Performance issue

ToejaM t · 06-19-2007, 06:04 PM

I don't know why but my graphics seems very laggy and my system is seriously under performing. It wasn't before but now it is. I've taken out 2gig (had 4) of ram to see if its because Vista 32 doesn't support 4gig but theres no major change from what I can see. I scored almost 14k on 3dmark the first time I did it, before I installed and updated things and now I'm scoring 11.6 - thats a bit of a drop if you ask me. I've tried uninstalling the graphics and I've changed sound cards because of my previous problem with creative and vista. I don't understand where the drop in performance is coming from. Quadcore 2.93 @ 3.2ghz 4gig of 800mhz ram alienware / nvidia 680i mother board 1000w psu 300gig raid 10000rpm sata drive with a 1TB 7200rpm hdd dual 8800 nvidia bfgs 768mb thats my setup I get this nasty feeling I need to use driver cleaner or something similar and just clean up my PC. I really don't want to have to format or recover because I've got it all setup how I want. I also believe I'm using dx10. Everquest2 my FPS is absolutely HORRIBLE from the balanced settings up and it struggles with high performance if there are to many people around and I would expect to at least be able to be in a full group with balanced settings on, my brothers PC is nothing compared to mine really and his runs the game perfectly. Any suggestions?

TheJoeJoeMan · 06-19-2007, 10:25 PM

With that powerful of a Pc you should be able to run EQ2 at very High quality at the very least and still get decent frame rates. I have a decent system too but using dual 7950's instead of 8800's and I can run on Extreme quality with Environmental shadows turned off, I can play with the shadows on but take a huge performance hit, so i see no reason why you couldn't be on similar settings.

Taking that huge of a hit on 3dmark it could be a couple things , and unfortunatly it's going to take some testing on your part to figure out the cause.

Things i would check for first:

check heat, what temp is your videocards and cpu running at? are you using aftermarket cooling for everything? I would assum so since you are overclocking. Heat can directly affect system performance.

Next i would check the power supply. You are running alot of powerful components and i see you are overclocking as well. a single 8800 card requires a 450watt power supply with a combined 12v rail of 30a rating or more. So basically double that for dual 8800's. If your powersupply is running at peak, it will wear out alot quicker than it would normally. The optimal power usaged of a powersupply is 40-60% of it's total power. So check the 12v rail and amp ratings on the power supply and calculate how much power you are using with all of you components and make sure your powersupply is enough(It should be but it's one of the things I would check during my troubleshooting process with that powerful of a machine)

Are you running the 8800's in SLI or are you using dual monitor capibility?

Then i would download the latest drivers for everything(Bios, chipset, videocard driver, soundcarddrivers, etc.), driver clean, reboot in safe mode and install the new drivers, reboot and test. You can do that one device at a time to see if you can find the cause or all at once and get it over with.

Last resort, format and reinstall. If all of the above didn't fix the performance hit then I would start looking into hardware failures- CPU first since you have it overclocked, then videocards and then ram. Good Luck

ToejaM t · 06-20-2007, 05:27 AM

I think what would fix it is a full reinstall or changing to XP64 - I really don't think its a hardware issue, its a pre-built rig from Alienware so everything should be setup fine. Is there a driver cleaner I can use with vista because thats one thing I havn't tried. I was also thinking perhaps the newer drivers for my graphics are unstable but I can't find any older ones to download. The other thing is, it seems that the machine is kicking out alot of heat from the back.

The-Plethora · 06-20-2007, 07:06 AM

I have noticed some changes lately also. Before I could run raids on custom high quality settings where I would just disable the particle effects, now even on extreme performance things noticeably juddered so much I needed to reboot and I have not had to do that in months. I 2 box so I have 2 PC's side by side they are... Main PC Athlon X2 4200 @ 2.4GHz 4GB Corsair Ram @ 218Mhz or so X1900XT 512MB Overclocked 2 X Western D raptors in raid 0 300GB storage drive etc etc Second PC Athlon 3000 X1800XT 512mb 2GB Ram Standard 7200 driver 80GB Storage drive 120GB I turn them on at exactly the same time but the clunky old 3000 runs much better in extreme performace than the 4200. I can only think its one of 2 things... 1. On the main PC I switch from window mode to full screen on occasion to use msn etc and maybe this causes problems although never has before until about a week ago. I have a memory monitor and EQ2 in my custom settings uses just over 2GB of memory. 2. The operating systems on the 2 machines differes. On the main PC I use XP64 which has never given me any trouble in EQ2 until the slowness about a week ago. The "old clunker" runs Windows Vista Business 64 bit edition and gives me no trouble at all. Hope this is of some use to the tech team but something seems to start sapping performance away and this has only started recently. Hope others are having similar issues so we can look into it. If you are please respond with your system setup and operating system details so we can get as much info as possible. Thanks all

ToejaM t · 06-20-2007, 08:16 AM

Well I'm gunna find my recovery disc from alienware and try that and if that don't work I'm gunna go pickup a copy of xp 64 I think. I killed the dwm.exe process and it gave me alot of my performance back but its still juddery and I almost thought, hey I can deal with this then remembered I should have no problems at all ffs.

ToejaM t · 06-25-2007, 08:45 AM

The problem seems to occur when I run the graphics in SLI. I've noticed when not in SLI mode that I get annoying freezelags in a number of games. Its definately a driver problem, anyone know the solution?

06-19-2007, 10:25 PM	#2
TheJoeJoeMan Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 79	With that powerful of a Pc you should be able to run EQ2 at very High quality at the very least and still get decent frame rates. I have a decent system too but using dual 7950's instead of 8800's and I can run on Extreme quality with Environmental shadows turned off, I can play with the shadows on but take a huge performance hit, so i see no reason why you couldn't be on similar settings. Taking that huge of a hit on 3dmark it could be a couple things , and unfortunatly it's going to take some testing on your part to figure out the cause. Things i would check for first: check heat, what temp is your videocards and cpu running at? are you using aftermarket cooling for everything? I would assum so since you are overclocking. Heat can directly affect system performance. Next i would check the power supply. You are running alot of powerful components and i see you are overclocking as well. a single 8800 card requires a 450watt power supply with a combined 12v rail of 30a rating or more. So basically double that for dual 8800's. If your powersupply is running at peak, it will wear out alot quicker than it would normally. The optimal power usaged of a powersupply is 40-60% of it's total power. So check the 12v rail and amp ratings on the power supply and calculate how much power you are using with all of you components and make sure your powersupply is enough(It should be but it's one of the things I would check during my troubleshooting process with that powerful of a machine) Are you running the 8800's in SLI or are you using dual monitor capibility? Then i would download the latest drivers for everything(Bios, chipset, videocard driver, soundcarddrivers, etc.), driver clean, reboot in safe mode and install the new drivers, reboot and test. You can do that one device at a time to see if you can find the cause or all at once and get it over with. Last resort, format and reinstall. If all of the above didn't fix the performance hit then I would start looking into hardware failures- CPU first since you have it overclocked, then videocards and then ram. Good Luck __________________

06-19-2007, 06:04 PM	#1
ToejaM t General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 121	I don't know why but my graphics seems very laggy and my system is seriously under performing. It wasn't before but now it is. I've taken out 2gig (had 4) of ram to see if its because Vista 32 doesn't support 4gig but theres no major change from what I can see. I scored almost 14k on 3dmark the first time I did it, before I installed and updated things and now I'm scoring 11.6 - thats a bit of a drop if you ask me. I've tried uninstalling the graphics and I've changed sound cards because of my previous problem with creative and vista. I don't understand where the drop in performance is coming from. Quadcore 2.93 @ 3.2ghz 4gig of 800mhz ram alienware / nvidia 680i mother board 1000w psu 300gig raid 10000rpm sata drive with a 1TB 7200rpm hdd dual 8800 nvidia bfgs 768mb thats my setup I get this nasty feeling I need to use driver cleaner or something similar and just clean up my PC. I really don't want to have to format or recover because I've got it all setup how I want. I also believe I'm using dx10. Everquest2 my FPS is absolutely HORRIBLE from the balanced settings up and it struggles with high performance if there are to many people around and I would expect to at least be able to be in a full group with balanced settings on, my brothers PC is nothing compared to mine really and his runs the game perfectly. Any suggestions?

06-20-2007, 05:27 AM	#3
ToejaM t General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 121	I think what would fix it is a full reinstall or changing to XP64 - I really don't think its a hardware issue, its a pre-built rig from Alienware so everything should be setup fine. Is there a driver cleaner I can use with vista because thats one thing I havn't tried. I was also thinking perhaps the newer drivers for my graphics are unstable but I can't find any older ones to download. The other thing is, it seems that the machine is kicking out alot of heat from the back.

06-20-2007, 07:06 AM	#4
The-Plethora Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 173	I have noticed some changes lately also. Before I could run raids on custom high quality settings where I would just disable the particle effects, now even on extreme performance things noticeably juddered so much I needed to reboot and I have not had to do that in months. I 2 box so I have 2 PC's side by side they are... Main PC Athlon X2 4200 @ 2.4GHz 4GB Corsair Ram @ 218Mhz or so X1900XT 512MB Overclocked 2 X Western D raptors in raid 0 300GB storage drive etc etc Second PC Athlon 3000 X1800XT 512mb 2GB Ram Standard 7200 driver 80GB Storage drive 120GB I turn them on at exactly the same time but the clunky old 3000 runs much better in extreme performace than the 4200. I can only think its one of 2 things... 1. On the main PC I switch from window mode to full screen on occasion to use msn etc and maybe this causes problems although never has before until about a week ago. I have a memory monitor and EQ2 in my custom settings uses just over 2GB of memory. 2. The operating systems on the 2 machines differes. On the main PC I use XP64 which has never given me any trouble in EQ2 until the slowness about a week ago. The "old clunker" runs Windows Vista Business 64 bit edition and gives me no trouble at all. Hope this is of some use to the tech team but something seems to start sapping performance away and this has only started recently. Hope others are having similar issues so we can look into it. If you are please respond with your system setup and operating system details so we can get as much info as possible. Thanks all

06-20-2007, 08:16 AM	#5
ToejaM t General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 121	Well I'm gunna find my recovery disc from alienware and try that and if that don't work I'm gunna go pickup a copy of xp 64 I think. I killed the dwm.exe process and it gave me alot of my performance back but its still juddery and I almost thought, hey I can deal with this then remembered I should have no problems at all ffs.

06-25-2007, 08:45 AM	#6
ToejaM t General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 121	The problem seems to occur when I run the graphics in SLI. I've noticed when not in SLI mode that I get annoying freezelags in a number of games. Its definately a driver problem, anyone know the solution?