When I play a game, after about 2-5 minutes, I would get these lag spikes where the fps would significantly drop, making the game unplayable. After about 10 minutes though, it would go back to normal for a few minutes and then the process repeats itself. It never used to do this and only started today. I mean I been playing Dead Space for a while now and today it did it for the first time. It happens on any game I've tried. I have the latest drivers for my graphics card and I have the latest direct x. I have also scanned for viruses and spyware but my system is clean. My system specs are as follows: Power supply: 500W Motherboard: Winfast AMD AM2, Dual DDR2 800/667 Processor: AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200+ Dual Core Memory: Kingmax DDR-2 1GB (2 of these RAM) Graphics: Chaintech 8600GT 512MB DDR2 128bit Any ideas, please post them here. If you have experienced the same problem. If anything you need to know please ask. Its really annoying and I cant play anything now.
find the IP of a gameserver you use, and open command prompt. Type in 'tracert [ip] > c:\tracert.txt' (replace [ip] with the game server ip) then post the contents of c:\tracert.txt. Ideally do it when its bad, but a one from when its good can provide useful information in addition to one from a bad period.
I am sorry for my ignorance on such matters, but I do not play online and the game does not connect to a gameserver. Don't know if that makes a difference? Do I still need to post that info for you?
ah, my mistake, 'lag' refers to when the time taken for data to get from you to a game server and back is too high. good thing to check for your problem is watch your hard disk light when the game is stuttering. Is it flashing slowly, rapidly, solidly on or not at all?
I apologise for incorrect terminology. I did mean that the game stutters incredibly. It's as if the computer can't handle it, yet funny thing is it works perfectly at the start. And it has worked before even for hours on end. The light does go on and it flashes slowly, but it does it even when the game is running smoothly. I did notice that the CPU usage jumped to about +-70%. Not sure if that has anything to do with it.
Fan's are working. Machine is VERY dusty. Graphics card is boiling. Will clean it up inside, will report on whether it's working after the dust is gone.
I think I found the problem. The fan on the fraphics card seems to be stuttering. It gains speed and then slows down and goes fast again constantly, making a humming noise during this cycle. It doesn't seem natural so I assume this is what is causing the problem but I am no expert at computer hardware. Could this be the case Loony? Can I replace the fan itself or does the whole card need to be replaced?
check the driver settings to see if there's any fan control. it may be trying to slow down to save power/reduce noise and speed up when needed. If there's no fan control and/or its doing it even in windows desktop, it's not right and you will need to replace something. Replacing the card is the easiest and most commonly picked option; replacing the GPU cooler is generally possible but it depends how confident you are about doing it.
I was having a problem like this, try cleaning your actual video card! Mine had so much crap heating it up it screwed with all my games! Also, make sure your screen saver is disabled. Sometimes that messes with games.
