help me!!!!!

[soggycrouton4]

i posted this question in another forum, and i was just hoping i would get more responses in a new thread

"in every 3d game i have, it has been slowing down to an unplayable level, (about 0.5 fps) for about 10 seconds, then speeding back up to normal. this happens about every 1-2 minutes, and is extremely annoying. It seems to happen more in games that are more of a system hog. for example, in morrowind, it doesnt happen for the first 5 minutes, then it starts happening about every minute for about 15 seconds. in spinter cell demo, it happens about every 2 minutes, for about 10 seconds. REALLY annoying. ive tryed almost everything, im hoping it doesnt have anything to do with my video card being damged by overclocking. have u ever heard of anything like this happening?"

system specs:

1.50 ghz p4
512 mb ram (SDRAM)
visiontek geforce 4 ti4200
40gb hard drive

i have tried:

-checking if any tasks are changing mem usage in the Ctrl+Alt+Del screen
-event viewer
-changing around the page file size
-freeing up RAM and HD space
-overclocking
-returning clock speed back to normal
-defrag, scan disk, clean up
-probably some other things too
-disabling backround tasks (including a virus scanner)

my bad guesses are:
-some setting deep inside the computer (i might have been changing that around the time it started)
-video card damaged by overclocking

:confused: :confused: :confused:

please help!:(

[mr.PC_eddy]

well,if u think ur video card is damaged,THEN GET A NEW ONE! Also,if u have the cash,get a new cpu. cause 1.5ghz is a bit slow.if u really dont knwo waz goin on,go to ur nearest computer tech.

[Maxpowers]

mr.PC_eddy thats a preatty dum post, i mean why didnt u just say um uh your PCs a piece get a new one, also another thing is that if he can go to the nearest tech why would he ask on the boards, think about it maybe he did...

From what i know i dont think your card is damaged, cause if it was it would not be working or and you would be getting some errors. I would try a different v/c driver, Uninstall any tweaking utility for card and ram, play around with the bios settings especially the AGP apreture size i would set it down to the lowest setting and see what happens then, this should at least give a start of where to look its all i can think of atm. GL

[G Smith]

Maxpowers,
Nice post...most of us at TweakTown post here and try to help others. Not show how rude we can be.

As far as the video problem....what sort of tweaks might you have been making when the problem started?

Like Maxpowers said...try reverting back to a stable bios and clock speeds... see if that helps.

[soggycrouton4]

well, thats a relief that my video card isnt damaged, i didnt really think that made sense, but its practically the only thing left i can think of. i have already reset the default clock speed for my card, which did not help, and, to be honest, I have way to many tweaks enabled to figure out which one it is, and since it did not happen around installing or changing any of the tweaks, i doubt that is what it is.

i shall try somethings, then report back, thats for the feedback

[soggycrouton4]

ookay... that didnt work.
maybe my RAM is damaged, maybe i'll open the computer up. its getting worse, more frequent...

[Wiggo]

When was the last time that ya cleaned ya case out? :?:

[Mr. C]

Nice call again Wiggo:)
Seems symptomatic of clock throttling.

[Wiggo]

I had so many of them here leadin' up to Xmas that it wasn't funny and I even posted a pic, ah here it is. :D

<center><img src="http://forums.tweaktown.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=112896">
even P166MMX can be useful and was ;)
:cheers:</center>

[soggycrouton4]

i tried opening up the case, cleaning it out, removing the 3d card and placing it back in, and pushing what appeared to be RAm that was loose in its slot. it did not work. i will try to remove the RAm and place it back in, and I will try cleaning it more thoroughly.

it really doesnt make any sense! no task in the task manager does anything, the performance graph does not budge, and the standard windows mouse moves normally, while the 3d game's mouse moves slowly!
GAAAAAAAAAHHHH! (head explodes) :snip:

btw... how could i find my "nearest computer tech"

[Wiggo]

If your HSF is as blocked as that in the pic (the fan could not spin with all that dust in it) and ya must remove the fan from the heatsink to see just how much ya got in there. These CPU's will first throttle back to speeds so low before eventually shutting down that this is the exact symtoms that you are describing (I must start a gallery of these as I've easily done over 50 PC's now in similar states of disrepair as this one and ppl just throw them away). ;)

It's about time anyway that ya learn't to strip it down and reassemble it anyway. If ya old enough to ask the questions then ya old enough to learn that as well. And reading this, http://www.tweaktown.com/document.ph...de&dId=411, would be a good start to some enlightenment for ya and don't bother about it's title, just read it and it's links. Then sit down and have a good long hard look at matters and how they are now plus how they could be. Do a little research also with www.google.com then comeback and ask any questions ya still have and someone should be here to answer them. :devil win
<center>:cheers:</center>

[soggycrouton4]

that sounds like a good idea. ive never overclocked a video card before, which would explain why tthis has never happened before, and the excess work could cause excess dust, among other things. Could the same thing be happening with my 3d card's fan? that would make sense, seeing as the problem does not happen in non-3d games. could i clean my cpu fan without removing it? if i had to, would i remove it in the same manner that this page describes?

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=article&dId=62

The way they describe it, it sounds like you have to break the clips and therefore i would not be able to put it back

[Maxpowers]

best and fastest way to clean any dust is with compressed air in cans that you can pick up where ever they sell any video equipment or computers. Also Wiggo did that Fan Explode cause it looks like it did :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

[Wiggo]

Actually it still works and that P166MMX is happy at 208MHz. :thumb:

[soggycrouton4]

:flames: excellent :flames:

I shall try that this weekend

D'oh! I just realized something! I can hear my computer's fan running! I suppose there could be dust in some other hardware component, but.... :confused: