Odd behavior with Black and White 2

[pmarathe25]

I bought a game called black and white 2 a few months ago and it has suddenly started lagging. I have a Geforce GTX 460 v2, and it never used to lag before, so the hardware is probably not the issue. I've also observed that it only lags in my current save game; If I start a new game, it plays normally ( average of 60 fps ). Also, the expansion pack (called Battle of the Gods) doesn't lag. Why is this happening and does anyone know any way to fix it?

EDIT : It gets even weirder - If i change the time of day during the game (the time itself doesn't matter, just as long as you change it), it suddenly stops lagging. Then if I close the game and start again, it starts lagging. I've never seen this happen before...

 

[skaz]

Does sound odd. Maybe a memory leak? Have you updated the game?

Awesome game though.

 

[pmarathe25]

I've updated the game to version 1.2 (I think that's the newest available). My graphics drivers are up to date as well. I was playing this yesterday and it was fine - the lag started only today.

I'm on land 6 if that helps.

 

[pmarathe25]

Update : GPU-Z reports that the GPU usage is only about 20% when playing the game? I'm pretty sure that's the issue...Anyone know how I can fix it?

EDIT : Ok, so I did some more tests - at night time (in game) GPU usage is around 60-70% and I get 60 fps, which is normal. However, as soon as the sun rises (again, in game) GPU usage dips to around 20% and it starts lagging (really badly - around 18 fps). I'm using the 301.24 nVidia driver.

Also, the peak voltage is 0.95 - is that normal, or should it be higher? On the nvidia website it says the card's power consumption is 160W so 0.95V seems a little low.