Husband and I built my computer in June of last year. It’s probably more than I need now, but I love the speed and the fact that if I want to use more intensive games and programs, I will be able to…for a year or two, anyway. I rarely play involved 3D games, and when I do, they’re self-paced point and click types. I am fond of a couple of Match 3 games. Those are my canaries. When they start slowing down, I get very nervous. I had multiple video card problems on the elderly Dell system I replaced.
When I first installed it in June, Bejeweled 3 ran like lightning. Sometime in September or October, I noticed the jewels drifting into place. Classic and Diamond Mine were running like Zen (level 111). I didn’t play Bejeweled much last Fall, but now another Match game has started to…hesitate. Other than security updates, the only system changes I remember making were in September to update the NVIDIA driver set, and to set up a partition on my Velociraptor for a big system pagefile. WEIndex was a fraction higher after that change: 7.8. I’ve updated three frequently used programs. I’ve also added a couple of file recovery programs (for an SD card) and MalwareBytes.
I haven’t changed any of the defaults in the BIOS. When I rechecked the BIOS settings to be sure, I looked at the monitoring screens: the CPU fan seems to be running about 30% lower than the optimal. The NVIDIA Control Panel is overkill for me, and I haven’t touched it since I installed it. 3D controls are per the application. I switched to single panel display.
I tried some troubleshooting, but none of the steps, below, has helped.
*Reduced the resolution in Bejeweled and eliminated Background Animation.
*Ran Full system scans (NIS and Malwarebytes), and got rid of 3 tracking cookies.
*Eliminated all Windows Visual Effects (then turned 5-6 back on).
*Downloaded/installed the latest NVIDIA drivers.
*Vaccuumed the computer case inside and out.
*Made sure cables were all snugly seated.
*Totally uninstalled the game and reinstalled it.
*Tried running the game in Safe Mode and Clean Boot.
*Increased the pagefile partition & allocation to about 20% more than the suggested maximum. When that didn’t work, I tried letting Windows manage pagefile for the whole system. It is currently using only the SSD system drive and far less than I had allocated.
I don’t test on a really high level, but did run some routines I’ve used when I’ve had graphics problems in the past.
*I used Windows routines to test DirectX and Memory. Everything passed with flying colors.
*A System Health Report was fine, except for a couple of plug n play issues.
*I ran chkdsk at startup (verify only). There were no bad sectors, nor file system problems.
*sfc /scannow showed no issues with system files.
*Found a DisplayQuality FixIt on MS. All it did was shrink my type size. It says it “fixed” colors, but I can find nothing in the Monitor controls or NVIDIA panels that changed.
Had a few more options this time through. The motherboard came with a small suite of hardware tests. Every component passed every test. I updated the utility that came with the video card. Ran OC Guru on one side of the monitor and Bejeweled on the other. A lot of lines running along the bottom of graphs. Power consumption and fan speed barely changed with huge explosions, and GPU temps stayed at 29-30 C over 5 minutes of game play.
After some reading on the forums, I downloaded and ran the free version of Heaven 4.0. The Performance Charts that include my card and benchmark with Heaven are based on a bigger monitor than mine, and must use the Pro version of Heaven, because there are test parameters reported that I can’t set in the Basic version. When I used the Extreme Preset (8X AA, extreme tessellation & ultra quality), my card averaged 42 FPS and the temp climbed to 78 C. Disabling Aero totally improved the Heaven results by 1-2%. The frame rate seems ok, but I can’t find an equivalent benchmark for the temperature, which seems high. Windows complained about slow performance after one of the runs. Details led me to the event log, which shows 3 instances of Video Memory Degradation…. two months ago.
I’m stumped. I’m don’t really know if I have a problem or not! I don’t know if I should be concerned about the GPU temperature during that extreme test or the CPU fan speed. “Video Memory Degradation”, even in the past, is scary. Husband talks about using some of this system’s capabilities to speed up processing or to add umph to 3D game play. I suppose I could set up a profile for that, but I don’t play those match games for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. And I LIKE some of those Aero features I’ve turned off.
I am beginning to miss my elderly all-Dell computer and the support package. Putting all these wonderful components together seemed like the right move, but there isn’t any one place I can get advice…except here on Tom’s.
I would so appreciate any expert advice. Is my system problematic? If not, any guesses as to why those Match games are so slow.
HC Crain
ASUS Z87-WS | Crucial Ballistic Tactical 16 GB | Intel i7-4770 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 |
Dell 2209WA | Crucial M550 GB SSD | EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 |
WD Velociraptor 1 TB | WD1600AAJS 160 GB | Fantom GEForce eSATA/USB 1 TB |
Windows 7 SP1
When I first installed it in June, Bejeweled 3 ran like lightning. Sometime in September or October, I noticed the jewels drifting into place. Classic and Diamond Mine were running like Zen (level 111). I didn’t play Bejeweled much last Fall, but now another Match game has started to…hesitate. Other than security updates, the only system changes I remember making were in September to update the NVIDIA driver set, and to set up a partition on my Velociraptor for a big system pagefile. WEIndex was a fraction higher after that change: 7.8. I’ve updated three frequently used programs. I’ve also added a couple of file recovery programs (for an SD card) and MalwareBytes.
I haven’t changed any of the defaults in the BIOS. When I rechecked the BIOS settings to be sure, I looked at the monitoring screens: the CPU fan seems to be running about 30% lower than the optimal. The NVIDIA Control Panel is overkill for me, and I haven’t touched it since I installed it. 3D controls are per the application. I switched to single panel display.
I tried some troubleshooting, but none of the steps, below, has helped.
*Reduced the resolution in Bejeweled and eliminated Background Animation.
*Ran Full system scans (NIS and Malwarebytes), and got rid of 3 tracking cookies.
*Eliminated all Windows Visual Effects (then turned 5-6 back on).
*Downloaded/installed the latest NVIDIA drivers.
*Vaccuumed the computer case inside and out.
*Made sure cables were all snugly seated.
*Totally uninstalled the game and reinstalled it.
*Tried running the game in Safe Mode and Clean Boot.
*Increased the pagefile partition & allocation to about 20% more than the suggested maximum. When that didn’t work, I tried letting Windows manage pagefile for the whole system. It is currently using only the SSD system drive and far less than I had allocated.
I don’t test on a really high level, but did run some routines I’ve used when I’ve had graphics problems in the past.
*I used Windows routines to test DirectX and Memory. Everything passed with flying colors.
*A System Health Report was fine, except for a couple of plug n play issues.
*I ran chkdsk at startup (verify only). There were no bad sectors, nor file system problems.
*sfc /scannow showed no issues with system files.
*Found a DisplayQuality FixIt on MS. All it did was shrink my type size. It says it “fixed” colors, but I can find nothing in the Monitor controls or NVIDIA panels that changed.
Had a few more options this time through. The motherboard came with a small suite of hardware tests. Every component passed every test. I updated the utility that came with the video card. Ran OC Guru on one side of the monitor and Bejeweled on the other. A lot of lines running along the bottom of graphs. Power consumption and fan speed barely changed with huge explosions, and GPU temps stayed at 29-30 C over 5 minutes of game play.
After some reading on the forums, I downloaded and ran the free version of Heaven 4.0. The Performance Charts that include my card and benchmark with Heaven are based on a bigger monitor than mine, and must use the Pro version of Heaven, because there are test parameters reported that I can’t set in the Basic version. When I used the Extreme Preset (8X AA, extreme tessellation & ultra quality), my card averaged 42 FPS and the temp climbed to 78 C. Disabling Aero totally improved the Heaven results by 1-2%. The frame rate seems ok, but I can’t find an equivalent benchmark for the temperature, which seems high. Windows complained about slow performance after one of the runs. Details led me to the event log, which shows 3 instances of Video Memory Degradation…. two months ago.
I’m stumped. I’m don’t really know if I have a problem or not! I don’t know if I should be concerned about the GPU temperature during that extreme test or the CPU fan speed. “Video Memory Degradation”, even in the past, is scary. Husband talks about using some of this system’s capabilities to speed up processing or to add umph to 3D game play. I suppose I could set up a profile for that, but I don’t play those match games for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. And I LIKE some of those Aero features I’ve turned off.
I am beginning to miss my elderly all-Dell computer and the support package. Putting all these wonderful components together seemed like the right move, but there isn’t any one place I can get advice…except here on Tom’s.
I would so appreciate any expert advice. Is my system problematic? If not, any guesses as to why those Match games are so slow.
HC Crain
ASUS Z87-WS | Crucial Ballistic Tactical 16 GB | Intel i7-4770 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 |
Dell 2209WA | Crucial M550 GB SSD | EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 |
WD Velociraptor 1 TB | WD1600AAJS 160 GB | Fantom GEForce eSATA/USB 1 TB |
Windows 7 SP1
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