• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

GeForce 230 update makes my games lag heavily

N64 Gamer

N64 Gamer

N64 Gamer

Associate
Joined
25 Jun 2012
Posts
17
Alright, so I have GeForce 230 and I updated to the driver version 301.42, however the update makes my games lag after 5-10 minutes. (I have had this lag problem for 6 months now with all the previous updates in this time span.)

The games that I'm trying to play are Left 4 Dead 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV.
When I try to play these games, they seem to be running fine in the start, but after 5-10 minutes, they start lagging to the point where it's unplayable.
However, not all my games lag. When I play Counter Strike: Source, I have no problems, and the game runs smoothly for hours. The problem doesn't seem to occur with the "older" games.

I used to be able to play all my games without any problems, but it's after I updated my driver to 301.42 that it started lagging in these games after 5-10 minutes.

Throughout the time, I have been in contact with Nvidia customer support and they suggested me a couple of drivers but none worked.
I tried to clean my RAM but that didn't change anything either (this method: http://www.ehow.com/how_5068108_clean-ram.html)
I tried to run a Video Card Stability Test (the program with the 2 earths spinning) and my computer never froze or crashed after 2 hours of running it, although the earths did lag a lot at times.

Here are some screenshots of my computer's specs:
http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/ae173/borntobe1/specs1.png
http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/ae173/borntobe1/specs2.png

Here are the screenshots of the results from System Requirements Lab when I check if my computer can run the two games:
http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/ae173/borntobe1/l4d2.jpg
http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/ae173/borntobe1/gta4.jpg

Any ideas what could be wrong? :(

EDIT:
Alright, so I cleaned up my computer and a lot of the dust is gone. Apparently there was a ventilation at the bottom of my computer which was full of dust:
http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/ae173/borntobe1/2012-08-09-16-20-29.jpg

I cleaned it all up and I just managed to finish an entire campaign in L4D2 without it lagging, which was maybe 30-40 min of gameplay.

The temperature reached a max of 89 degrees which is better from the 105 degrees I previously got, but I'm not sure if 89 is still too high?
 
Last edited:
Why, if they don't perform as well? I doubt there are many performance gains to get from such a card, and no one is forcing you to upgrade

Edit: Check temps with something like Afterburner. If it's lagging after a few minutes it could be your card cooking...
 
d_brennen said:
Why, if they don't perform as well? I doubt there are many performance gains to get from such a card, and no one is forcing you to upgrade

Edit: Check temps with something like Afterburner. If it's lagging after a few minutes it could be your card cooking...
Click to expand...

The reason that I started updating my driver was because everytime I would open the games, Steam would say that my driver is outdated and that I should update, which I did.
 
Furry muff, check temps though. Steam can advise all it wants, if a driver is working for you then don't worry about it. The 230 is hardly a powerhouse and probably won't benefit from driver improvements this far down the line
 
I would give the card a good clean out with compressed air. Then monitor the temperature during slowdown.

The newer drivers will be leaving the 230 behind. Something in them may cause the fan to spin slower (that's happened before in the nv 8000 series I think).

You can use msi afterburner to monitor both the fan speed and temperature.
 
opethdisciple said:
You could try the latest betas, which are running fine for me.

304.79 is what you want.
Click to expand...

I'll have a look at it, thanks.

d_brennen said:
Furry muff, check temps though. Steam can advise all it wants, if a driver is working for you then don't worry about it. The 230 is hardly a powerhouse and probably won't benefit from driver improvements this far down the line
Click to expand...

Yeah, maybe you're right. But I still want to try and fix it. I'll go back to my old driver as a last resort if nothing else works.
What is the best way to check the temperature while in the game? do I have the program running in the background while I play and as soon as it lags, I tab over to the program?
Sorry, I'm not that good at computers. :(
 
MSI Afterburner can do real time temp monitoring and display it via and osd while you game. Also useful for seeing FPS, memory usage and taking screenshots/recording gameplay
 
Yep. You might have to enable the OSD in the application before it will show anything, its been quite a while since I last set up AB
 
Yea you need to go into settings and tell it what to display on screen and set a hotkey. I think that's all you need to do. I display it on my keyboard so I'm not sure..
 
spoffle said:
Lag and low frame rates aren't the same things.
Click to expand...

No shiz, but to most folk it is.

OP, way too hot. Your poor performance (not lag, don't want to upset anyone) is quite likely throttling, your GPUs last ditch attempt to save itself from a fiery doom.

Is it a passive card or does it have an active fan?
 
d_brennen said:
No shiz, but to most folk it is.

OP, way too hot. Your poor performance (not lag, don't want to upset anyone) is quite likely throttling, your GPUs last ditch attempt to save itself from a fiery doom.

Is it a passive card or does it have an active fan?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what that means. But there is a fan to the left inside of it.
My computer is a Packard Bell imedia S3720. I haven't made any modifications to it.
http://i53.tinypic.com/2vuk039.jpg
 
Last edited:
Passive GPUs don't have a cooling fan, they just have a large heatsink to dissipate their heat. Active coolers have a fan to force air over a (usually) smaller heatsink

Have you had a good look at the card? Is the heatsink clear of dust/fluff?

Edit: Your time frame of months that this has be occurring suggests it isn't a software thing
 
d_brennen said:
Passive GPUs don't have a cooling fan, they just have a large heatsink to dissipate their heat. Active coolers have a fan to force air over a (usually) smaller heatsink

Have you had a good look at the card? Is the heatsink clear of dust/fluff?

Edit: Your time frame of months that this has be occurring suggests it isn't a software thing
Click to expand...

I've never tried to open my computer before so I really have no idea.
I guess my only option now is to open it up and clean it with compressed air? This will be my first time trying to open up a desktop. I've cleaned Nintendo 64's and cleaned dust inside them but I've never dealt with desktops before.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom