vijatoffee

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Feb 19, 2012
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Hi guys, Basically i've been having this issue for some time now ~ 6 Months. I've looked all around for fixes, and it seems like a somewhat common problem, but I can't seem to find a convincing solution, and don't want to have to spend money where I don't have to. (Student = Poor)
Noticing lag whilst gaming, playing games like WoW, SC2, COD4 and other popular games.
Basically my game will run perfectly at 200-250FPS at maximum native resolution (1680x1050) Until around every minute or so, I will notice the frame rate reduce by around 75% of normal, to like 70-90FPS, and during these around, 10-15 seconds the gameplay is very choppy and makes the game hard to play. I recently found out that PSU's are actually important, and you shouldn't skimp out when buying one, however I never realised and just bought budget PSU's for all my systems in the past, however this is the only time i've encountered issues, so before I buy a new one, I thought I would seek some informed help.
Now my build is as follows:
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate - 64-bit (Running DX11)
AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition 940, 3GHZ (15x200)
ASRock N68C-S UCC Motherboard
Palit NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 (1024/MB)
Hitachi SATA 500GB and a Hitachi SATA 120GB Hard drives
4GB 667 Kingston DDR2 RAM
550W WinPower PSU

When stressed whilst gaming, CPU Temperatures are around 45degrees and GPU is at around 55degrees.

Any Advice is greatly appreciated :) Thanks, Sam.
 

AdrianPerry

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70-90 fps is still incredibly high and you wouldn't be able to notice slow frame rates.

Anything below 30 is when the human eye can start to tell the difference.

Enabling VSYNC in the in-game settings might be a good idea. This caps the FPS at your monitors refresh rate (usually 60mhz/60fps).

Random bursts of lag like this is usually due to memory or cpu reaching its upper limits. If your CPU goes over about 90% this is likely to happen, and the same applies to your RAM too.

Id recommend leaving performance monitor running while you play, after a few random lag bursts look back at the perf mon graphs (set it to record CPU and RAM usage) and see if anything unusually high shows on the graph.
 
Upgrade GPU, see if thats it. after you have a new Graphics Card and the framerates are still down. You either need to Overclock (with a better heatsink) just a tad more (Maybe 3.2?.. The afterwards and its still a issue. your ram is a bit low freq. But i doubt your ram is the issue
 
Adrian is also right about all this. the Human eye only sees but so fast. There is a difference in seeing the frame numbers go up to 120 fps and running at 120 while the game is still lagging. Lag can be caused by anything. From Video lagg to Internet lag. with that set up. your frames are fine. but i do recommend running EVGA precision and System monitor gadget on the desktop and look at the numbers and graphcs and see what becomes the most used
 

vijatoffee

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Feb 19, 2012
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Ok so, Value PSU shouldn't be causing these FPS problems? I understand that 70-80fps is still a high FPS, but in games like Cod, its really noticeable, and is quite annoying while trying to move and play. Performance Monitor, how do i look back at the graphs?
 

AdrianPerry

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This is down to your internet connection then, not the hardware.
 

vijatoffee

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Feb 19, 2012
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What can I do to fix it? I'm currently using a wireless connection (router in the next room) with a belkin wireless adaptor f5d7050b
 
Yeah for online gaming, it may be the wireless losing signal for a short period, it may be your neighbors sucking up your shared bandwidth, it may be the other players with a high ping...

Online and offline, it also may be your CPU hitting a limit (very likely in WoW and SC2) or doing something in the background, it may be your video card hitting a limit in certain areas, it may be your slower RAM speed.

Either way, you should not be noticing choppiness at 70fps, unless you've got an expensive 120Hz monitor or you're talking about screen tearing... The human eye CAN detect drops in framerate (up to detecting 1 frame in 220/s being different), BUT your monitor is not displaying all the frames your video card is outputting at 200+fps (it's limited to your refresh rate of 60Hz-120Hz). I could go on about this subject, but it's better said here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html

Enabling Vsync in your games will make a huge difference and keep everything much smoother.