How could this possibly bottleneck?!?

rivman

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Apr 16, 2011
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Lately my system hasn't been running at its full potential.
It all started when i bought a nice little Radeon 4650 512mb back in about may
i had about 40+ fps in black ops maxed out no AA,about 70+ in MW2 maxed out no AA
and just cause 2 at 35+ fps at mid high graphics settings
after about a couple weeks of happy gaming,i turn on my pc and play black ops
Laggiest,thing,ever.
my fps was probably about 5-10
even at lowest setting was about 10-18
mw2 was lagging at 17-30 fps
just cause 2 stayed at about 13 fps
i thought maybe the new 11.6 driver were the problem so i switched back to 11.5
didnt help at all
so i switched back to 11.6 and i set the clocks to default
still didnt help
i tried reinstalling the card
no change at all
My cpu is a Pentium Dual Core E5200 at 2.5 ghz
Any ideas?
 

rivman

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Apr 16, 2011
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the only part the card gets dirty in is the fan and it doesnt have any dust except a little.for software,i have already uninstalled tons of useless software from my pc and freed up about 130 gb on my hdd.
 
That is good thus far so give a defrag a try when you are not using your machine and that will have some affect. As for the card if there is very little dust on only the fan then wipe the drivers and start from there. Use hdtune to check the life and condition of the drive.
 

rivman

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Apr 16, 2011
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i have already wiped the drivers and reinstalled them back.as for the hdtune benchmerk:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/capturemx.jpg/
i think my hdd might be the problem.so any ideas to get it running faster
 
Rather slow but nothing as bad as what some often try to use. Check the health tab please. As for any thing else reinstall the card physically. Also check your cpu clocks and that they have not changed recently from where you had then set when performance was good.
 

rivman

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Apr 16, 2011
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yes i reinstalled the card physically and it didn't change performacne.
here is the health tab:http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/855/capture232.jpg/
anything serious?
 
A slow hard drive can hold back any rig even a $10k workstation. It could be the drive but it also can be the card. Some ati cards fail in a way that leaves the card working slightly but performance is never the same. How you ask well I am not sure but every once in a while a thread or two like this pops up. Go ahead and upgrade the card but if it is not the problem the bottleneck will still be there meaning it could be the card but I am not 100% sure.
 

rivman

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Apr 16, 2011
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alright.i switched my 4650 with my 8400gs.i have confirmed that it is the hard drive,not the card.In Audiosurf, I get 17 fps,when i switched the card to a 8400gs,i still got the exact same framerate,eacgh card having the latest drivers.so since the problem is caused by my hard drive,what do you suggest i do?get a new hard drive and transfer all my files to that drive?or get and ssd(which is my kind of last option since those are pretty expensive)