My performance is degrading - whats wrong? How do I test it?

[Decker87]

What's been happening over the last 8 months or so is that my computer's performance during Company of Heroes and other games as continually gotten worse and worse. It still runs the games I play, but just very poorly. My first guess is that my graphics card is dying. Is there a way I can test this? Is there a GPU stress-test? My card is a GeForce 6800XT. I bought it in April 2006, so it is almost 3 years old.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

It could be temperature throttling. If the heat sink is saturated in dust it may not be cooling very well causing the GPU to overheat, and then downclock to avoid completely toasting. It could also be the build up of system clutter and associated junk. A clean OS can work wonders. If you do wind up replacing your GPU almost anything will be faster than the 6800 while also staying very affordable (assuming you have PCI-E).

-mcg

 

[boulard83]

agree.

CLEANING hardware ! fresh install of windows.

If you can upgrade. a also agree that any new low end card beat this 6800. a 9600gt is more then twice as fast ....

 

[meodowla]

I too think like that..

 

[MRFS]

Read and heed (if you haven't already seen this evidence):

http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/heatsinks/warning.htm


MRFS

 

[geofelt]

Consider the possibility of spyware or other unwanted started programs.