StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Upon further investigation, I have determined that the problem I first encountered in my Jedi Knight games was not limited to that program. All my 3D games- Call of Duty, Pirates!, Warcraft 3, and C&C Generals are experiencing bizarre slowdowns for no apparent reason after 10-15 minutes of playing them. Can anyone please explain why this might be happening, and the steps I can take to fix it? My non 3D games, like the Monkey Island games, Hearts of Iron 2, Europa Universalis 2, etc. are unaffected.

I usually just reinstall my OS when shit like that happens. But maybe your graphics card is fucked.

I don't know why it would be, it always worked fine before.

And there's always the possibility of reinstalling the OS, but I REALLY don't want to have to do that...it would be an immense headache.

Have you done a spyware/hijacker check recently?

It could possibly be your GPU overheating. Are you noticing any graphical glitches during gameplay?

Captain tycho wrote:It could possibly be your GPU overheating. Are you noticing any graphical glitches during gameplay?

In that vain, the CPU could also be overheating and throttling back.

Arrow Mk84 wrote:

Captain tycho wrote:It could possibly be your GPU overheating. Are you noticing any graphical glitches during gameplay?

In that vain, the CPU could also be overheating and throttling back.

If the CPU was the issue he'd be noticing a slowdown in areas other than 3d gaming.

Darth_Zod wrote:

Arrow Mk84 wrote:

Captain tycho wrote:It could possibly be your GPU overheating. Are you noticing any graphical glitches during gameplay?

In that vain, the CPU could also be overheating and throttling back.

If the CPU was the issue he'd be noticing a slowdown in areas other than 3d gaming.

Not necessarily, if those other areas aren't CPU intensive (and honestly, I usually can't tell the difference between Firefox, Outlook or Word on a 1 GHz machine vs a 3 GHz machine). Still, its a shot in the dark.

If none of the above works, you may consider just jamming in a few more sticks of RAM. Won't hurt anyways.

Overheating is a possible problem. I had this exact same thing happen on my brother's computer at home. Half Life 2 ran fine for a while than one day started slowing down radically after a few minutes of playing. There was no other noticeable slowdowns, and a reformat didn't fix the problem. It turns out one of the fans was so clogged with dust that it failed and the cpu (or possibly the 3dcard) was overheating.

Oh and actually the same thing happened again on my dorm room computer.
I noticed a sudden radical drop in performance and an increase in fan noises. I turned of my comp and took the cover off since I could feel the heat radiating through the case. The vent on my case has a filter and it was covered in dust cutting off the airflow. Cleaning out the dust restored the performance.

Well, I have a laptop, and I'm not hearing any fan noises. No graphical glitches, and my computer is spyware-free.

I did decide to defrag it, but aborted it when it said defragging the computer would take over a day (I haven't defragged in over four months). I suppose I ought to try that.

HemlockGrey wrote:Well, I have a laptop, and I'm not hearing any fan noises. No graphical glitches, and my computer is spyware-free.

I did decide to defrag it, but aborted it when it said defragging the computer would take over a day (I haven't defragged in over four months). I suppose I ought to try that.

Defrag in safe mode. Always. Or you'll probably get some program writing to the HD, meaning you'll have to start all over every 5 minutes.

Well, I defragged it, and no dice. I reinstalled the OS and all my files, no dice. I cleaned out the fan (wasn't all that clogged up, just a bit of dust and lint) and no dice. Is there anything it could be besides a RAM or video card problem? If its one of them, I might as well just buy a new laptop...

Exonerate wrote:

HemlockGrey wrote:Well, I have a laptop, and I'm not hearing any fan noises. No graphical glitches, and my computer is spyware-free.

I did decide to defrag it, but aborted it when it said defragging the computer would take over a day (I haven't defragged in over four months). I suppose I ought to try that.

Defrag in safe mode. Always. Or you'll probably get some program writing to the HD, meaning you'll have to start all over every 5 minutes.

Wow. Windows hasnt required that since Windows 98.

Windows 200 and windows XP do not require this at all.

Hemlock, have you tried updating to the latest drivers for everything?

Yes. Drivers are go.

I suppose I'm just going to have to shell out for another laptop. This Dell has been nothing but one catastrophe after another anyway (not to mention that it is literally falling apart; fragile POS) and after the fiasco I had with Dell customer support I will *never* buy Dell again.

So now I start on the long road to buying another 1500 dollar laptop. Probably and IBM or Toshiba. Any suggestions?

Toshiba Tecra S2 is my recommendation for the gamer wanting a Geforce 6600 at $1300 without breaking the back, since it's only 6.5ibs.

IBM doesn't have a decent graphics chip in its lineup, and not really IBM these days is it now?

HemlockGrey wrote:Yes. Drivers are go.

I suppose I'm just going to have to shell out for another laptop. This Dell has been nothing but one catastrophe after another anyway (not to mention that it is literally falling apart; fragile POS) and after the fiasco I had with Dell customer support I will *never* buy Dell again.

So now I start on the long road to buying another 1500 dollar laptop. Probably and IBM or Toshiba. Any suggestions?

I've said before and say again, Averatec has a nice line of notebooks for around $1k. With specs good enough for most of your tasks, save high end graphical gaming and video editing.

Personally, I recommend Acer. We sell their laptops at work, and they're decently-specced, decently-priced, and I haven't had one brought back for repairs yet ASIDE from one that was dropped on concrete.

Ypoknons wrote:IBM doesn't have a decent graphics chip in its lineup, and not really IBM these days is it now?

Lenovo/IBM's best laptops have the X300-core GPU. The design team is the same.

...the man said decent. X300 is all nice and next-gen and such, but it's crap-end for gaming, certainly on new software. Not crap, but at the bottom of the barrel of the latest generation.