PC severe Sluggishness.

Jacob29

Jacob29

Jacob29

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17 Apr 2012
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Hi there! I have noticed that rather recently my Graphics Card has been having problems with overheated even though it's been fine for over a year.

With games like Starcraft 2 I have to close it after every game to allow it to cool-down or else it will simply crash my entire PC or sometimes, rarely, Blue Screen.

Now this isn't the issue I am having, the issue is that it has now become very very slow indeed, even playing rather low quality games it has become unplayable and is reduced to 10 or less fps when even small skirmishes of battle's occur.

I can't seem to figure out what the problem is.

I was wondering if any of you could throw up suggestions and I will either try that fix, or tell you that its unrelated or even tell you that I have already tried it.


For those that are wondering I am using an ATI Radeon HD 5670.

TLDR: Radeon 5670 severly slow after overheating problems.
 
Hi there,

If you are having overheatsing problems with the card then it may be automatically downclocking itself to prevent damage (which also drastically reduces the performance of the card).

I would recommend you turn off the PC, remove the card and give it some good blasts of compressed air - as dust often builds up over time and clogs up the fans and heatsinks of graphics cards, which greatly reduce their ability to remove heat from the components.

If you don't have any, here is some compressed air sold on OCUK.

May I ask what the specs of the rest of your components are?
 
cmndr_andi said:
Hi there,

If you are having overheatsing problems with the card then it may be automatically downclocking itself to prevent damage (which also drastically reduces the performance of the card).

I would recommend you turn off the PC, remove the card and give it some good blasts of compressed air - as dust often builds up over time and clogs up the fans and heatsinks of graphics cards, which greatly reduce their ability to remove heat from the components.

May I ask what the specs of the rest of your components are?
Click to expand...

Hi, I did actually already used compressed air to get rid of all of the dust, then after placing it back in it performed fine for quite a while and then a few days later it became sluggish.

You may be onto something about it downclocking itself though, and sure I can tell you the rest of its specs

Motherboard: ASUS M4A77TD PRO
CPU : AMD Athlon II X4 640
Memory : DDR3 4096MB

Any sound/network related device's are all Motherboard related, I'm not sure what make my RAM is but if need's be I could find out. Any other info I would be glad to give.
 
Ah, so when you put it in a few days ago it was pretty clear of dust?

How are you finding the GPU temperatures during idle and load now? (you can check this using GPU-Z)

If you are finding it is getting too hot under load then you could set up custom fan profile (it is really quite easy to do) using MSI Afterburner (when installed, go to settings > fan tab, enable user defined fan control - then setup your profile with the fan speed/temperature graph). Alternatively, increase the cooling around your graphics card - like angling fans towards the card's air intake.

Those specs look good, though may I ask what make and model number your PSU is and how is your case airflow?

Also, have you updated the card with the most recent AMD graphics drivers (12.3)?
 
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80 degrees is a bit warm, but it shouldn't be in the danger zone for these cards (where they start to throttle performance) - you can check this by running a 3D intensive application that loads up the graphics card and make a note of the GPU temperature and GPU core clockspeed. At ~80C the core clockspeed should stay at the standard level, if it in fact reduces then it is thermally throttling itself.

Jeantech don't tend to make great PSUs, but for a relatively low power card like the HD 5670 and a Athlon II X4 it should be fine to run with it- so long as it is functioning correctly.
 
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I just got to 71*C while hanging about on the Starcraft II login screen and the Driver Crashed but quickly recovered.

Then it crashed a second, third, fourth, fifth and then I closed the application.

This appears to be a new problem.


I now loaded up GPU-Z and opened up the app again, the GPU Core Clock went to 840 MHz, and the Memory Clock 1012.5 MHz. Got to 68*C, and then crashed and recovered.

Screenshot ( http://i.imgur.com/pBz7z.jpg )
 
That is worrying.

To approach it from a different angle, have you tried stress testing your CPU (using an application like Intel Burn test) and running a memtest scan on your memory? As instability when running intensive applications are not always caused by the GPU (though they are certainly the most likely candidates).

Also, have you had a chance to set up a custom fan profile on your graphics card using MSI afterburner? I would recommend that for testing purposes you have the fan set to 100% when the temperature is over 70C.

Edit: You mentioned that the core clock of the 5670 is 840MHz and memory clock is 1012.5MHz. The stock HD 5670 has a default maximim core clock of 775MHz and a memory clock of 1000MHz, so yours is running with a pretty decent overclock. Is your particular HD 5670 a factory overclocked version or maybe you overclocked it yourself?
 
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I have not tried stress testing the CPU, so I shall shortly.




Blergh, it was a self-overlock but partially as a mistake more than anything. Using the AMD Vision Engine I was changing the Fan control speed but to do that you have to enable overclocking which must have ramped up the Speed by mistake. Tuning it back down has, embarassingly fixed the crashing so I guess that was just a mistake on my part. However, I shall test it a little further when it comes to applications as it was fine temporarily last time, and then suddenly had a massive drop in performance after a small amount of time.

What I shall do is over the course of the day if anything abnormal happens I shall instantly note down the temp and the core speeds.

Thank's for point out that terrible error :P
 
Well I was just playing and then suddenly...

http://i.imgur.com/ENA61.jpg

I unfortunately didn't get a chance to see what the temperature was or the clock speeds, but performance was fine and suddenly that just happend. It didn't appear to be recovering either as it was just stuck like that even though I could still hear things

Edit : Just for clarity, those are a bunch of lines on the screen not one solid grey blob.
 
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Ouch, that isn't good :(

Were you able to restart the system and get it working again?

Also, have you checked that all the frequencies and voltages are back to their standard levels?
 
Yeah everything is restarted back up and is working fine again, but I just can't figure out what's causing it to black out like that :/ ...

and If it is the heat... I dunno what to do about that :s ... Fan's at 100% as far as I can tell.
 
If it is overheating at stock clockspeeds then you may want to RMA it (if it is still within the warranty term).

If it is no longer covered by the warranty then you should consider taking off the heatsink, clear the old thermal paste and re-apply new paste. Usually this gives you a good few degrees back since the paste they often use is poor quality and they usually apply too much.

Other options include installing a fan in your case (like this one) to prove extra airflow to the graphics card and underclocking the card.

That said, I would still stress test your CPU and RAM, as you really want to make certain that it is the graphics card that it is giving you problems - now that it is at stock settings.
 
The big issue I used to have with my ATI was massive driver problems.

This could be an issue with the current driver you have installed. With ATI I used to find the policy 'if it aint broke don't fix it' worked well with driver updates. I'd suggest rolling back to previous drivers but just keep note of your current driver revision number.

See if that helps at all. It's worth a try.

Also, when you start a game the ATI software also loads a profile so you may want to look into editing and check what the profile is adjusting.
 
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