to unplayable levels. Random stuff like that. This results in a very choppy play experience, to say the least. It happens constantly in Battlefield 2 SF, the game is 100% unplayable 100% of the time.
This just started happening recently as well, over the past week.

Athlon 64 2800
1024 MB DDR
Geforce 6800 128 DDR
Creative Augigy 2 ZS
Windows XP SP 2

Heeeeelp!
EDIT: oh and you might want to know:
The behavior is present in Battle For middle earth, but in that game, the game is fine for a while, then something triggers the lag, I alt-tab out, and the performance returns to normal until I trigger the lag again.

 

[TIIMMYY]

I get this too If I look a certain direction in some games my FPS drops to about 1.

Ideas? :'(

 

[_-_-SELAS-_-_]

Its a graphics thing, you need a better graphicscard or to make your settings lower - stuff like shadows, lightning, resolution Antialisation and anisotropic filtering.

 

[MiccyNarc]

Its a graphics thing, you need a better graphicscard or to make your settings lower - stuff like shadows, lightning, resolution Antialisation and anisotropic filtering.

This just started happening recently as well, over the past week.

:|
My settings are fine, I've been running them like this for months, and only recently has this happened.
PS. How dumb do you think I am?
EDIT: I decided to try lowering the graphics in UT2004 down to the lowest level possible.
Framerate was stuck to 100 FPS most of the time, but in the same suspect areas as mentioned above, it would drop to 30 FPS. Lowest I saw was 18 FPS.

So no, there's something going on here. A Geforce 6800 SHOULD be able to handle UT2004 at its lowest possible settings.

 

[Ren.182]

Have you tried defragging your hard drive? Scanning for viruses/spyware and the like?

 

[MiccyNarc]

Have you tried defragging your hard drive? Scanning for viruses/spyware and the like?

I've scanned for viruses and spyware, I haven't defragged, I'll see what that does for me.

 

[TheGrimSweeper]

format and reinstall windows. will fix all your problems.

 

[MiccyNarc]

format and reinstall windows. will fix all your problems.

That's what's known as a "Last Resort"

 

[Glirk Dient]

Sounds like it could be a memory leak. Try taking a stick of RAM out to see if it happens again...or swap a new set in to test it. One of your sticks may be bad and leak so after a while in the game or some event will trigger it and it will be very slow.

 

[TheGrimSweeper]

That's what's known as a "Last Resort"

nah, i typically use it as a first or second resort. If you have 2 harddrives, its really easy and fast to do, copy and paste all the files u wanna keep onto second, reinstall Windows, then games and apps, copy back over the files. (Obviously you have to reinstall all games and applications though, but as long as you keep the installers on the second hdd for apps, and have the cd's for games, can do it in a few hours).

 

[Freemanator89]

nah, i typically use it as a first or second resort. If you have 2 harddrives, its really easy and fast to do, copy and paste all the files u wanna keep onto second, reinstall Windows, then games and apps, copy back over the files. (Obviously you have to reinstall all games and applications though, but as long as you keep the installers on the second hdd for apps, and have the cd's for games, can do it in a few hours).

Hmm.. a couple hours? :-p

 

[Ren.182]

Formats should be used as a last resort. Though sometimes they're less frustrating than other fixes.
But it's always better to fix a problem rather than just start a-fresh.

 

[chewyxx]

i always get that lag in cs:s i never used to get this lag like 2 months ago its really annoying

 

[MiccyNarc]

Sounds like it could be a memory leak. Try taking a stick of RAM out to see if it happens again...or swap a new set in to test it. One of your sticks may be bad and leak so after a while in the game or some event will trigger it and it will be very slow.

The behavior of BFME leads me to agree with you. Though right now, a new stick of RAM is the last thing I want to spend my money on

That's what's known as a "Last Resort"

nah, i typically use it as a first or second resort. If you have 2 harddrives, its really easy and fast to do, copy and paste all the files u wanna keep onto second, reinstall Windows, then games and apps, copy back over the files. (Obviously you have to reinstall all games and applications though, but as long as you keep the installers on the second hdd for apps, and have the cd's for games, can do it in a few hours).

Well it's something I just did after thanksgiving and I don't want to do it again

Update:
Odd, I don't get this behavior in Red Orchestra in any of the maps I tried.

 

[Glirk Dient]

The behavior of BFME leads me to agree with you. Though right now, a new stick of RAM is the last thing I want to spend my money on

Well it's something I just did after thanksgiving and I don't want to do it again

Update:
Odd, I don't get this behavior in Red Orchestra in any of the maps I tried.

It could be a software problem that leads to the memory leak. Perhaps the drivers got messed up while installing so whenever it goes to load a certain function it loads wrong and causes a memory leak. Reformatting would fix this. Un install your graphics drivers and reinstall...or update to the newest ones if you can. You could also try an older version of drivers as the current ones your using might be faulty for you.

 

[JNightshade]

I take it cooling is fine? No idea if that has anything whatsoever to do with it, it's just always good to be sure.

 

[MiccyNarc]

I take it cooling is fine? No idea if that has anything whatsoever to do with it, it's just always good to be sure.

I did check the temps on my card and it's cooler than it's ever been (30s C)

It could be a software problem that leads to the memory leak. Perhaps the drivers got messed up while installing so whenever it goes to load a certain function it loads wrong and causes a memory leak. Reformatting would fix this. Un install your graphics drivers and reinstall...or update to the newest ones if you can. You could also try an older version of drivers as the current ones your using might be faulty for you.

Alright, I guess I'm using slightly outdated nVidia drivers so I get to upgrade, yay!

 

[MiccyNarc]

Update: Installing new drivers fixed UT2004 just fine.

HL2 still doesn't work.