games are going 2fps every 5 secs

F

finran

hi,
I've just bought a new PC with Vista, and when I run games it goes
down from 40+fps to about 2fps approx. every 5 seconds, then back to
40fps and the cycle goes on :crybaby: . Happens on all my games, and
sometimes the system slows down like that while not playing games,
under load.
My system specs are:

Amd athlon x2 6000+ 3ghz dual core
2gigs ddr2 533mhz ram
geforece 8600gt pci-e
Hec 550W peak psu
asus M2N8-VMX motherboard
500gig hdd

I underlined the peak part because during the 2 weeks i've had it,
i've come up with a theory that it's the 550W psu that's causing this,
because it's a peak supply so i suppose it only gives out 400W
sustained. My system shouldn't need that much power, surely?
Any ideas about what's wrong or anything that could help would be
appreciated.
 
I

Ian D

Run Task Manager, always on top, and select the Processes tab.
Watch the CPU column while a game is running to see what's
stealing your CPU cycles.
 
P

Paul

finran said:
hi,
I've just bought a new PC with Vista, and when I run games it goes
down from 40+fps to about 2fps approx. every 5 seconds, then back to
40fps and the cycle goes on :crybaby: . Happens on all my games, and
sometimes the system slows down like that while not playing games,
under load.
My system specs are:

Amd athlon x2 6000+ 3ghz dual core
2gigs ddr2 533mhz ram
geforece 8600gt pci-e
Hec 550W peak psu
asus M2N8-VMX motherboard
500gig hdd

I underlined the peak part because during the 2 weeks i've had it,
i've come up with a theory that it's the 550W psu that's causing this,
because it's a peak supply so i suppose it only gives out 400W
sustained. My system shouldn't need that much power, surely?
Any ideas about what's wrong or anything that could help would be
appreciated.
Click to expand...

There is a tool called RMClock. You can use that to watch changes
in your CPU state. You can see a picture of the screen here.

http://www.coolaler.com/forum/showthread.php?t=117069

The download is here.

http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml
http://cpu.rightmark.org/download/rmclock_225_bin.exe

In addition, doing control-alt-delete allows using the Task Manager
to monitor the load on your two cores. You should be able to quickly
flip out of the game with alt-tab, then look at the two displays
and get some idea what is going on. (Those are techniques I use on
Win2K.)

It could be that you need to install "dual core optimizer" from the
AMD site.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html

You can read this thread for more info about "dual core optimizer" and
the Microsoft patch. There are a few little things to install when you
get an X2 processor.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81429&page=24

I don't expect this has anything to do with a power supply. It is an
"OS versus dual core AMD" issue.

Paul
 
J

John Doe

Ian D said:
Run Task Manager, always on top, and select the Processes tab.
Watch the CPU column while a game is running to see what's
stealing your CPU cycles.
Click to expand...

He's probably talking about full-screen games. Task Manager would be
hidden whether or not it's set to be Always on Top.

I would be curious to know whether it happens during non-gaming
activities. If it's only gaming, you can suspect something specific to
gaming.
 
J

John Doe

Paul said:
In addition, doing control-alt-delete allows using the Task Manager
to monitor the load on your two cores. You should be able to quickly
flip out of the game with alt-tab, then look at the two displays
and get some idea what is going on. (Those are techniques I use on
Win2K.)
Click to expand...

Unless it's gaming specific, he would be able to do that without being
in a game. If it doesn't happen within regular Windows then it has to
be something gaming specific.

For what it's worth. There is a free and ultra simple utility for
measuring video memory usage called "MemStatus 2.5". Probably not
useful for this particular problem but I like it for gaming generally.
Mainly for games that might use lots of video memory.
 
F

FKS

finran said:
hi,
I've just bought a new PC with Vista, and when I run games it goes
down from 40+fps to about 2fps approx. every 5 seconds, then back to
40fps and the cycle goes on :crybaby: . Happens on all my games, and
sometimes the system slows down like that while not playing games,
under load.
My system specs are:

Amd athlon x2 6000+ 3ghz dual core
2gigs ddr2 533mhz ram
geforece 8600gt pci-e
Hec 550W peak psu
asus M2N8-VMX motherboard
500gig hdd

I underlined the peak part because during the 2 weeks i've had it,
i've come up with a theory that it's the 550W psu that's causing this,
because it's a peak supply so i suppose it only gives out 400W
sustained. My system shouldn't need that much power, surely?
Any ideas about what's wrong or anything that could help would be
appreciated.
Click to expand...

I don't know what's going on with your system, but let me tell you that it's
not your PSU.
My 2nd PC consumes more power than yours (for starters, it has 4 hdd's)
according to a PC power calculator. The PSU is an Antec 380W. I have never
had a problem like yours.
 
B

BillL

FKS said:
I don't know what's going on with your system, but let me tell you that
it's not your PSU.
My 2nd PC consumes more power than yours (for starters, it has 4 hdd's)
according to a PC power calculator. The PSU is an Antec 380W. I have never
had a problem like yours.
Click to expand...

Are you getting HDD activity during the slow-downs? Your system shouldn't
need to use a HDD as swap file with 2 GB's of RAM but I'm sure stranger
things have happened.

BillL
 
D

dombombob

Hi, it's Finran,
All your idea's have been great. I've already been watching the cpu
usage while playing games and using tools to find it out; it goes from
about 60% constant usage to 30-40% when it slows down.
Another thing i'd like to mention which is very important is the use
of the power settings feature in vista. when i first got the computer
it was very bad with this problem right from the word go. I spent a
while trying to find out what would change it and i came across the
power settings. I first changed them from moderate to high thinking
that it would make the system run faster, but it made it run the same
as before if not slower. So, i tried the power settings on lowest
which limits cpu power to 50% and turns on 'link state power
management' on graphics card, to maximum energy savings. And hey
presto, the slow downs stop. However, the system performance is just
not as good; it's like running a pentium D and a 6600gt instead of my
specs. When i turn them up again it works fine for a while (10 minutes
solid?), and games run almost double as well (fps-wise) but then the
problem kicks in again and i have to change it back. It's because of
this that im still pretty sure it's the PSU that is the problem.
Hope this triggers some more ideas.
 
P

Paul

Hi, it's Finran,
All your idea's have been great. I've already been watching the cpu
usage while playing games and using tools to find it out; it goes from
about 60% constant usage to 30-40% when it slows down.
Another thing i'd like to mention which is very important is the use
of the power settings feature in vista. when i first got the computer
it was very bad with this problem right from the word go. I spent a
while trying to find out what would change it and i came across the
power settings. I first changed them from moderate to high thinking
that it would make the system run faster, but it made it run the same
as before if not slower. So, i tried the power settings on lowest
which limits cpu power to 50% and turns on 'link state power
management' on graphics card, to maximum energy savings. And hey
presto, the slow downs stop. However, the system performance is just
not as good; it's like running a pentium D and a 6600gt instead of my
specs. When i turn them up again it works fine for a while (10 minutes
solid?), and games run almost double as well (fps-wise) but then the
problem kicks in again and i have to change it back. It's because of
this that im still pretty sure it's the PSU that is the problem.
Hope this triggers some more ideas.
Click to expand...

Would this be temperature related at all ? If the GPU was being
throttled, maybe that would account for it. The processor usage
dropping, suggests the processor is waiting on the video card,
implying the video card core clock may have dropped in value.

Paul
 
D

dombombob

Paul,

I've been using a program called Rivatuner which can check the core
clock speed, memory and temperature of the core. When things slow down
the temperature of the core drops about 7-8 degrees C in a matter of
5-10 seconds. Then when it goes back to normal the temperature rises
again. This isn't normal as i would guess that the temperature should
rise to a constant temperature when running gaming applications. The
core clock is staying the same in value as well
 
D

dombombob

Ok, i've downloaded the program called RMclock 2.25 (thanks for the
suggestion)
The reading's i have got from it are rather.. odd.

i start up the computer, and the cpu and throttle are the same, capped
at about 3ghz and it's working fine. Then, very soon after logging on,
the throttle for the cpu drops all the way to about 300mhz, and the os
load becomes much higher than the cpu load (which worked in unison
before). At this point the computer is horribly slow, nothing works
fast at all it's absolutely aweful (worthy of shutting down and
restarting).

What could this mean? the throttle occasionly goes back up to 3ghz,
randomly, but the vast majority of the time it's at 300mhz.. Infact
it's on that right now.

Anyone have suggestions as to what is causing this?
 
I

Ian D

It looks like the CPU is overheating, resulting in throttling.
A good program to check for this is Everest. It's available
for download from ZDNet.com. It's a 30 day demo with
reduced function. With my Intel Core2 Duo it gives
individual temps for each core and for the whole chip.
If you go to the Everest website, it'll probably redirect
you to ZDNet for the download anyway.

Check the seating of the CPU heatsink, and the fan operation.
If the CPU is running at 50%, core 0 will be at 100% and core 1
at 0%. You can check this with Task Manager. It looks like your
problem starts when core 1 kicks in. What you're getting is a
thermal oscillation. CPU overheats, slows down, cools, speeds up,
overheats.....
 
D

dombombob

Hiya,
Interesting idea, although i dont think mine is doing that as both
cores are running Together in taskmanager. However, could be wrong..

What i wanted to mention is; Could an out-of-date bios cause this? My
bios revision is 903, and the latest one which "Support new CPUs" is
revision 1004. Also, if i decided to update, could this cause a threat
to my system? ie: nothing works/faults?
 
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