- Jun 1, 2014
- 7
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- 4,520
EDIT, found a solution:
After a week of grief, I have finally figured out the cause of all my problems.
So I bought a r9 270x, formatted my pc and tested. To my horror, the issue wasn't gone. At all. I tried messing with power saving, core unparking and all that stuff with no success.
Then I tried reapplying the thermal paste on my CPU's heatsink and, as I was monitoring my CPU's temperature on speedfan, I noticed that my chipset (Temp2) was overheating all the way up to 65C. So I fired up watch dogs and watched the chipset temp closely and sure enough, as soon that the chipset hit 65+C the lagspikes would start.
My guess is that this crappy mobo can barely handle my q9650 (didn't have any problem before my old mobo died). My temporary solution was to pull my pc out of the case and place an extra fan pointed towards the mobo's heatsink.
Do not buy the MSI G41M-P33 Combo unless you're using it for a low-end pc.
Well, at least now I have a decent GPU.
OLD POST:
Hello, I've recently been experiencing random lag spikes that seem to regularly occur while gaming on any 3D game (haven't tested any 2D games for this issue so far) regardless of GPU / CPU / Memory load and graphics settings.
During each lag spike (which lasts about 10-20 seconds), the game drops to around 5-10 fps and the sound starts stuttering (EDIT: the sound stuttering only happens on certain games, for example saints row lags with no sound stuttering). I've monitored cpu, disk, gpu and memory usage to see if any of them was spiking, but it seems like everything stays the same except for GPU usage, which drops to 0%. If the lag spike is long enough, the GPU goes into power saving mode (probabilly because of the lack of GPU usage) and the voltage drops briefly.
The GPU temperature never goes beyond 75C (EDIT: runs at <60C after cleaning the heatsink and the problem persists), and I've had it running at higher temps when mining dogecoin / litecoin so that shouldn't be a problem.
The CPU temperature is always below 65C.
I have no idea when this issue started and I don't think I changed any parts since the last time I remember playing with no lag spikes.
I've recently updated my catalyst drivers to the latest non-beta drivers (14.4 I think?) and then switched to beta drivers (14.6) today, hoping to fix the issue to no avail.
DxDiag:
http://pastebin.com/XW3LnkPj
OS: Windows 8.1
CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9650
GPU: ati HD 5770
PSU: Corsair cx430
Mobo: MSI G41M-P33 with 4gb DDR2 ram
no overclocking
I'm using dual monitors
primary: Asus VG248QE @ 120hz + lightboost (also tried 144hz w/o lightboost)
secondary: Samsung SyncMaster LD220HD @ 60hz
- Turning off the secondary monitor by disabling it in the desktop properties (without physically disconnecting the dvi cable) seemed to reduce the frequency of the lag spikes when I was testing on Saints Row The Third, but I'm not entirely sure, as the spikes are kinda random.
- Switching to 144hz and disabling lightboost didn't help.
- Disabling indexing on all hard drivers didn't help.
- Wiped out the video drivers, manually removed registry entries and downgraded to catalyst 13.2 (which is the last version I remember working correctly) and the problem persists.
- Tried cleaning and reseating the GPU's heatsink. This made the GPU run 15C cooler, but it still didn't fix the problem.
- Tried installing watch dogs on my SSD to rule out any disk access problems and the lag spikes did not go away.
- Tried playing Serious Sam Classic: The Second encounter for around 1 hour and a half on my integrated intel G41 GPU and the lag spikes do not appear when playing on the integrated GPU.
Now that I've ruled overheating out, I think I'll have to borrow my friend's GPU to see if it's a GPU hardware problem. I'll also try swapping ram sticks just to be sure the ram is good, but ram problems usually result in bsod's.
I also ran this tool to check wether my VRAM is dying (my video card is like, 3-4 years old) but it didn't seem to find any errors even though it skipped 2 passes of the test due to incompatibility:
EDIT:
Ok so I ran a more accurate memory test on the video card with MemtestCL and 900+ errors popped up at around 30 iterations. Now I'm 99% sure it's the gpu, unless the driver crashed or something:
Games I've been playing:
Saints Row The Third (both dx9 and dx10/11 modes, lowest and medium settings)
Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter
The Ball
Some 3D game I'm coding on unity3d
Watch Dogs
Heva Clonia Online
After a week of grief, I have finally figured out the cause of all my problems.
So I bought a r9 270x, formatted my pc and tested. To my horror, the issue wasn't gone. At all. I tried messing with power saving, core unparking and all that stuff with no success.
Then I tried reapplying the thermal paste on my CPU's heatsink and, as I was monitoring my CPU's temperature on speedfan, I noticed that my chipset (Temp2) was overheating all the way up to 65C. So I fired up watch dogs and watched the chipset temp closely and sure enough, as soon that the chipset hit 65+C the lagspikes would start.
My guess is that this crappy mobo can barely handle my q9650 (didn't have any problem before my old mobo died). My temporary solution was to pull my pc out of the case and place an extra fan pointed towards the mobo's heatsink.
Do not buy the MSI G41M-P33 Combo unless you're using it for a low-end pc.
Well, at least now I have a decent GPU.
OLD POST:
Hello, I've recently been experiencing random lag spikes that seem to regularly occur while gaming on any 3D game (haven't tested any 2D games for this issue so far) regardless of GPU / CPU / Memory load and graphics settings.
During each lag spike (which lasts about 10-20 seconds), the game drops to around 5-10 fps and the sound starts stuttering (EDIT: the sound stuttering only happens on certain games, for example saints row lags with no sound stuttering). I've monitored cpu, disk, gpu and memory usage to see if any of them was spiking, but it seems like everything stays the same except for GPU usage, which drops to 0%. If the lag spike is long enough, the GPU goes into power saving mode (probabilly because of the lack of GPU usage) and the voltage drops briefly.
The GPU temperature never goes beyond 75C (EDIT: runs at <60C after cleaning the heatsink and the problem persists), and I've had it running at higher temps when mining dogecoin / litecoin so that shouldn't be a problem.
The CPU temperature is always below 65C.
I have no idea when this issue started and I don't think I changed any parts since the last time I remember playing with no lag spikes.
I've recently updated my catalyst drivers to the latest non-beta drivers (14.4 I think?) and then switched to beta drivers (14.6) today, hoping to fix the issue to no avail.
DxDiag:
http://pastebin.com/XW3LnkPj
OS: Windows 8.1
CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9650
GPU: ati HD 5770
PSU: Corsair cx430
Mobo: MSI G41M-P33 with 4gb DDR2 ram
no overclocking
I'm using dual monitors
primary: Asus VG248QE @ 120hz + lightboost (also tried 144hz w/o lightboost)
secondary: Samsung SyncMaster LD220HD @ 60hz
- Turning off the secondary monitor by disabling it in the desktop properties (without physically disconnecting the dvi cable) seemed to reduce the frequency of the lag spikes when I was testing on Saints Row The Third, but I'm not entirely sure, as the spikes are kinda random.
- Switching to 144hz and disabling lightboost didn't help.
- Disabling indexing on all hard drivers didn't help.
- Wiped out the video drivers, manually removed registry entries and downgraded to catalyst 13.2 (which is the last version I remember working correctly) and the problem persists.
- Tried cleaning and reseating the GPU's heatsink. This made the GPU run 15C cooler, but it still didn't fix the problem.
- Tried installing watch dogs on my SSD to rule out any disk access problems and the lag spikes did not go away.
- Tried playing Serious Sam Classic: The Second encounter for around 1 hour and a half on my integrated intel G41 GPU and the lag spikes do not appear when playing on the integrated GPU.
Now that I've ruled overheating out, I think I'll have to borrow my friend's GPU to see if it's a GPU hardware problem. I'll also try swapping ram sticks just to be sure the ram is good, but ram problems usually result in bsod's.
I also ran this tool to check wether my VRAM is dying (my video card is like, 3-4 years old) but it didn't seem to find any errors even though it skipped 2 passes of the test due to incompatibility:
Code:
WARNING: Your card can be not compatible with this test! If multiple errors will found, try test with onscreen buffer usage or wthout of ignoring colors bit mask.
Changing video mode to 640x480x16...OK
[5/31/2014 5:44:42 PM] Test started for "Primary Display Driver (AMD Radeon HD 5700 Series)"...
Trying 16bpp RGB:565 mode...OK
Trying 16bpp RGB:555 mode...OK
Trying 16bpp BGR:565 mode...NOT SUPPORTED (Code: 80004001)
Trying 32bpp RGB:888 mode...OK
Trying 32bpp BGR:888 mode...NOT SUPPORTED (Code: 80004001)
[5/31/2014 6:54:03 PM] Pass completed (0 errors found).EDIT:
Ok so I ran a more accurate memory test on the video card with MemtestCL and 900+ errors popped up at around 30 iterations. Now I'm 99% sure it's the gpu, unless the driver crashed or something:
Games I've been playing:
Saints Row The Third (both dx9 and dx10/11 modes, lowest and medium settings)
Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter
The Ball
Some 3D game I'm coding on unity3d
Watch Dogs
Heva Clonia Online
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