Gaming is slow... hard drive?

All of the games you have listed are completely CPU intensive. Your CPU may be a bottleneck for your rig.

how many fps? on average? you could have a virus etc using tons of cpu resources. that cpu isnt to bad so you should be gaming at decent fps


donwload malware bytes and do a full scan

I mean yeah it isnt bad but these games are more CPU bound.

on the lowest settings your bottleneck will always be the cpu. it's the mods that are killing you i suspect... but your cpu should be good enough at low settings to be playable.. I suspect if you check out the ram utilization or the vram utilization when in those games you're probably maxing them out.

not enough ram would be my guess... get hwmonitor and gpuid, window those games and check out the ram usage... i bet all those mods are eating up your ram like crazy.

Which is why I always recommend a 7970... http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1837310/locked-unlocked-amd-gpus-limits-mine-asus-dc2-7970.html

The gods have spoken! One must obey, and prosper!

Is it a constant low FPS or does it lag in places? It could be something overheating or a problem with some of the mods. Do you see crazy hard drive activity when its lagging?

which ram... the vram or the system ram

big drives back then were 5400rpm and not as fast as today's 5400rpm drives..............if that's what it is......

when is the last time you did a disc clean up and defragg?......

the 650 can be a problem too.

1 stick of ram or 2?.............. and I would be running at least 8 especially with texture hogs like skyrim.

If the FPS are at a constant low its not a HDD issue as its not loading from the drive all the time, can you try Skyrim without any mods just to test.

Just like I wrote in the explanation above, that thing is holding you back big time. I recommend you get a nice $60 - $70 Western Digital Blue 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD and completely replace that 750 GB because after 7 years, that thing is just asking to fail on you. Most HDDs don't last that long I'd say. Until you can afford a new HDD, I again highly recommend a good defragging and free space wiping, which for you will probably take a good whole day considering that you've gone 7 years without any maintenance on the thing.

I'm not too familiar with Hybrid drives. In theory they sound good, but I've never read anything about them beyond that and I don't use one myself. But regardless of what your new method of storage is it's bound to be better than your current, completely fragged, completely unwiped HDD which has likely reduced its angular velocity over time.

Dayum.... Sorry for misleading OP. I need to take myself to sleep...

Hard Drive:
Most games load data into the SYSTEM RAM prior to running the game. Drive access during gameplay is rare now. If your drive passes diagnostics from the manufacturer you should have no issues (in some cases a defective drive can cause software issues that bog down the system but it's not a drive performance issue.)

Hybrid drives:
The worst choice possible. They use a very small amount of SSD memory (i.e. 8GB) meant for Windows boot files and other critical files and NOT games. Most are also 2.5" drives so the hard drive portion is much SLOWER than a 7200RPM 3.5" drive.

Angular Velocity:
Uh, what? The motor speed won't be reduced. You can defrag to improve things but as said this mostly affects LOAD TIMES not your in-game frame rate. The in-game frame rate is dependent on your CPU, Memory and Graphics Card.

WAS WORKING:
Since your system apparently WAS working much better it's easy to narrow down the suspects. It's unlikely to even be a hardware issue. It's probably a SOFTWARE problem.

Troubleshooting:

SOFTWARE:
1) Try an earlier RESTORE POINT if one exists prior to the problem->
a) Make a Restore Point right now (so you can Restore to it if you need to)
b) Load a Restore Point for a time you know THINGS WORKED.

2) Reinstall the Main Chipset driver and video driver.

3) If stumped, backup data and Restore Windows
*If you have a SPARE DRIVE try reinstalling Windows, updates, drivers etc (especially Main Chipset and Video) then any game and test to see if performance improves. If so, reinstall Windows after carefully backing up data, passwords etc.

HARDWARE (I doubt it):
1) Unhook all unneeded drives or peripherals.

2) CLONE data to a different drive.

3) Run MEMTEST or Windows Memory Diagnostic.

SUMMARY:
- drive speed has almost NOTHING to do with frame rate
- probably a SOFTWARE issue

I won't argue with you about the Hybrid Drives, as I have little experience there, but I will argue with you concerning the rest. He has a 7 year old HDD. You don't need any knowledge of computers to know that a mechanical part suffers from wear and tear after constant use, and we all know that HDDs aren't exactly the most durable parts of our PC. So yea, it's actually not too crazy to think that something mechanized would decrease in angular velocity (i.e. RPM) after 7 years of near constant use. It's not like HDDs are built to last.

You seemed to miss a lot of what he wrote. His system wasn't suddenly working and then just crapped out. It's been a steady decrease over time. That's a hardware issue, not a sudden software problem or a sudden hardware failure.

You're also right, a Hard Drive's efficiency does affect load times more than anything else. Now let's look at the games he's playing. Skyrim, Minecraft, and Saint's Row IV. Interestingly these are all open world games. And you know what open world games lack a lot of compared to linear games? Loading screens. But you know what they do have a lot of compared to linear games? Loading times. You're missing half the story here. You're right in saying that game data is loaded into memory, but that's not just how it works. It'd be fantastic if games just relied on RAM for data, now wouldn't it? But they don't. When a game loads data into memory, it only loads a small portion due to size limitations. In open world games, areas are divided up into cells. As a game is first loading a save file or what have you, it loads a certain number of these cells into RAM as a cell buffer. These are the cells immediately surrounding the player so if he/she walks into a new area, they won't have to wait on the HDD, it'll only have to wait on the RAM. However, if you only have 4 GB of RAM and you're playing on low settings, your PC is being told to allocate a smaller amount of data towards the cell buffer and that's only exacerbated by the large number of content mods and texture mods, so every few steps you take your CPU is requesting data from your HDD with which it can load into RAM.

Now of course, this signify's that RAM could be at fault here too, but considering how old and unmaintained his HDD is, it's a good bet to start there. I recommended he buy a new drive rather than just doing maintenance anyway because after 7 years, do you really trust an HDD? I sure don't. But regardless, I suggested to the OP that he defrag and wipe free space.

I'm not ruling out the possibility of a software issue, but judging by everything up until this point, it's not like you can rule out that it's an HDD issue either. However, he should take your suggestion to use Memtest86 to test his RAM when he gets a chance to.

it's all memory. i have no real issue with the hard drive explanation. i don't have enough familiarity with those games to know how plausible that explanation is. I know from experience it's POSSIBLE... unlikely... but possible. It still smells like RAM to me, but i don't see the harm in chasing down other possibilities.

BTW: my own ram explanation has it's own holes, which is why i am unwilling to argue with the hard drive possibility. The issue with the ram argument is his GPU isn't fast enough to be bottlenecked by a game using all his vram... he wouldn't notice it really. So even if the game uses all his vram it shouldn't be bottlenecked. System ram seemed more likely to me but OP said he's monitored it and it never got over 1/3 utilization (hard to believe, but whatever)... in which case ram seems like a dry well.

unless of course i'm wrong and it IS possible to bottleneck a 650ti by maxing out it's vram. (i would be stunned to learn i'm wrong about this, it would be eye opening, that's for sure)

While I really think it's still the HDD, I'm not going to say it can't be RAM or some software issue as others have said. While I disagree with photonboy on a lot of what he said, I won't argue his point on hybrid drives. I have a 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD and for my purposes it's perfect (for the most part). I suggest you just get a WD Blue 1 TB 7200 RPM for $70 because no matter what the problem is, your HDD is in need of clean up, and even better it should be replaced due to its age.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-236-339%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20

But like others have said, RAM could still be at fault even if its usage isn't high. For example, if you have sub 1333 MHz RAM, that could be a factor, however that's not likely. Even if it was 1066 MHz RAM, it wouldn't be giving problems to the extent you're talking about. So it could be a bad piece of RAM, utterly just busted. The best way to test this is with a program called Memtest86. When you get a chance, put it onto a bootable USB drive, and put first boot priority to the USB. The program will test your RAM for errors. At least test it for a full pass, which takes around an hour or so, but it's good to test it for around 3 or 4 hours. If no errors at that point, then your RAM is fine.
http://www.memtest86.com/

id say its a combination of things, 4gb of ram is not nearly enough i use more than that playing bf4 and although i havent played skyrim in forever i'd say with all those mods its maxing out his memory and relying on the page file on the hdd which is slowing everything down a ton. Also I know when i played skyrim i had 1 and then 2 550tis OC to 1ghz the first one was barely playable on medium adding a second one helped but still wasnt great and the 650ti isnt a ton faster than the old school 550ti

this was all played on a 1440x900 monitor at the time as well

can only imagine playing on 1080


one other thing is is your gpu at 100% utilization and you said you were only using 30% of your memory on your gpu or your computer?