GTS 450 1 fps.

[pillow817]

hi i've recently purchased a GTS 450 which worked great when i got it for about a month. it ran everything at max settings with playable or reasonable fps (Including Starcraft 2). Recently now, only when i play SC2, whenever there is a large amount of units on the field it lags to 1 fps. But when i play other games like Champions Online at Max settings in windowed mode i still recieve high fps. I would also like to mention, while i am playing sc2, if i alt tab and surf the web etc. it does not lag one bit until i alt tab back into game which is still getting 1fps. Also, the temperature of the card while playing is 50s degrees C while playing SC2 which is when i get 1 fps; however, when i play champions online its at 70 degrees celcius and it doesnt lag one bit. so i dont think its a heat issue

I ran the Diagnostics that came with my HP PC and the test was fine except when i ran the wireframe test. it was extremely laggy when that went on. not sure if this is normal.

PC specs are:
Athlon II X4
8GB memory
GTS 450
1TB HD
Windows 7 64-bit

ps. i have tried upgrading my drivers, doing all the tune up i could think of to fix this problem but was unsuccessful.

Please Help!
Thank you!

 

[gamerk316]

CPU Temps? SC2 is VERY CPU intensitve, so I'd blame the CPU before the GPU...

 

[dalta centauri]

An Athlon processor will suffer under stress when there's a massive number of units, possibly overclocking it to at least 3.0-3.2GHz will give you more framerate.

 

[Psychoteddy]

CPU Temps? SC2 is VERY CPU intensitve, so I'd blame the CPU before the GPU...

I second this. If your GPU temps are lower than in other games and the game is lagging then your GPU is not being taxed to its full potential due to a bottleneck somewhere, probably your CPU (since you're alt+tabbing, a CPU-intensive process). Leave task manager open with the performance tab open, alt tab from your game and back. See where the CPU graph goes. Report your results back here

 

[awi]

An Athlon processor will suffer under stress when there's a massive number of units, possibly overclocking it to at least 3.0-3.2GHz will give you more framerate.

but if u overclock it the core temperature might rise which will minimise the performance

 

[pillow817]

hi guys. thanks for the replies. do you guys think it could still be the CPU temps although i've ran it for a month just fine with the GTS 450? it only recently started to lag this bad. but ill give the cpu temps a try.

So ...how would we go about getting my CPU temps? Is there a program where it will give us these numbers?

When my pc first started to lag this bad, i also tried to do it ghetto style with a large house fan pointing at my case with no improvement. what other ways of cooling my cpu would you guys reccomend?

 

[pillow817]

I second this. If your GPU temps are lower than in other games and the game is lagging then your GPU is not being taxed to its full potential due to a bottleneck somewhere, probably your CPU (since you're alt+tabbing, a CPU-intensive process). Leave task manager open with the performance tab open, alt tab from your game and back. See where the CPU graph goes. Report your results back here

hi Psychoteddy, thanks for the reply. I did what you said with the performance tab and this is what i got. I played a regular game until it started to lag again and i began alt tabbing between 5 second intervals.

Do you think it is still the cpu after looking at this graph?

 

[gamerk316]

Could be; download a program like Realtemp or Coretemp and list temperatures at idle, when first playing SC2, and after you start hitting 1FPS.

If its not temps, then theres few things it could be; CPU graph looks fine at first glance, and 8GB is plenty of RAM. Sure, a 450 may be a budget card, but I doubt you'd fall all the way to 1FPS under any circumstances in a RTS game due to a weak GPU...

 

[pillow817]

i agree gamerk316. theres no possible way i should be getting 1fps lol. i used to play it on Ultra setttings with minimal lag ..and now even on Lowest settings i get 1 fps.

thanks for the free temp programs. trying coretemp now. will post up results soon.

 

[pillow817]

Here are the results.

this worries me. seems like everything is normal. what do you guys think?

 

[Psychoteddy]

CPU usage looks fine. If it's not pegged at 100% it should be able to produce more than 1 frame per second. Does your system do this with any other game? Try something else that's CPU intensive like GTA IV or Cities XL 2011. Do the alt+tab trick with the graph open again and see if that does it. I'm wondering if it's just bad code...

 

[dalta centauri]

The 620 is clocked at 2.6GHz, have you tried to overclock it to 3.0?
The biggest problem may end up being your gpu, but try and overclock your cpu to see if there's any improvements.

 

[Derbixrace]

seems like your CPU stays in the power saving state, its only running at 800mhz. disable cool n quiet and c1e.

 

[pillow817]

Best answer selected by pillow817.

 

[pillow817]

seems like your CPU stays in the power saving state, its only running at 800mhz. disable cool n quiet and c1e.

wow. i feel like a complete noob. This pretty much did it. i went to power options and changed it to high performance. my cpu is now running at 2.6ghz. and runs everything like back to normal. this saved me from buying another vid card. Thank you guys for all the help!

 

[Psychoteddy]

Interesting problem. I wonder, does Windows 7 not adjust proc usage metrics in accordance with frequency modification? What I mean is: Will Windows 7 show that the proc is running at 50% if the clock is scaled down to 800 MHz and it's maxed out at that speed?

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey