What Is Causing My PC To Underperform?

Overslop

Overslop

Overslop

Soldato
Joined
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Thailand
I've been having troubles with my PC for some time now...


LOW FPS IN GAMES


Call of Duty 2 - Often 30-40 FPS when there's fighting taking place.

Maximum in-game and Control Panel settings - 1920x1080 res.



Warhammer 40k: DoW: WA - 30-40FPS when there's a lot of enemies on screen or constantly on some levels.

Maximum in-game and Control Panel settings - 1280x1024 res.

(Original DoW ran rock solid 60FPS on my 8800GTX)


Age of Empires III - 20-25 FPS when there's a lot happening on screen (I'm not sure any cards can handle this game yet though)

Maximum in-game and Control Panel settings - 1920x1080 res.




BSODS


Quite often get BSoDs at random times - usually browsing web. Though only have 1 since reinstall of Windows, which happened a week ago.

The ones I used to get were (exact names unknown):

nvlddmkm stopped responding

Bad Pool Caller

Page File Error



RANDOM CHOPPY PERFORMANCE


DreamScene fails - either stopping completely or splitting Desktop into 4 sections

System becomes very unresponsive

Mouse pointer animations cease

Keyboard input lag



POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS ATTEMPTED


Reformatting hard drive

Using 1 stick of RAM

Resetting BIOS settings

Updating BIOS

Trying other graphics card (ATi Radeon HD4870)



What could be causing my issues? Bad PSU? Dodgy motherboard? Ditch Vista 64 for XP?

If someone could help me sort this out I would be very grateful. :)
 
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What temps are you running? You could try swapping Vista for XP and see what happens (Infact you should, just incase), but I don't think that should make any difference. PSU should be powerful enough, but if you can find a spare one that may be a viable option. Is your CPU overclocked? Try resetting the BIOS to safe aswell (whether you've overclocked or not) and see what happens.
 
MooMoo444 said:
They're both old games, and might not work well with Vista 64, or even just Vista for that matter.
Click to expand...

I also suspect that it's Vista that is responsible.

If that's the case then I'll accept that and live with it. But I want to be sure.

Can anybody tell me if they have tried those games on Vista (64), and what sort of performance they got?
 
Mattf121 said:
What temps are you running? You could try swapping Vista for XP and see what happens (Infact you should, just incase), but I don't think that should make any difference. PSU should be powerful enough, but if you can find a spare one that may be a viable option. Is your CPU overclocked? Try resetting the BIOS to safe aswell (whether you've overclocked or not) and see what happens.
Click to expand...

OK, just did some testing with CoreTemp and my idles are 30-37 across the four cores, and 33-48 whilst playing Winter Assault.

I would swap for XP if Vista is the cause of so much instability. But it took me most of a day to do the full install of Vista, and I don't want to do another reinstallation unless it's necessary.

I don't have a spare PSU and won't change it unless it's the cause of the problems. How can I test this to be the cause without swapping it? I don't have a multireader.


EDIT: The CPU has been overclocked but I've also run at stock which I'm doing now. BIOS is also reset.
 
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Something else I should mention is that I have both hard drives as well as my optical drive all powered off of 1 cable to the PSU. Could this be causing the issues?
 
I dont have DoW installed so can't try it with my Vista 64. I don't remember it being laggy/choppy/slow..but then again I've not played it in months.

If you have a spare HDD lying around just install XP on that to try, maybe

Also just saw "nvlddmkm stopped responding" in OP.. that sounds like a driver issue. Try different ones :s
 
MooMoo444 said:
I dont have DoW installed so can't try it with my Vista 64. I don't remember it being laggy/choppy/slow..but then again I've not played it in months.

If you have a spare HDD lying around just install XP on that to try, maybe

Also just saw "nvlddmkm stopped responding" in OP.. that sounds like a driver issue. Try different ones :s
Click to expand...

Actually, I do have a spare HDD so I could try that. However, I would really prefer to get my system working for Vista than resort to downgrading to XP. I will leave this option for a latter resort.

Haven't had that nvlddmkm BSoD since reinstalling Vista, so I hope at least that one issue has already been addressed. Then again, it's only been a week since I did the reformat so too early to tell for sure.
 
eiko_magami said:
could be a dying HD ? much more likely to be drivers than anything else.
Click to expand...

What drivers?

For graphics I've tried a variety of ATi and nVidia ones, and am currently running the latest nVidia ones on a fresh install of Windows. So it can't be graphics drivers.

As for motherboard ones, I'm just running the ones you can download from the Abit website. I doubt those are dodgy as people would have reported it left, right and centre.

If it's my HD on the way out, how can I test this?
 
Was just browsing this site and it BSoD again.

This time a big range of numbers was all I could see before the comp rebooted. Where can I find what the BSoD records?
 
Changing to XP temporarily isn't necessarly to determine if you should go there permanently, it's to determine if the issue is Vista related, once we know where the issue comes from, we can look into ways to fix it :) Right now if could be something completely unrelated, using a process of elimination to find the cause is always a good idea, time consuming but effective.
 
Redgie said:
Changing to XP temporarily isn't necessarly to determine if you should go there permanently, it's to determine if the issue is Vista related, once we know where the issue comes from, we can look into ways to fix it :) Right now if could be something completely unrelated, using a process of elimination to find the cause is always a good idea, time consuming but effective.
Click to expand...

I can see the logic behind it, I just really don't want to do yet another OS installation.

But on second thoughts, you are right - better to narrow it down.
 
reflux said:
Do you really need 18 threads on the same topic?
Click to expand...

I have the problem posted in 3 forums where it is perfectly relevant. If I come up with more evidence, such as strong pointers towards it being a PSU failure, then I will post in more relevant forums.

It's better to post in as many places as possible and get more opinions and solutions.
 
Update -

Just been running a little test on Bioshock...

All settings cranked up to maximum except V-Sync switched off and AA turned down to 4xAA (enhanced in control panel).

From the first section where you go into the sea and swim across to the tower, I was seeing frames between 30 and 60.

Once inside I looked around a lot and walked over to the elevator. Frames were generally around 80 here but lowered to 45 at a few spots.

Can someone do a comparison with me please? It's a very popular game and is certified for Windows Vista, so should be a good test. :)
 
Update 2 -

Northbridge already had a voltage overclock, but have bumped it up even higher. So far no BSoDs but too early to tell if that's solved it.
 
I am assuming this is the rig as per your sig?

8GB will put quite a strain on the memory controller so you could try popping out a couple of sticks for a short while?

Could run memtest too to check the memory anyway??
 
rxmac said:
I am assuming this is the rig as per your sig?

8GB will put quite a strain on the memory controller so you could try popping out a couple of sticks for a short while?

Could run memtest too to check the memory anyway??
Click to expand...

Already done testing of the memory - 2 tests of memtest and lots of Blend tests in Prime 95. Every time it passed 100%.

And did try running just 1 stick (all of 4 of them, one at a time) but it didn't help in the end.
 
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