- Apr 6, 2017
- 15
- 0
- 1,510
Recently, my computer started slowing down massively in certain situations. I've been desperately trying to identify the cause but have been thus far unsuccesful.
I need your help to figure this out.
The main problem is that my frame rate drops to gameplay-impairing levels (10-20 fps) in moderate to heavy load situations that never used to cause such slowdowns (didn't cause such slowdowns just a few weeks ago). Even web browsing can be slow, though that's usually when multitasking. It seems to slow down more in heavy-load, high-stress situations that you would expect to tax a computer. However, such slowdowns were slight and barely noticeable before but are significant and very noticeable now. For example, I play Warhammer End Times Vermintide, and whenever a pack/swarm spawns, there is a noticeable drop in framerate that can impair my aim. I also play SWTOR and in combat situations in pvp warzones and during pve raids my frame rate drops to painfully low levels whereas before I didn't notice any drop at all. Even in low-stress situations when my framerate is generally high there is occasional hitching/stuttering that never happened before (this doesn't seem to register as an fps drop).
I haven't made any major hardware/software changes in the past few weeks or even months (when this started happening). I run a very clean system. I obsessively monitor all my processes and services and have trimmed anything I've deemed unnecessary. If there is a new/unfamiliar process in task manager I recognize it immediately because I basically have all the processes I'm supposed to have memorized. I don't pirate any games, software, or movies and don't visit any shady websites. I also browse only with Noscript. I only let websites that are cleared by https://safeweb.norton.com/ or https://global.sitesafety.trendmicro.com/result.php through noscript.
The only thing I've done differently in the past few weeks was start to run videos while afk to earn points on tremorgames.com. I started by running one video window at a time but later increased the amount to 2-4 windows at a time (to gain points faster). The videos are from EngageMe.TV via the Adscendmedia survey wall on Tremor. I basically started allowing everything on Engageme.TV through noscript. After doing this for a couple weeks I noticed my computer performance start to suffer (to state the obvious - I close the afk movie windows whenever I'm not afk - I don't play games with them running in the background). After I noticed the slowdown I stopped running the afk videos completely. The afk videos may not have anything to do with the slowdown but it's the only thing different I've done recently. The only other programs I've installed recently are various Steam games that I mostly run afk for cards and then uninstall.
System built in 2011 (have upgraded it several times since then). These are the current specs:
OS: Windows 7 64bit (also Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit dual boot on another hard drive)
CPU: Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52400
Motherboard: Intel BOXDH67CL LGA 1155 Intel H67 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
This is the bugged one but I was very careful to not use any of the affected SATA ports so the bug doesn't affect me.
RAM: 16GB (4 x 4GB) CORSAIR Vengeance 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Memory Kit Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9R
PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply
Video Card: EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-3662-KR GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
After running many diagnostics I've ruled out faulty RAM, CPU, and hard drive failure. I ran Memtest86 5.01 and all my RAM was fine. I ran IntelProcessor Diagnostic Tool and my CPU was fine. I ran Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic and my hard drives are fine. I defragged my hard drive. I ran multiple malware scans with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Anti-Rootkit and no malware was found. I also ran downloaded and ran 3DMark on both my Windows 7 64 bit and 32 bit installs and the results were very similar for both (4 739 and 4 662 respectively). I updated my video drivers (with clean install). Unfortunately, I didn't run it before this slowdown occurred so I have no basis for comparison. My GPU temperature is always under 60 C (usually 50-60 C under heavy load - it's usually in the 40's) so there's no GPU overheating, at least. I will start monitoring CPU temps soon (just downloaded CPU-Z) but somehow I doubt that's the problem.
So I really can't figure out what's going on. My top candidates for what's causing my problem are:
1. Subtly Dying Graphics Card - No artifacting, no overheating, no crashes/reboots. Just the aforementioned slowdowns in high-load situations that never happened before.
2. Dying Motherboard - No problems other than the aforementioned slowdowns. No problems recognizing any devices.
3. Dying PSU - No symptoms other than the aforementioned slowdowns. I'm going to download Speccy to try to diagnose this.
4. Dust - No overheating (I think) so this is unlikely, I think.
5. Undetected Malware - I ran Malwarebytes but there could still be something there causing this that it didn't detect. Any suggestions?
I was thinking of just buying a new video card, but decided to hold off until I'm more confident in identifying the cause of my problem. I can use all the help I can get. I'm completely baffled.
I need your help to figure this out.
The main problem is that my frame rate drops to gameplay-impairing levels (10-20 fps) in moderate to heavy load situations that never used to cause such slowdowns (didn't cause such slowdowns just a few weeks ago). Even web browsing can be slow, though that's usually when multitasking. It seems to slow down more in heavy-load, high-stress situations that you would expect to tax a computer. However, such slowdowns were slight and barely noticeable before but are significant and very noticeable now. For example, I play Warhammer End Times Vermintide, and whenever a pack/swarm spawns, there is a noticeable drop in framerate that can impair my aim. I also play SWTOR and in combat situations in pvp warzones and during pve raids my frame rate drops to painfully low levels whereas before I didn't notice any drop at all. Even in low-stress situations when my framerate is generally high there is occasional hitching/stuttering that never happened before (this doesn't seem to register as an fps drop).
I haven't made any major hardware/software changes in the past few weeks or even months (when this started happening). I run a very clean system. I obsessively monitor all my processes and services and have trimmed anything I've deemed unnecessary. If there is a new/unfamiliar process in task manager I recognize it immediately because I basically have all the processes I'm supposed to have memorized. I don't pirate any games, software, or movies and don't visit any shady websites. I also browse only with Noscript. I only let websites that are cleared by https://safeweb.norton.com/ or https://global.sitesafety.trendmicro.com/result.php through noscript.
The only thing I've done differently in the past few weeks was start to run videos while afk to earn points on tremorgames.com. I started by running one video window at a time but later increased the amount to 2-4 windows at a time (to gain points faster). The videos are from EngageMe.TV via the Adscendmedia survey wall on Tremor. I basically started allowing everything on Engageme.TV through noscript. After doing this for a couple weeks I noticed my computer performance start to suffer (to state the obvious - I close the afk movie windows whenever I'm not afk - I don't play games with them running in the background). After I noticed the slowdown I stopped running the afk videos completely. The afk videos may not have anything to do with the slowdown but it's the only thing different I've done recently. The only other programs I've installed recently are various Steam games that I mostly run afk for cards and then uninstall.
System built in 2011 (have upgraded it several times since then). These are the current specs:
OS: Windows 7 64bit (also Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit dual boot on another hard drive)
CPU: Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52400
Motherboard: Intel BOXDH67CL LGA 1155 Intel H67 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
This is the bugged one but I was very careful to not use any of the affected SATA ports so the bug doesn't affect me.
RAM: 16GB (4 x 4GB) CORSAIR Vengeance 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Memory Kit Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9R
PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply
Video Card: EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-3662-KR GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
After running many diagnostics I've ruled out faulty RAM, CPU, and hard drive failure. I ran Memtest86 5.01 and all my RAM was fine. I ran IntelProcessor Diagnostic Tool and my CPU was fine. I ran Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic and my hard drives are fine. I defragged my hard drive. I ran multiple malware scans with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Anti-Rootkit and no malware was found. I also ran downloaded and ran 3DMark on both my Windows 7 64 bit and 32 bit installs and the results were very similar for both (4 739 and 4 662 respectively). I updated my video drivers (with clean install). Unfortunately, I didn't run it before this slowdown occurred so I have no basis for comparison. My GPU temperature is always under 60 C (usually 50-60 C under heavy load - it's usually in the 40's) so there's no GPU overheating, at least. I will start monitoring CPU temps soon (just downloaded CPU-Z) but somehow I doubt that's the problem.
So I really can't figure out what's going on. My top candidates for what's causing my problem are:
1. Subtly Dying Graphics Card - No artifacting, no overheating, no crashes/reboots. Just the aforementioned slowdowns in high-load situations that never happened before.
2. Dying Motherboard - No problems other than the aforementioned slowdowns. No problems recognizing any devices.
3. Dying PSU - No symptoms other than the aforementioned slowdowns. I'm going to download Speccy to try to diagnose this.
4. Dust - No overheating (I think) so this is unlikely, I think.
5. Undetected Malware - I ran Malwarebytes but there could still be something there causing this that it didn't detect. Any suggestions?
I was thinking of just buying a new video card, but decided to hold off until I'm more confident in identifying the cause of my problem. I can use all the help I can get. I'm completely baffled.
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