Solved Huge FPS drop while playing games

[aman113]

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?

 

[Mashed1316]

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

 

[aman113]

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.

 

[aman113]

Imageshack - fpscomparison.jpg

 

[Matt2488]

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.

 

[aman113]

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.

 

[Matt2488]

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.

 

[aman113]

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

 

[sygnus21]

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.

 

[aman113]

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.

 

[aman113]

I have been reading the guide provided and I am currently updating directx file and will post back with results.

 

[WDAexodus]

Have you taken a look at CPU use while in game? Seems like you may be spiking above 100% usage at times and that would explain why you are seeing FPS drops. With 3GB of ram and running these games with Windows 7 depending on what other programs you are running concurrently you may be maxing out your memory usage. I agree with some of the others. Your memory speed doesn't appear to be an issue and upgrading to DDR2 800 won't make things much better.

 

[aman113]

I have monitored the CPU usage and have looked at a CPU usage graph at exact time when I have a Fps drop and yes the CPU spikes to 100 percent on all 4 cores and this is why I was replacing the heatsink to overclock it but people here have suggested otherwise.

 

[sygnus21]

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.

This is a known issue with Crysis - The game is still system intensive. See my system spec - I can't even get Crysis to run full bore without FPS drops. It the game!

To give you perspective, I ran the game on my Q6600 OC to 2.9GHz, 4gig of DDR2 @1600MHz with a 4890. Game ran in DX10 mode on basically high settings and the game ran well in some spots but dropped frames in intensive locations where a lot of action was. Also the last chapter of the game became unplayable in DX10 mode - I had to drop to DX9 to finish the game.

Now with my system you see in my sys specs, I use that chapter in DX10 mode as a test point and though it's a lot better it still drops frames and is still choppy at times.

Again, I wouldn't bet my system's life on Crysis

My two cents.

 

[aman113]

What I said above was when I played Battlefield Bad company 2 the fps drop happens there as well.

 

[Mashed1316]

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.

Sygnus, there's no DDR2 1366MHz, maximum DDR2 is 1066MHz, when i meant DDR2 667MHz... is PC-5300, the frecuency is 333Mhz, which doubled (by Double Data Rate) you get 667MHz

 

[Mashed1316]

True, what i meant in my post was that the slowest part on his PC is the RAM memory. and that could be affecting it. NOT bottlenecking it, but affecting it somehow, i didn't say it was the culprit

I say that the "Hawk" series cards from MSI comes way too overclocked from factory, or is it just me who thinks that? :huh:

15.5555555556% seems a little bit too much for me (maybe because i'm not an overclocker)

 

[sygnus21]

Sygnus, there's no DDR2 1366MHz, maximum DDR2 is 1066MHz, when i meant DDR2 667MHz... is PC-5300, the frecuency is 333Mhz, which doubled (by Double Data Rate) you get 667MHz

You're right. Sorry this is the memory I was talking about Amazon.com: Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF Dominator 4GB 2 X 2GB PC2-8500 1066MHz 240-Pin DDR2 CL5 Dual Channel Desktop Memory - Fan Included: Electronics

Corsair's Dominator 1066 memory (533x2 = 1066MHz)

When I mentioned 1600MHz I was thinking about my DDR3 Corsair Dominator 1600MHz memory (800x2 = 1600MHz).

Sorry for any confusion caused

However I still stand by my performance statement with regards to Crysis and memory

 

[aman113]

I don't think the MSI version is overclocked way high, its idle temp in my machine is around 25c and 55c under full load and its getting enough power from the cooler master 750w power supply. Furthermore only crysis is not affected Battlefield bad company 2 is affected and some times I see drop in Counter strike source.

 

[WDAexodus]

I would look to see if there is something in the background that you can loose to reduce the load on your CPU. I had the same problem and thinned out startup programs and it seemed to help me.