All games running at lower fps than usual

[kramer haze]

I recently acquired a PC from a friend, albeit its not a monster rig but is enough to play some games on a lower setting.

The spec is

AMD A6-3650 CPU
ASROCK A75M-HVS Motherboard
8gb RAM
Integrated Radeon HD 6530D Graphics
Windows 7 64bit Home edition

The story goes, I got the PC off my friend and installed a few games such as Batman Arkham City, DOTA 2, CS:GO and to be fair was getting around 30fps in all of them in medium settings for months which is good enough for me.

Suddenly I started getting random blue screen errors with a "clock interrupt" message or freeze with a buzzing noise from the speakers. I messed round for ages, changing settings, uninstalling software , etc only to have no luck. I decided the easiest way to sort this out and quickest would be a windows reinstall and put all the exact same drivers I had when it was working. I went ahead with the whole mission of a full clean reinstall. Got steam on there and downloaded batman, I would normally get around 29fps in the benchmark in batman, but know can only receive 12-15 if I'm lucky. DOTA wont go above 17fps all of a sudden on any setting and where the title screen would be over 100 or so it now sits on 30fps. I once again messed around for ages and got so fed up I decided I must have done something wrong and done another reinstall of Windows. Once again I am still receiving the same problem, nearly every game is now running at a much lower fps than it used for no reason I can see.

Hardware wise, I have swapped several ram sticks which I know work and still have the same problem. I have flashed the bios to the latest one, swapped PSU's and even reseated the motherboard. I have HW monitor everything is running extremely cool and is not overheating, I have the latest drivers and updates for windows. Also unfortunately I had a freeze whilst in the bios also once recently so am hoping its not the motherboard,. But would a motherboard just run games slower rather than just crash or something?

Any ideas would be welcome? , apart from gaming the PC seems to run fine and doesn't crash or freeze.


thanks

 

[badger906]

welcome to the forum
firstly.. never ever ever ever update the bios unless you have to!! its the quickest and easiest way to brick a mobo! annnnd 90% of the time a bios update wont make a vast difference to anything, other than adding compatibility to a system i.e a new gen of cpu on the same chipset.

For this situation i think its just a windows issue. the latest windows update/patch could just require that little bit more resources causing the system to have less to spare when it comes to gaming.

You can improve this by removing as many start up programs as you can. click start, type run, then type msconfig in the box. click the startup tab and remove everything non essential. you only really need to leave your virus scanner if you have one... and again virus scanners are a massive resource hog so i suggest gettitng something light weight like AVG.. or not at all im my case!

Also game patches ect can quickly change the minimum system requirments in games causing them not to work on a slightly slower system.

you best bet is just to sacrifice more in terms of game looks. turn of shadows, no AA or post filtering, change textures to a lower setting ect, and at a worst case lower the resolution in game.

If your willing to spend a little bit of money a Nvida GTX 750ti will only cost around £130/$130 and will add a massive performance boost to your games! if you have a fairly decent power supply (650w or upwards) then for around £100/$100 you could get a ATI HD7870 which would be even better, but would require that extra bit more power!

 

[ShamrockRig]

Do you have any settings forced through the amd catalyst or other similar program?

 

[kramer haze]

Hi thanks for all your replies, I agree about the BIOS but was at my wits end. I have finally found the problem so will post for others in future in case. After a lot of messing around I noticed the task manager was only registering 4gb of my 8gb ram. Even though windows and BIOS could see the 8gb it was only utilizing 4gb. I once again stated looking at memory and hardware and reseated the memory sticks (again), reset the BIOS to default (again) and managed to get windows to recognize the full memory and now works as before. Not sure what I did different as I did all this stuff before and never solved the problem but this time it did, possibly the order of things I done it in may have had something to do with it. Either way the problem still seems a little weird as why would it do that but it solved the issue and hope it helps someone in future.

 

[Solarstarshines]

The thing here that is not being said is he has a APU with a Hybrid Crossfire

Technically he should be getting more frames then just 30fps that already tells me something is wrong he should at least be getting 60 to 70 minimum

Something tells me his set up needs to be redone maybe he need to take it apart and reset it up something doesn't add up

Check your CPU TEMPS that would be a good idea of it could be throttling and making the frames dip also his GPU could be going uppity doo meaning it's about to die be a good time to take it out clean it up and test check the fans if they are blowing do a few benchmarks

I am sure something along those lines might be the issue also check MOBO voltages could be starving for juice as well

 

[ShamrockRig]

The thing here that is not being said is he has a APU with a Hybrid Crossfire

Technically he should be getting more frames then just 30fps that already tells me something is wrong he should at least be getting 60 to 70 minimum

Something tells me his set up needs to be redone maybe he need to take it apart and reset it up something doesn't add up

Check your CPU TEMPS that would be a good idea of it could be throttling and making the frames dip also his GPU could be going uppity doo meaning it's about to die be a good time to take it out clean it up and test check the fans if they are blowing do a few benchmarks

I am sure something along those lines might be the issue also check MOBO voltages could be starving for juice as well

He doesn't have crossfire, the 6530D is the APU Graphics, if he has no dedicated card then he only has the 6530D, i have 6520G+7470M and i get from 40fps-60fps on cs go, he does have 600mhz more on each core than i do though, could be a driver related issue also.

 

[Solarstarshines]

The thing here that is not being said is he has a APU with a Hybrid Crossfire

Technically he should be getting more frames then just 30fps that already tells me something is wrong he should at least be getting 60 to 70 minimum

Something tells me his set up needs to be redone maybe he need to take it apart and reset it up something doesn't add up

Check your CPU TEMPS that would be a good idea of it could be throttling and making the frames dip also his GPU could be going uppity doo meaning it's about to die be a good time to take it out clean it up and test check the fans if they are blowing do a few benchmarks

I am sure something along those lines might be the issue also check MOBO voltages could be starving for juice as well

He doesn't have crossfire, the 6530D is the APU Graphics, if he has no dedicated card then he only has the 6530D, i have 6520G+7470M and i get from 40fps-60fps on cs go, he does have 600mhz more on each core than i do though, could be a driver related issue also.

I see i never had a APU but i know they are paired with HD6 and 7 series GPU

Thanks for the info it should actually do fairly well especially with mantle but i would still get a low profile GPU to help some of that out

 

[ShamrockRig]

The APU only has one GPU processor, to have crossfire, you would need to have a dedicated card, 1 APU= 1 GPU the other GPU has to come individually, Like my 3420m has the 6520g Built in as the APU GPU, but my 7470m has nothing to do with the APU.