Huge FPS drop while playing games

Hi I have noticed that I have been getting huge fps drops while playing most games. I get fps drops in bad company 2 and Crysis. I am not sure but I don't seem to notice fps drops when the settings are turned low however there are some hitches now and then but its often on high settings I get Fps drops. I am not sure if its the Graphics card or my system is acting as a bottleneck for the GPU. For reference I have recently got this graphics card which is MSI GTX 460 Hawk. I have currently ordered a new heatsink and fan for the CPU so I will be overclocking the CPU but in mean time are there any other suggestions?

Hello there.

The only downside that i could think of is the fact that you're using DDR2 667MHz RAM, but that's it.

Try to turn down the clocks on the GTX 460 and bring them to the reference clocks to check if it is the Overclock.

Reference GTX 460 Clocks

Core Clock: 675Mhz
Shader Clock: 1350MHz.

MSI GTX 460 Hawk Clocks

Core Clock: 780MHz
Shader Clock: 1560MHz

Post back with the results

Hi thx for your reply and I tried what you said putting back the core clock and shader clock to reference model. However I still see some hitches now especially in low settings and in High settings I saw very few drops than I usually see. Here is the comparisons of both at reference clocks.

Imageshack - fpscomparison.jpg

Your CPU is fine. No need to overclock it with DDR2 memory. You need DDR3. The processor is only as fast as your memory is, so by overclocking it wouldn't make much of a difference just create more heat.

My motherboard only supports DDR2 memory so I was thinking of getting DDR2 800 Mhz which should improve the performance. For reference My friend has a similar system and he is running all the games smooth no drops or anything of such nature. He has q6600, DDR2 800Mhz 4gig memory and Nvidia 8800GT. So I am wondering if its the memory that is letting me down.

aman113 said:

My motherboard only supports DDR2 memory so I was thinking of getting DDR2 800 Mhz which should improve the performance. For reference My friend has a similar system and he is running all the games smooth no drops or anything of such nature. He has q6600, DDR2 800Mhz 4gig memory and Nvidia 8800GT. So I am wondering if its the memory that is letting me down.

I'd say it's your memory more than anything, your video card is high end in the 400 series.

Ok I am pretty sure its my memory, I have done several test and the conclusions is that I get FPS drops when i am playing memory intensive games such as Crysis or Bad company 2 and on other It's smooth as a butter. I have done several benchmark tests and stability test and they all seem to be positive. So I will be upgrading my memory soon hopefully I will see the results. Thx for all the help

Punkster said:

Hello there.

The only downside that i could think of is the fact that you're using DDR2 667MHz RAM, but that's it.

Sorry but my Q6600 systems uses 4gig of DDR2 RAM and I was able to run Cryisis on it at DX10 level (med high settings) using an ATI 3870/4850/4890 video card at a resolution of 1680x1050.

My point is the fact that he has DDR2 RAM is not the issue. Sorry.

Have a look through this to see if anything helps - Tips on Troubleshooting Game Issues

Again, the fact that you have a DDR2 system doesn't mean you get bad gaming performance. Check that something is going on with your system.

Also if your memory is 667 it's running at 1366MHz (667x2) so the diffrence between 1366 and 1600 is very small and should be that big of a deal.

My two cents.

I run on very high settings at 1680x1050 and I have just been testing out on Crysis single player getting avg 35fps and everything seems smooth however its sometime on rare occasions the fps will suddenly drop even though no explosions or anything of that nature is going on in the game. I understand the memory may not be causing this but I have no idea what other things can affect.