All games suddenly running at low fps even after windows reinstall

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trevorcory

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Oct 24, 2012
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I recently acquired a PC from a friend, albeit its not a monster rig but is enough to play some games on a lower setting.

The spec is

AMD A6-3650 CPU
ASROCK A75M-HVS Motherboard
8gb RAM
Integrated Radeon HD 6530D Graphics
Windows 7 64bit Home edition

The story goes, I got the PC off my friend and installed a few games such as Batman Arkham City, DOTA 2, CS:GO and to be fair was getting around 30fps in all of them in medium settings for months which is good enough for me.

Suddenly I started getting random blue screen errors with a "clock interrupt" message or freeze with a buzzing noise from the speakers. I messed round for ages, changing settings, uninstalling software , etc only to have no luck. I decided the easiest way to sort this out and quickest would be a windows reinstall and put all the exact same drivers I had when it was working. I went ahead with the whole mission of a full clean reinstall. Got steam on there and downloaded batman, I would normally get around 29fps in the benchmark in batman, but know can only receive 12-15 if I'm lucky. DOTA wont go above 17fps all of a sudden on any setting and where the title screen would be over 100 or so it now sits on 30fps. I once again messed around for ages and got so fed up I decided I must have done something wrong and done another reinstall of Windows. Once again I am still receiving the same problem, nearly every game is now running at a much lower fps than it used for no reason I can see.

Hardware wise, I have swapped several ram sticks which I know work and still have the same problem. I have flashed the bios to the latest one, swapped PSU's and even reseated the motherboard. I have HW monitor everything is running extremely cool and is not overheating, I have the latest drivers and updates for windows. Also unfortunately I had a freeze whilst in the bios also once recently so am hoping its not the motherboard,. But would a motherboard just run games slower rather than just crash or something?

Any ideas would be welcome? , apart from gaming the PC seems to run fine and doesn't crash or freeze.


thanks

 
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thespaceduck

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Sep 24, 2012
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Hello

If I had to guess, my tip would be that something is overheating.
I had a similar problem when my HDD overheated. The OS put a restraint in the registry which caused the HDD to operate in a sort of safe mode.

My guess would be the CPU.
Start off with some tempreture measurements then check the coolers and reapply thermal paste if you can.

Kudos,
Albert
 
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trevorcory

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Oct 24, 2012
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thanks for the replies.

I have been using HW Monitor and as mentioned earlier it reports that even when gaming I'm only hitting around around 30C where my threshold is around 70C. The same for the HDD and graphics, all seem to be running well below their threshold.

Is there a way of checking if the HDD is running in some sort of safe mode? Would a defrag help even after a reinstall?

I have also all the latest drivers, but one thing that puzzled me was that the latest drivers on the Asrock website date from 2011, so I downloaded the latest catalyst drivers instead from AMD. Either way they both have the same issue, it made no difference. Is it better to go for Asrock drivers in any case even if they are older?

 
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thespaceduck

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Sep 24, 2012
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OS reinstall would solve the HDD issue, so you can rule out tempreture problems. You can try various drivers from the manufaturers websites. By the way are you using windows 8? The new 8.1 screwed up some drivers out there.
 
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plaintuts

plaintuts

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May 5, 2014
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defrag is only used to reorganize the file structure for faster retrieval after amassing files and programs.

as for the asrock drivers, it's better to go with the manufacturer support drivers for better compatibility and stability.
 
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trevorcory

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Oct 24, 2012
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thanks again for your quick replies. Well I'm using windows 7 64bit home edition which is a fresh install, temps are good, seagate tool says HDD is fine, memtest says memory is fine and have no issues running normal windows, only when gaming it seems.

Slight update if this could help, as I mentioned earlier even my DOTA menu screen was running low fps, the valve splash screen used to show 250fps, but with this issue it was locked at around 60. I managed to figure out Vsync wasn't turning off in game and managed to do it via the cfg file. It now shows normal FPS in logo and menu screen but the game only has slight improvements. Could it be some sort of locked VSYNC in windows?

I will uninstall current AMD drivers and install the older Asrock ones and see, this failed before reinstall but will try now and update.
 
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trevorcory

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Oct 24, 2012
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I have finally found the problem so will post for others in future in case.

After a lot of messing around I noticed the task manager was only registering 4gb of my 8gb ram. Even though windows and BIOS could see the 8gb it was only utilizing 4gb. I once again stated looking at memory and hardware and reseated the memory sticks (again), reset the BIOS to default (again) and managed to get windows to recognize the full memory and now works as before.

Not sure what I did different as I did all this stuff before and never solved the problem but this time it did, possibly the order of things I done it in may have had something to do with it. Either way the problem still seems a little weird as why would it do that but it solved the issue and hope it helps someone in future.
 
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