troubleshoot my computer, please!

[Jerry_111]

Hi guys! Much help needed...

I start playing DOD: S, CS: S -- any Source-based game -- and everything runs fine. FPS is normal. After 20 minutes or so, my FPS suddenly decreases by an average of about 10-15 FPS and the FPS goes from good to absolutely horrid.

I exit the game, and try running something like Quicktime and the movie ALSO runs slow with a slower FPS. I suspect it's the same for everything on my screen in general.

I also suspect that this happens in other games; for example, after 20 minutes of CNC3-play the slowdown also occurs, and applications like quicktime runs slow.

I can so far only fix this by restarting the computer. But if I play again, the problem occurs once more.

Any ideas? Help!

 

[VirusType2]

Just a quick guess, it sounds like maybe something is starting up behind the scenes and isn't stopping.

Might be a memory error in the program as well.

Could also be due to overheating (either video or cpu), it's slowing down your clock speeds.





play the game until it slows down like you described

quit to windows and CTRL+ALT+DEL to view the task manager and see what processes are taking place.


When not doing anything, sitting there in windows you should easily be able to tell what the heck it's doing.

type the name of the processes that are using CPU% into the google browser to see what they are.


If everything appears to be normal, it just might be overheating or memory problems, or the software usage of it.

Make sure all your fans are working. new fans are cheap at places like www.newegg.com I've seen them as cheap as $1.99 each.

 

[MRG]

Good ideas Virus.

Have you checked the temps of your system? Performance slowdown can easly be caused by components overheating. Make sure the heatsinks on both your CPU & GPU are clean of debris. Also make sure the fans are spinning for each. Might want to check that ASAP. You can also download a program like motherboard monitor, it checks the teps for you, provided your hardware supports it.

Have you defraged your HDD within the past 3 months? Fragmentation can cause such problems as well.

I'll post more, but I just got called into work & there is no bloody coffee... Yawn!

-MRG

 

[Jerry_111]

Thanks for the advice, guys! I'll give all of those a try.

I also sought help in another forum, and this is what they asked:

Could be 1 of many things...

1. Have you updated the Drivers?

2. What kind of Card is it Nvidia/ATi if so which series

3. Have you ran a Spysweeper/Virus scan to see if any trojans are eating up all your ram?

4. Have you checked to make sure it is not overheating. once a Video card starts overheating it will get throttled ESPECIALLY since it's the HOT summer...Get some AC on near the PC and make sure it has sufficient cooling.

5. Clean out the Dust. Dust bunnies are terrible and wreak havoc on PCs. ESPECIALLY during the summer.

1. Drivers are all updated!

2. Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT Series Viewsonic VA1912w

3. Not yet, I just installed Windows Vista, replacing Windows XP. Now, I don't think it's vista's fault; I had the exact same FPS problem when I had XP -- good FPS followed by a slow-down. Since I just installed Vista 2 weeks ago, isn't it kind of unlikely that I would get the same virus/trojan within that small amount of time?

I haven't run anything besides Windows Defender, and it didn't pick up anything. I'll try Ad-Aware and an anti-virus program now -- is Avast good?

4. Thanks, I'll try that.

5. Eep, it's been a while since I cleaned out. I'll check that too.

Also, maybe my fan stopped working?

 

[VirusType2]

Do what I suggested in the first post, then see if that fixes it first before asking for more things to try. They only work if you do them.

Just a quick guess, it sounds like maybe something is starting up behind the scenes and isn't stopping.

Might be a memory error in the program as well.

Could also be due to overheating (either video or cpu), it's slowing down your clock speeds.


I repeat:

play the game until it slows down like you described

quit to windows and CTRL+ALT+DEL to view the task manager and see what processes are taking place.


When not doing anything, sitting there in windows you should easily be able to tell what the heck it's doing.

type the name of the processes that are using CPU% into the google browser to see what they are.


If everything appears to be normal, it just might be overheating or memory problems, or the software usage of it.

Make sure all your fans are working. new fans are cheap at places like www.newegg.com I've seen them as cheap as $1.99 each.

 

[Asus]

Recently my brother had an issue where most games would act up after playing them for a few minutes. But it didn't happen with older games like regular CS. Just current games that used DX8 and 9 features which really exercised all parts of the card. It turned out that his GPU was not getting enough power. He only had a 20pin powersupply with a 24pin board. So the 4 extra pins (which are to help power the PCI-Express 16x slot) were not being supplied power. And his GPU did not have a power plug on the end of the card for extra power. Swapped my 24pin PSU in place of his and it was all clear.

Does that sound like it could be similar to your issue?

 

[Barney Fife]

Could you tell us about your system spec?

 

[Jerry_111]

Windows Vista (I had this same problem during XP just two weeks ago)
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.20 GHZ
1 GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT
Sound Blaster Audigy sound card

 

[Jerry_111]

one of my svchost.exe is using like 37,000 K worth of memory. Is this something to worry about?

 

[Asus]

one of my svchost.exe is using like 37,000 K worth of memory. Is this something to worry about?

Probably not. There can be more than one svchost.exe running and each one can work with a group of .dll services. It's a Windows thing.

 

[VirusType2]

Windows Vista (I had this same problem during XP just two weeks ago)
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.20 GHZ
1 GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT
Sound Blaster Audigy sound card

Asus seems to have a good lead for you to follow up on

So is your graphics card supposed to have a separate power source ? A wire going to it?

Is it PCIe or AGP?

Did you plug one into it?


Maybe your power supply isn't great enough as well.

 

[nutcrackr]

power supply could be having issues.