Sudden Slowdowns when playing high level graphics games

**Del Valle** · August 28, 2011, 01:11 PM

So recently I've been having this problem with all the games I have that have top-of-the-line graphics. The game runs perfectly smooth and works fine for a few minutes, anywhere from 1 to 20 minutes, then it starts to slow-down allot, like 3-4 fps. At this point I exit out of the game for a few minutes, and when I enter back in , the game is working like it was originally, though pretty soon afterwards it encounters the same slowdowns. I figured it was something due to cooling, so I dissembled it and sprayed it down an air can. Problem is still there and I'm wondering whether or not my video card has gone bad or something. Can you guys please help?

Examples of the games I was playing: Mass Effect 2, the Space marine demo, Tropico 4 demo, DoW 2.

**irishron** · August 28, 2011, 02:13 PM

Check your temps. It can be heat related.

**mrmouth** · August 28, 2011, 02:26 PM

The first place to look would be temps. So even though you cleaned, check them if you haven't. After that it could be ram/vram related.

**Del Valle** · August 28, 2011, 03:48 PM

Edit: So I found a tutorial online and I checked them. MY CPU is currently 95 F and my System is 113 F, not doing anything fancy, just Internet and printing.

**irishron** · August 28, 2011, 05:17 PM

Cpu is about 50c if my math is right.

**PoleCat** · August 30, 2011, 11:50 AM

One option is to open one of those games and let it run. Immediately Alt-Tab out to desktop, open the Task Manager and check the Processes and Performance tabs to see if something is running in background that is stealing cpu time. Also that would be a good time to check temps to see what the change is between idle and load. Good luck!

**Taiji** · August 31, 2011, 09:09 AM

Use HWmonitor to check your temps - Graphics card is probably the important one.

Also give us details about your PC. This temps thing is just a random guess.

edit:

Reinstall your drivers for mainboard and graphics (or update them if you can find newer versions), maybe they're screwy.

Try Gamebooster, I think it's free. It disables background software, which also might be what's causing your issue.

**irishron** · August 31, 2011, 01:06 PM

It's been proven the Warscape engine can jump the gpu temp 10c in minutes without adequate ventilation and that's not battles.

**Taiji** · August 31, 2011, 02:07 PM

I'd imagine jumps in temp can reach +40c on some cards, it really varies a lot from card to card. Plus the the idea of a slowdown occuring due to heat buildup, I'd expect that to vary from card to card. Since it's never happened to me, and I've done plenty to encourage it....

An overheating gpu tends to cause the program using it to freeze, which usually kills windows too in the process. Before that happens there might be artifacts, like crazy 3d lines, some kind of geometry thing. Memory overheating tends to cause coloured specs, missing textures, stuff like that.

But then again, these days I expect many cards are thermal monitoring themselves. Perhaps some lower the clock speed instead of/as well as raising the fan speed. Still, for a slowdown like this I'd either be suspecting lack of memory and subsequent usage of the swap file, or a background application making trouble, or some broken drivers. Basically I'd be focused on the software possibities before considering hardware (unless I had hardware handy to swap test).