Strange lag in Radeon Xpress 1150 onboard

[Mike2009]

I recently aquired an HP 5750 pc with Radeon Xpress 1150 graphics which is set to 256mb ram, Im noticing on games i play which this graphics should support Im getting a very weird *jerk* lag in my framerates. its like every few seconds it jerks ( only way i can describe it is jerk), I thought updating the drivers and catalyst would fix it , but its the same, worse in some games than others but always the same feeling of *jerk*, I want to get this fixed and not sure how ,,

btw system specs are :

AMD athlon 64 X2 4450E? @2.3ghz
2gb dual channel DDR2 667
ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 Graphics
Hitachi 80GB Harddrive (I dont know much more about it other than 7200rpm)
Win XP pro SP3

 

[hang-the-9]

Turn on Vsync in the options. Also that is not a very fast card, what games are you playing? Having a supported video card does not mean it will run the games well at all settings. Try turning down the options.

 

[Mike2009]

I play older games and secondlife ,,secondlife doesnt have the jerk glitch b unless i enable shaders then it does. 9 dragons is another game I play well used to ,,, cant right now the flickering and jerking just gives me a headache ,,, Needfor speed MW ,, same thing ,,,, I updated the drivers everything ,,,, still the same effect ,,,,, I noticed if I reboot the computer it sometimes doesnt do the flickering. but I dont want to have to reboot my pc constantly. enabling vsync makes no difference

 

[hang-the-9]

Try running on lower settings. Also make sure you are running DX9 c version which is the latest that XP supports.

 

[Mike2009]

i checked and made sure it was 9.0C it is ,,, graphics are set to minimum ,,, after I reboot it plays fine for a while ,,, then after a while its starts up,, certain textures flicker, then it gets worse so I shut the game off. it still plays just starts flickering then stuttering texture flickering ,,, till its unplayable. shutthe game off and until i reboot it will be the same,,,,

now in secondlife as long as I keep shaders off it does fine but I still see some sky flickering ,,,, occasionally ,,,

 

[hang-the-9]

Run a benchmark on the card, 3DMark03 will be good for that, see if it locks up or has image issues. Sounds like an issue with the card when it heats up, which is a hardware issue. If you did not re-install Windows on the PC since you got it, can't hurt to try that.

The 64 X2 is not a horribly slow CPU though, you can use a faster video card anyway if this one is dying. This should match the CPU OK http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814134133 if you have a PCI express video slot free.

 

[Mike2009]

This issue was never resolved but wanted to thank you hang-the-9 for trying to help

 

[Sunius]

Could you download HWMonitor and check the temperatures when the games get jerky? It might be a temperature issue.

 

[Mike2009]

@Sunios I thought the same thing so what I did was too the the top of the case off ,,, and had a 15" floor fan blowing inside it at high speed , which the cfm I couldnt tell you but it sounds like a hurricane LOL .. it still does the same thing after an hour or two if im lucky or on a good day 5 or 6 hours... during the time when its glitching I touched the heat sinks ,, and they dont even feel like the computer is running they are so cold ,,, which is good on the CPU I think ,,, I looked at the motherboard layout and the CPU heatsink blows its hot air across the chipset and GPU which is rediculous I thought ,, so thats why I thought Id pull out the floor fan... Im going to have to puting a a PCI E vid card ,, and maybe replace the ram and install win 7 64bit ,,,, I just dont have the money at this time to do it. so trying to get by ,,,

 

[Sunius]

It's an old machine, so the thermal paste might have gone bad (their average lifetime is 3 years). If that's the case, the CPU will get hot but the heatsink will not. The only way to check temps then is to use HWMonitor. Also, when it happens, could you open task manager and see whether something is using up your CPU?

 

[Mike2009]

cpu hardly ever goes over 50% load ,,, only when I have like 10 webpages open and running a game at the same time will it stress out right now its at 4% dropping to 1% usage system cache is at 335756 ,,, and i have a ton of browsers open atm so i have 1.09gb of ram available if I close it I average 1.6 gb (2gb of ram 256mb designated to video ram) available avfter windows services n all that

 

[Mike2009]

ok just downloaded HW monitor
currently temps are :::

Core 0 is at 21 C 23C max right now
Core 1 is at 25C 27C max

Motherboard is 7C 8C max
Im not sure what TMPIN2 is but its 25C 25C max

fans running at 1200rpm and 900 rpm


I have it loaded with secondlife running now the tempos jumped up a wee bit but not too bad so far

Core 0 34C max 36C
Core 1 39C max 40C

motherbaord 17C

 

[Mike2009]

ok after an hour it hit 46 max and stayed below that most of the time I just loaded my other game up to watch the temps they didnt rise but it was bglitching bad. so its not the temperatures

 

[Sunius]

Okay so we ruled out the temperatures. You still didn't say what games exactly are giving you lag and at what settings and resolution.

 

[Mike2009]

ok older games mainly I i play a mmo called 9Dragons ,, sometimes wow,, and this isnt agame but I frequent secondlife 9dragons is 1024 x 768 @ 85hz
the rest is 800 x 600 @85hz , even runescape starts losing frame rates after some time , and all my graphics settings are set very low in all games even though in 9dragons theres not much adjustment just quality settings but understand I used to play 9dragons on a socket 478 celeron 2.8ghz with 768mb of ram and the on board intel graphics so i know that game isnt demanding

 

[Sunius]

when you posted temperatures, what temperatures were they? Processor, or graphics card?

 

[Mike2009]

the temps were for motherboard which never got over 26C ,,, and the cpu that got 46C which is AMD athlon 64 X2 4450E 45watt cpu

there where things like Tmpin2 which I think is temperature input that is 23C

 

[Sunius]

Okay I guess you don't know the graphics card temperatures, but it's probably not the issue because you used the big fan and all. Could you open task manager and take a screenshot of processes tab when games start lagging?? Make sure to maximize processes tab so I could see all the things that might be ruining your gaming experience. You can upload the picture to www.imageshack.us, just make sure to check the option not to resize your image!

 

[Mike2009]

This in game while moving I was able to play with taskmanager showing so that was handy ,,,, i couldnt get it to do what it usually does this morning ,,, but this all it ever shows in processes (blocked my comps name for security reasons btw)

 

[Sunius]

There's an odd thing: your task manager says your CPU usage is on 55%, but there isn't any process that uses it. Could you tick the 'show processes from all users' thingy? It will show all the processes, maybe then I could identify the problem. It would also be very helpful if you could capture it while lagging, though if you can't do it, it might work when you're not either.

 

[Mike2009]

I checked that there aren't any other processes added in when I run the game but Ill have to see when logged in next ,, right now they having server issues. but i know there arent any other processes besides what is shown in the picture my comp is always on my administrative account noone uses this computer and keep an eye on things lol



I just logged in and the game was glitching bad , like textures of the game monsters flash across the game screen in window mode but doesnt go all over the screen just the game screen same happens in fulscreen mode now if I reboot the machine , itll be fine for a couple hours and i can play the game fine ,, then it seems like after a while itll start doing it again ,,, i monitored temps ,,, cpu wasnt maxxing out and 18 processes including the all users checked was showing up.

again I can drag the windows screen to the side and keep part of of visable and only the texturing in the game window will flicker like this not the entire screen. its confusing the hell out of me because if it was a overheating issue it would happen across the entire screen ,,,

oh and I have ran a full ram test and it checked out fine with no errors ...
and I have totally uninstalled and reinstalled drviers and catalyst twice with no fix.

 

[Mike2009]

After long trial and error ,, I finally just decided to just reinstall windows all the drivers and updates ,,, and it seems to have resolved the isse ,, not saying for sure yet ,, but it seems better now.