Weird come-and-go lag...

**~Beren~** · March 05, 2007, 05:35 PM

Hi,

I got this Alienware Aurora m9700 a couple of months ago. Then, I was playing games like a dream. It was all smooth and fast. But now, I got this weird problem where lag would come in every 3-5 minutes. This doesn't just happen online so that's when I thought that something was really wrong. This happens in every game I play, and it's really annoying. Now, I can't play online because I can't aim straight with the immense, but short lag, that comes in at the worst time. Even old games like Warcraft 3 experiences that lag. So what could be wrong to my computer?

Here are my Specs:

AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology ~2.0GHz
1GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS
80GB Memory Space (ordered 260 but given 80

)

Also, at the first few minutes I start a game, it's all smooth. The lag comes in after 15-20 min of startup. Help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks.

**~Beren~** · March 06, 2007, 11:25 PM

Nobody knows what the problem might be? I read something about overclocking, not sure if it would help my situtation, but thing is that my BIOS doesn't have the option to change the speed or something. Either that or I just can't see it.

**spartan_phalanx** · March 07, 2007, 03:41 AM

Beings no one else has chimed in I would say a possible bad memory module, too many background processes, fragmented hard-drive or a virus.

I'm not an expert but you might look into those for starts.

**Aristocrat** · March 07, 2007, 04:51 AM

Hmmm.

Ok, a few things to run through.

1) How fragmented is your hard drive? Have you defragged it lately?

2) Do you have any viruses, spyware or malware?

3) How many things do you have running on your computer in the background?

4) How hot are your cpu and GPU when you are playing the games (IE: Under Load)?

Find these out for us and we can run through some fixes, or troubleshoot some more.
1-3 are all easy to find out, for 4 you will probaly have to download a program like motherboard monitor (which is free) and use that to find out the temps.

Edit: and 5) How much free space is left on your harddrive?

**~Beren~** · March 07, 2007, 08:37 AM

1) I defragmented it about 3 months ago. I'll defrag it now.

2) Norton says, I have no viruses.

3) I always close un-used background programs except for "explorer", and "wbload" (desktop's theme etc) but I have a program that once I end its process, it comes back again, mainly "wscntfy" not sure what that is.

4) I'll try to download one of them.

5) I only have 14GB left...Oblivion and Valve games takes too much memory...

Thanks for the advice guys.

**Turbo** · March 07, 2007, 08:49 AM

By the sound of things, it is your hard drive. The lag spurts most likely occur when the data is swapped to the hard drive. You have 2gb of ram so the lag happens less frequently as the PC swaps less to the hard drive. When it does however, <<sputter, cough>>

Your hard drive is really inadequate. You likely do not have a SATA harddrive and you don't have a cache on it either. Look at getting a 200 gig SATA 16mb cache drive, and I bet that the lag will go away.

You can use the 80 GB as a secondary drive. Mission critical for you is to run windows on the fast drive.

**~Beren~** · March 07, 2007, 07:00 PM

Originally Posted by Turbo

By the sound of things, it is your hard drive. The lag spurts most likely occur when the data is swapped to the hard drive. You have 2gb of ram so the lag happens less frequently as the PC swaps less to the hard drive. When it does however, <<sputter, cough>>

Your hard drive is really inadequate. You likely do not have a SATA harddrive and you don't have a cache on it either. Look at getting a 200 gig SATA 16mb cache drive, and I bet that the lag will go away.

You can use the 80 GB as a secondary drive. Mission critical for you is to run windows on the fast drive.

I've been looking for a new hard-drive so I would have more memory. I know, my hard-drive is inadequate (damn Alienware...I ordered 260GB) But yeah, I'll see if I can buy a new hard-drive. Thanks!

**King Edward I** · March 07, 2007, 12:59 PM

tbh 8mb and 16mb cache have very little diff on 7200rpm drives

**Aristocrat** · March 07, 2007, 08:31 PM

In the meantime try just making space on your hard drive, some games use a lot of so-called free space during normal operation.

**~Beren~** · March 12, 2007, 06:24 PM

Is it also possible that my processor is causing the problem? At my desktop, with no programs running, I check my system info in the Control Panel. It says that my GHz is 2.01 - which is the normal rate. But when I play a game (any game) and the short lag comes up, I quickly check my system again, and now it reports having 804 MHz... Any of you know what could have caused that? It can't be the game. Since I played Red Alert 2! And that's a pretty old game.

I have 14GB of free memory space right now and still experience the lag (although in the past, this lag never happend even when I had 5GB!
I'm still trying to purchase the external harddrive though.

**Doono** · March 13, 2007, 03:10 AM

Does it use cool and quiet? Because I think that software is desinged to underclock your cpu if the speed isnt needed to reduce temprature,heat and electricity use. Since red alert 2 dosen't need much cpu power it could just be underclocking it to whats needed.