i have a 7600gt and i can play my games at nearly maximum with very good frame rates but sometimes in the same spot when i get over a 100 fps i get like 50 or 40?? why do i get lower frame rates in the same spot when last time i had over a hundred?

if you are playing an online game, your ping(and the servers ping) may effect your FPS. Also note that the graphics card will render what you cant see sometimes. so there could be a pile of people behind a wall setting of smoke grenades and other items lagging you(this is how those bastards make cheats).

There is also a chance that you are over just a bit and seeing a slightly more complex seen. Little things like transparent items and smoke can also cause lag. Last off your FPS can go down when you are page filing(windows is swapping ram and virtual memory)

i say just drop the graphics a notch if it bugs you allot.

What game is it btw

Hope this helps some

the game is mostly half life but it happens in doom 3 also if you drop down the resoulution in games will that help frame rates because last time i changed the res for the few minutes i played it i didnt notice any changes?

yes it depends on what resolution you are playing on. for instance if its on 1024x768 then to 800x600 you wont see much of a difference. but if you go up from like 1280x1024 to 1600x1200 then you should see a pretty good sized loss on some cards

It could be that some application on your PC not related to the game is acting up (trying to access the internet or something).

MSN explorer gives me problems sometimes: Suddenly my games will slow down, and I have to exit the game, click on MSN messenger to bring it up, and go into the task manager to shut it down. Then everything returns to normal.

Such a pain in the ass.