FPS Issues

[f4lk3n]

So my Christmas present to myself was a new build (the first in 5 years) and was running pretty decently in Skyrim and in large matches in BF3. I now am playing SWTOR and am gratefully in the Diablo 3 Beta. My concern is an extremely slow FPS in both games when even just a few animations are occurring onscreen, and an inability to even attempt PvP in SWTOR. I have been forced to turn shadows completely off and most other setting on low. I know my rig isn't an absolute beast by any means, but was hoping to at least have a shot at Ultra settings in these games.
I'm thinking that my HDD is the issue here and have been looking into an SSD, but any other suggestions or help would be grateful.
Thanks.

AMD Phenom II X4 955BE 3.2GHz
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5
Asus GTX560 DCII
WD Caviar Blue 1TB
Antec Earthwatts 750W
Corsair Vengeance 8GB
CM Hyper 212 Plus EVO
HAF 922
64-Bit Windows 7

 

[HugoStiglitz]

Hard drive is NOT likley to cause FPS issues.

what does your HDD light do when playing games? it should only be on every now and then. if its on almost all the time then it could be a problem.

the only thing i can see is your video card. What resolutions are you playing at?

 

[Rockdpm]

Hey man, i have Experience with the 955 (Previous User). i can guarantee you. You shouldn't be bottlenecked GPU wise. unless your trying to run the game at a extremely higher resolution. the 560 does decent on 1080p but anything above that and your bound for FPS issues. Are you running the latest Bios. That Chipset is great i ran the 955 for a while on my Sabertooth 990FX and got a 10-15% performance increase.

 

[f4lk3n]

Well my drive has little activity now that you mention it. I'm currently playing at 1600x1024, and have tried windowed mode and some lower resolutions but seem to have a little improvement but it is still unplayable at times with complete FPS freezes. All particle effects are off, AA disabled. I'll try updating my Bios.

 

[f4lk3n]

I've now updated my BIOS and all drivers, lowered my resolution to 1280x800 and have seen a bit of an improvement. Still not sure what the issue is, with 10-15+ enemies on screen FPS drops to a screeching halt for 5 or so seconds. Could it be that something isn't working up to par? Anyone see a bottleneck somewhere?
I want to start overclocking but haven't taken that plunge yet, would that have much of a benefit?

 

[natemare]

I would try two things first that aren't necessarily related to a hardware issue.

1) Run Malware/Spyware program/defrag
2) change your power management settings in Nvidia global settings to "high performance" (I think it is that, the other option is adaptive)

At the very least you can cut that out of the equation, especially if you are saying that these games ran fine before and have progressively gotten slower.

 

[4745454b]

While not a beastly system, you should be able to play at 1080 without having to use low/off too much. I agree with natemare, scan your system for virus/bugs.