Homebuilt pc slow, stutters, freezes and low FPS

[jefw123]

Hey guys, long time reader here. I am having some issues with my pc and was wondering if y'all could maybe help me out a little. It has been happening for a long time and it is really starting to annoy me.


First of all the issue. For some reason my computer is running much slower than it used to, both in games and in everyday computing tasks. An example of this is that when i do something such as open 'my computer', instead of it flashing up straight away like it used to, the computer now has to actually think about it. Programs are also regularly locking up and freezing on me upon use. If i am watching a video on youtube and switch between full and small screen, the video now stops for a split second - it didn't use to.

In terms of gaming, my FPS has dropped dramatically across the board. I now have to actually watch which games I will be able to play. Unlike before (where I was playing it on high-ultra), I now have to run BF3 on low-medium settings and even then, there is stuttering and severe drops in FPS when real action starts to happen, such as missiles flying past my head or a car blowing up. Counter strike Source does not run at a steady rate either, with the FPS dropping lots when looking at a wide area or if lots of smoke grenades go off.

Here is a list of my specs:

x4 965 3.4
xfx 5870 1gb
xfx 850w psu
4gb ram
asrock 870 EXTREME 3

As you can quite well see, they are clearly more capable of what is described above, and have been so before.

I would also like to note that so far in order to try and tackle this issue I have re installed windows 7 64bit multiple times on different hard drives, one of them even new, with no sight of fixing.

So my question is does anyone know what is wrong with my computer for it acting in this slow manner?

Any help would be very much appreciated and if you need any more information, please do feel free to ask.

 

[inigma]

Not being able to see it... taking a guess I would think bad ram or possible mem control problems in the gpu. Check the ram mem load while your running a program and check using gpuz the load the gpu is under during a game also. I had an issue where my gpu was clipping out at 100% then i downloaded new drivers ( or u can roll them back if needed). Give those things a shot.

 

[jefw123]

Thankyou very much for the reply. Will carry that out now! One thing which may help, when I play Crysis Wars all of the flora flashes, such as the grass and the trees, flashes, like the computer can't load them fast enough. Will this javascript: validform(this);point towards anything?

 

[jefw123]

Image when playing crysis wars using gpu-z.

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/12/03/26/h2k.png

And, when not playing a game

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/12/03/26/hmq.png

All looks normal to me

 

[kitsunestarwind]

GPU looks fine.

With it being slow in everday tasks check for anything running on your PC that should not be. Some virii/malware can load up your cpu time and really kill your performance.

If your not suffering any crashes/BSOD's i doubt its a memory problem
but i would check the temp of your CPU incase its overheating and throttling it.

 

[jefw123]

Ok, good to hear that the graphics card is in the clear.

In terms of checking for background tasks, I have already reinstalled a clean copy of windows 7 on a number of occasions to see if the problem would persist. This was even done on different hard drives to see if that was what was at fault.

As for the cpu temp. it is around 38-42 degrees Celsius which I think is low enough to rule that out.

I also just did a windows diagnostic test which came out clean to back up your memory statement so that too can be ticked off.

Could it possibly be something wrong with the motherboard?

I am saying this as the issue seems to be with buffering and loading new things, games going slowly cause the game can't load fast enough and programs freezing because they can't be loaded properly etc.

Does this make sense?

Thanks for all the replies so far!

 

[Guest]

My guess would be something clogging up the system.

Have you looked at the Task Manager and watched CPU and RAM usage levels?

 

[jefw123]

That theory does sound legit however, is it not slightly weird that this happens after clean installs with just the bare minimum of windows 7 present?

At the moment am at 1.34gb RAM and 1% cpu usage, which looks ok to me.

Thanks for the reply

 

[zakattak80]

first thing i'd guess is a hdd going bad, but if i read right you still have this prob on multiple hard drives?

 

[jefw123]

Yes - that was my concern too when this issue first occurred.

I have indeed tried four different hard drives, all with the same problem.

Could this be a problem with the motherboard?

 

[mortonww]

It very well could be your motherboard. When you reinstalled windows on several hard drives, did you connect them to the same SATA port each time? Usually motherboards will have a set of SATA ports run by the AMD chipset and then another couple that run on a third party controller, like Marvell. Connect the hard drive to a different set of SATA ports (they will probably be a different color) to rule out a faulty sata controller. Your general problems seem to me like a data transfer issue.

Test with each stick of RAM, too. Remove one stick, see if stuttering persists. If so, replace it with the other stick. If your problem goes away, then you have identified the bad stick of RAM.

So yeah, install hard drive in different set of SATA ports and then check RAM.

 

[mortonww]

I was just looking at pictures and specs of your motherboard and it looks like there's an LED error code panel right by your SATA ports (which all seem to run off the same controller. Still might switch ports and see if that helps, anyway, though). Check to see if it's giving you any codes when you boot up.

 

[jefw123]

Hey mortonww, thankyou so much for all this advise! Huge help!

I do believe that I have changed the sata port before, but it may not have been to another so called 'set' as you described, so will give that a try.

At the moment where I live time is ticking on a bit and I have work tomorrow morning early on. Due to this, I shall be going to sleep however will follow all that you said and report back tomorrow!

I totally agree with you on the issue being to do with data transfer

 

[jefw123]

Ok, sorry for the very long reply. Still no news. Changing sata ports yields no results, have tried each RAM stick - still nothing. Lastly, the digital monitor remains normal with the all clear :/

Anyone have any fresh ideas?