Very bad performance while gaming... no matter the graphical settings.

[Elheriel]

I've been having this particular problem since I built this computer a few months ago. I get bad performance in most games no matter which graphical settings I use. One of the things I noticed is that my framerate is extremely unstable, wildly going back and forth from 20/25 fps to 60 fps.

For exemple, when playing Crysis with "High" settings and 4x AA on, I'll get 25fps to 45fps, which isn't very smooth. However, setting everything to "Low", using no AA and a resolution of 1280x1024 will give me the EXACT same performances. There is absolutely no gain in performance, fps or stability when lowering the settings, which makes no sense to me.

Now I know that Crysis is hard to run but I'm also having this problem with older, far less demanding games such as Titan Quest, World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, Dawn of War II and Company of Heroes. The framerate on those games also rides a roller coaster from hell and won't stay stable for more than a few seconds. The games will run smoothly (40 to 60 fps) for a little while, and then dive to an unplayable 15-20 fps before going back up again, rinse and repeat. As with any other games I played on this computer, lowering the settings and resolution for these games will not affect the performance in any way.

Before anyone asks, my hard drive is freshly formated and all drivers are up to date, everything running at stock speeds, no overclock. Here are my specs.

Windows XP 32 bit
Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600 CPU
Sapphire Radeon 4830
2GB DDR2 RAM 800Mhz

[randomness]

check your temperatures...its possibly a loose heatsink or something similar.

When the CPU heats up to certain temperature it slows down dramatically which may explain your slowdown.

[Elheriel]

You were right about the CPU temperature being way too high. Everest shows that my CPU can reach an alarming 70 C when under load. Could it be that the pre applied AMD thermal paste is not doing his job at all ?

I'm also concerned that running my computer with those temperatures for almost a year may have damaged the CPU itself or even other components. Is there a danger at this kind of temperature or would it take more to cause any damage ?

[artdrivers]

Can you go into bios and adjust settings in your PC health status as follows? May help with the temperature. Try it and see if you reach 70° you will receive a warning.

PC Health Status
Reset Case Open Status [Disabled]
Case Opened No
Vcore 1.376V
DDR2 1.8V 1.872V
+3.3V 3.328V
+12V 12.112V
Current System Temperature 30oC
Current CPU Temperature 47oC
Current CPU FAN Speed 3375 RPM
Current SYSTEM FAN Speed 0 RPM
Current SYSTEM FAN2 Speed 0 RPM
Current POWER FAN Speed 0 RPM
CPU Warning Temperature [70°C]
CPU FAN Fail Warning [Disabled]
SYSTEM FAN Fail Warning [Disabled]
CPU Smart FAN Control [Disabled]This setting Fan at 100%
CPU Smart FAN Mode [Auto]
System Smart FAN Control [Disabled]This setting fan at 100%

What type of Power Supply do you have?

[Elheriel]

I modified my bios settings as you suggested. After stressing the CPU for a while Everest now reads a maximum of 65 C.

I am still getting the same performance issues however. As for my power supply, I'm using a cheap 550W X-Supply. Could it have something to do with my problem ? I was considering buying a new one very soon.

[artdrivers]

This is all based on a non OC rig. Yes a week power supply can create heat and cause a poor performance on graphics. It should'nt be the cause for that much CPU heat. Poor air circulation would cause the cpu and system to get hot also, but I beleive that the cpu heatsink is not making good contact to the cpu. That is what normally causes this. You can find out buy stressing the cpu and pushing the heatsink against the cpu while running and see if it drops any with a temperature monitoring program open. This is just a quick step to test the heatsink to cpu contact. Are you overclocked? It also could be a combination of things. Try setting the graphics setting in the game to 800X600 and see what it does on the game play.

[south side sammy]

I don't know what resolution you play at but, in Crysis alone, the video card is very low end, 2gig of memory is a nono and that processor is extremely slow. If you can play it on medium settings at 1024x768 count your blessings. The other games you mentioned have spots in them where graphics demands are steep. Judging by the settings you're trying to play at you're expecting too much from too little.

Having said that....... make sure vsnc is off and check all other setings in your video cards control panel.

Also, go get a program called Spyware Terminator and run it. You may have malware running that you don't know about. Run AVG free anti virus program.

Shut off instant messaging and all your auto down loaders. Go into the control panel and under security see what you have running through your firewall and start turning things you don't need OFF.

Goto start/run... type msconfig . Look under startup and deselect anything you don't need. Same thing with services..... down in the bottom you'll see "hide all Microsoft services. Click that and all other running things will be more noticeable. Start going through them and deselect anything you do not want or need running. These last two things will help a lot. DONT TOUCH ANYTHING YOU"RE NOT SURE OF.... but most things should be apparent.

While you're in the control panel..... add/remove programs........... get rid of all the "tool bars" that like to install themselves when you install other things. NONE of them are truly needed. ( Yahoo, Google, etc. )

[vsharma72]

I don't know what resolution you play at but, in Crysis alone, the video card is very low end, 2gig of memory is a nono and that processor is extremely slow. If you can play it on medium settings at 1024x768 count your blessings. The other games you mentioned have spots in them where graphics demands are steep. Judging by the settings you're trying to play at you're expecting too much from too little.

[south side sammy]

Originally Posted by vsharma72

I don't know what resolution you play at but, in Crysis alone, the video card is very low end, 2gig of memory is a nono and that processor is extremely slow. If you can play it on medium settings at 1024x768 count your blessings. The other games you mentioned have spots in them where graphics demands are steep. Judging by the settings you're trying to play at you're expecting too much from too little.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO QUOTE SOMEBODY, QUOTE THEM, DON'T PLAGIARIZE.......NOT NICE!