Okay im on the verge of dropping PC and turnin to consoles!!

Im just fed up of having to re-install (windows) my gaming system literaley every 2-3 weeks when the performance just suddenly drops (only on gaming) and i cant play my games at max detail ant more!!!!! It just dosnt make sense! How can a PC, after a certain amount of time passed, just suddenly slow right down and give me unacceptalbe 7800GTX framerates just like that!!? Of corse when i do a clean install (which i have to do aprox. every 2 weeks) the gaming is back to the right speed..... for 2 weeks, when it starts again!! I take such good care of my system and have never, ever had any spyware or viruses so what is going on!? All this is starting to make me hate pc gaming!! Plz help!

That you know of. I find it hard to believe that you've
NEVER had any spyware. :?

Yep, those porn sites will get ya every time.

dunno what ur lookin at tbh lol, well anyways id say there is some software that ur putting on ur machine thats putting ur pc on a "go slow" is it a manufacturer's pc or a custom system?


possibly are u running loads of scanning software like registry cleaners, anti virus or anti spyware progs, the reason y i ask a friend of mine uses too many and finds himself doing the same thing as u tho not as often as every 2 weeks

Custom built (built myself).

Hate to break it to you but this is just the nature of Windows XP gaming. If you do not want to deal with it... well either be a console gamer... or do what that guy said:

Basically the thing you have to realize about windows is that every new installation of software will cause it to slow down or become less reliable. So you have to try and install as little as possible

thats strange my comp runs fine. i seem to get the same fps and benchmark results no matter how much i install and i have been using this for a few months.

would you happen to dislike windows and be a linux user perhaps.

Howabout peripherals? Some mouse/gamepads have compatability issues that can cripple performance (drivers?).
Does your system just slowdown a lot or do they become completely unplayable, and/or crash to desktop?

Okay so i updated my g driver to 91.31 and my performance in FEAR is better than ever. It shot up! In the built in fps test i got 39min, 71avg and 165max! Everything max cept for Vol. lights medium. Thats compared to 36min, 65/66avg and 159max which i was getting an hour ago.... I only ran the test once so it could be a mess up but i sure hope not!!! Anyway so performance now is better than what i was getting even after a clean install! So could it just be that i need to update my driver every couple of weeks or so?

Umm.. well all i know is that after updating my gdriver today fixed the slow downs. Also i have never tried running my games with no updated drivers on a clean install. Ive always downloaded the latest chipset/graphics drivers first thing. Then tested. If thats the answer to your question. Why do you ask?

lol, you won't have to update your drivers every 2-weeks Hell I'd be shocked if their were even significant, stable, updates on Nvidias driver tree every 2-weeks.

Good to hear the new driver is working well, and it should continue to work fine. I can't see any reason why the driver would "degrade" over time.

Get a Mac mini for browsing the web, using Word etc... and leave your PC for gaming (away from an internet connection, if you can help it)

My PC isn't exactly the greatest, but it was a lot worse when I was using it for everything. Now that it's just games (and tinkering) it's much happier, and the Mac is better for all the 'boring bits' anyway.

You must be going where you shouldn't be going without protection. Even my worst customers don't have to come in and have that done so often, and their job it seems is to screw it up beyond use every chance they get.
Your problem may be not thinking, not enough anti spyware programs, or you think you can view porn without paying a price.
You got other issues if you have to load drivers all of the time, get someone that knows that stuff to go over your system.

Completely agree. iv been a pc gamer for years and years, but hardware prices are insanely high for crappy performance..i have a 7800gtx, which is a 450 dollar video card( complete with 2 gigs of ram and fx 55), and gives me a whopping 33 fps in outside environments in oblivion, thats just unexceptable after paying that much. Even the "awesome!" 7950gx2,gives you a HUGE 37 fps in outside environments, if your happy with that, after paying 600 bucks for a video card, theres something wrong with you. And after play oblivion on a friends 360, it was pretty amazing getting a constant 60 fps, hdr and AA at the same time. for a consol that mearly runs 399 bucks, and ran it on a pc monitor and looked awesome. The only reason i havnt gone to a consol, is cuz they dont have keyboard mouse support for Fps's n such, if a 360 or ps3 got keyboard mouse support for all their games, that would be the end of PC gaming. And also, its like you guys are making up excuses of why his computer is running crappy with games..."drivers, peripherals plugged in and how many programs your running" .....No, has nothing to do with any of those, its simlpy the fact that Manufacturers want your money. They are selling these new "Great" video cards for 600 bucks , just so you can get crappy frames if turned up to higher resolutions. (im sorry, 30 fps is just not exceptable by any means unless you have a video card like a 9800 pro) THey have the technology to make one video card, and make it work for every game at a steady 60 fps, but they dont, they do very small upgrades on each new video card, to make sure that you will come back and buy more, which is smart on their part, dumb on the consumers part.

I didn’t read all the posts so sorry if this has been mentioned, but the once over I gave the thread I didn’t see it.

of the games you install do any of them have starforce 4 protection or use steam valve protection (ect half life 2 for steam or ToCA 3 for starforce 4)

I know from personal experiance that thoes 2 protection systems FU*K up a pc. Now to fix this small problem you just need to treat the game install like you downloaded the game illegally. I do this all the time, make an image of my cd or dvd, mount it, get a no cd crack or what ever crack I need then boom no prob with the pc.

I haven’t tried anything with getting around the valve stuff bc after I got Half life 2 I promised never to support a company that effs me over like that. After I beat hl2 I reloaded windows and never touched that game again. I might buy hl2 episode 1 after I find a way to crack it but not until I know I won’t have to put up with valve crap

Those protection systems accomplish nothing but screwing over the people that legally buy the game to play it, those that want to steal it, the protection only slightly inconveniences them.

Hey guys, yeah just to say my good framerate didnt last..... Back to shitty performance now!! I just dont believe it! Installed the new forceware driver - great performance, 1 hour later its slowed down again!!? Okay there is definately something wrong here and it just does not make sense! I give up.

hmm, thats odd. describe bad performance(don't swear). has there been a severe drop in performance.

Nvidia's new drivers usually improve performance some.

Well i always use the FEAR performance test to check how well my graphics cards performing so thats what i am mostly basing my bad/good results on. Anyway so just after i updated my driver to 91.31 i had these decent results, 39fpsmin, 71avg and 165max. About an hour later i ran it again and i got (sorry almost swore there!) these bad results, 36min, 67 or 70avg and 155fpsMax!! Same game settings as i described earlier. Just one sudden drop is how i describe it. I just dont know what to do!!

thats it!!!!!!! thats what your worried about. c'mon thats nothing. its just normal for there to be fuctuations. jesus chill man.

Are you serious?? So theres nothing to worry about a drop in performance! :? I dont really understand. So are you saying this is normal?

Thats not exactly a huge drop in performance your describing, its a few FPS. The way you are acting you would thing your games were unplayable or something! Maybe you should go with console if you are that concerned with fluctuations in the your FPS numbers...

So you're basing your 'good' and 'bad' framerates on two single runs? The numbers you quoted represent a 'drop' in framerate of 8% minimum (3fps? - hardly worth crying over), 6% average (5 fps drop and you think there's a problem?) and 7% max (10fps difference? - where's the problem?) - that's not a catastrophic framerate reduction in my mind - and those framerates are still pretty good for FEAR if you have everything dialed up all the way. I don't see the problem. I think if you try running something like FRAPS you will see that your framerate varies dynamically with the environment it is rendering - large outdoor scenes will naturally have slower framerates than inside scenes with less to render. The variations you are describing sound to me like the typical statistical variation that comes with running the same graphics test only twice - run the same test 12 times and see how the numbers stack up, you will find your two numbers are well within the average range, and are nothing to be ashamed of, I might add.

If you start adding physics and all of the other stuff in modern games, videocards have trouble in a hurry.

No one seems to stop and think that even the grandest videocard on the planet will not run games like FEAR or Oblivion at 2048x1024 with HDR, 4XAA and 8XAF at playable framerates - right now game vendors have pushed the advantages of the new hardware beyond what the fastest is capable of doing completely maxxed out.

You'll find with most PC games - that extra 'HIGHEST' settings for stuff like AA and AF or even resolution increases don't make a tangible difference in how good the game gets. It looks it's 'best' somewhere in the 'medium' to 'high' range of settings and going the extra mile to 'highest' on everything only hurts performance with little/no improvement in image quality. It's been a long-standing tradeoff between image quality and framerate, and STILL people think they can have EVERYTHING with BOTH - it simply doesn't work that way.

As for consoles - that's easily explained - they have custom dedicated hardware that is still less powerful than most modern graphics cards but the key is it's DEDICATED - and all the game developers write for the DEDICATED hardware that can then be code-path optimized for the specific console - not possible with the myriad of GPU's out there. Additionally, most console titles' graphics are dumbed-down to live within the limitaions of the console hardware. The X360 is capable of 'high-def' gaming - ok, so what is that? 1080p, right - so you are now in HIGH DEFINITION mode at roughly 1024x760 on a TV screen - hardly high resolution and if you turn your games down to that resolution on your PC you would probably find you COULD turn everything up that high and get good framerates. Additionally, if you compared two EXACT scenes from the same game on a PC and a console, you could probably tell which is which. The difference is in the tiny details that are added for PC's and are deleted for consoles, and you probably don't even notice in gameplay that the graphics are 'dumbed down' because the detail added in PC games doesn't make that much difference - again the difference between 'high' and 'highest'.

So be happy with your framerate, or turn down the resolution/settings if you can't be, but it sounds to me like your PC is working flawlessly.

I understand but the thing is that when my performance drops in FEAR (especially maxfps) it will stay pretty much that way no matter how many times i run the test. For example the last drop from 165 down to 155. Its never going above 160fps now in the test. So when i get a sudden drop it remains pretty much that way. Thats why im worried..... You and StrangeStranger said that i will see it go back up after running the test a few times but that is not the case.

Let me get this straight... you're moaning about a 1-3FPS performance fluctuation with a 7800GTX in FEAR... and you're using onboard sound?

If you knew anything about building a PC you would look hard at getting a faster sound solution eg X-Fi. That will make a much bigger difference to your numbers AND let you run the sound at max settings.

Although nForce (soundstorm) made a pretty good stab at it, its widely known that onboard sound solutions generally put a crappy strain on the CPU in games.

The 3700+ you are using won't fully let the 7800GTX breathe anyway, so I'd heartily recommend a faster audio solution so your CPU can concentrate on the other stuff.