Wierd FPS drop lately in certain games...

[Viper]

I have PES 2008 (pro evolution soccer) and it worked OK, but in the last week the fps is very low and the game lags. Then i noticed it in 18 Wheels of Steel Haulin, so i decided to get PES6 to test it. While before it ran very nice (70+ fps) not it's the same as the other.
I have no idea what's wrong. Here's my system spec:
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2200+
Memory: 768 mb RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128 ram
I got DirectX 9.0c and at the latest drivers.

Any ideas?

 

[DiebytheSword]

Heat usually causes slowdown on my machine, followed by overloaded HDDs. So try cleaning up some space in your HDD, and take off the side of your case to see if your fan is running. Since you have a GT make nvidia card, you might be able to get some software that tells you if your fan is working and at what temp your card is running.

It should run no hotter than 60-70c, and even that is too hot imo. I have my GPU (x1900xt) down to 55c air cooled and overclocked. CPU temps being high might also cause this, so check them as well (from bios, or a 3rd party software that can read bios temp/voltage info like PC wizard 2008)

 

[Quagmire]

As DiebytheSword has already pointed out, Cleanup you're hdd by usual methods (Defrag, Disk cleanup, clearing space for stuff you don't need etc) and see what the airflow is like in your case. It might be an idea to check for dust and clean it out of the fans as dust build up causes reduced airflow and practically choke fans and rape airflow.

 

[Viper]

I found out that i really needed to defrag. I use the Xp Defrag tool, it failed.
So i got Diskeeper for defragging. Is it any good?

 

[Spunky]

I found out that i really needed to defrag. I use the Xp Defrag tool, it failed.
So i got Diskeeper for defragging. Is it any good?

Diskeeper is the best aside from the built in Windows defragmenter tool.

 

[Viper]

So, i defraged my HDD, but nothing has changed.
BTW i forgot to tell you that, besides the fps drop, the game is moving in slow-mo and commands are lagging.
I used Speedfan to do a temperature check and i don't get temperatures higher than 45C.

 

[Adaptus]

How do other programs function on your computer? Do they work well as they should, and do you only experience slowdown during games, or do other operations also experience slowdown?

In the latter case, perhaps you might have some spyware or virus on your computer that's taking up a lot of processor and memory capacity.

You could try looking at your Task Manager (press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to bring it up on Windows XP) and see if you can spot any processes that you feel don't belong there. If you don't know what a process does, work your Google magic. It would also be worthwhile to do a full system scan using an anti-virus and anti-spyware tool such as Avast!, AVG and SpyBot - Search and Destroy.

 

[DiebytheSword]

Since your temps are good, and your HDD is defragged, it's time to start looking at the info in task manager and seeing if there is huge spikes in your CPU usage or disk usage that would lag the games.

Spybot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster should be able to clean out the mal ware if it's there.

 

[Hibiki]

How old is your video card?

It could just be dieing.

 

[Viper]

I bought it from a friend in december, and it worked just fine. Actually it worked just fine until 2 weeks ago. Any way to find out the date of production?

 

[Hibiki]

It's usually printed either on the card or in the documentation.

 

[Deverz]

Play better games.

If your games start to cause your pc to restart like mine were for a while
Your thermals are gone. Like mine were