Games suddenly run slow and have random lag moments with the audio

[Sentoryu]

So I bought this AMD Radeon HD 6770 last month. I installed it in my PC and games like Dead Rising 2, Skyrim, Crysis 1 and 2 are now running perfectly and smoothly unlike before. I just had the integrated AMD 760G back then

I played for a month when suddenly they suddenly had these random lag moments. For example, in skyim I sometimes get laggy when the area seems too heavy for a grapchics card. But before, I do not experience anything like that. In Dead Rising 2, I can really feel the lag and the audio will be delayed for a brief moment. The same goes for crysis 1.

Man, something went wrong for sure. To be honest, i would play alot like 6 hour nonstop if I got hooked by the game. Maybe I overheat it?

But there is this one day that I used my flash drive to my friend's PC. I used it on my PC. I believe my friend's PC had a virus but I have to use it on my own.
Is it true that a virus can slow down gaming?

I'm not that good at computers and stuff so please don't talk to me with heavy computer terms. I do know a bit about benchmarks of video cards but not what's inside of them(circuits, board, etc.)

Please help.

 

[Sunius]

Yes a virus can and in most cases will cripple the performance. Also, try downloading HWMonitor from www.cpuid.com and check the temperatures when the lag occurs. If you don't understand where to look, just take a picture of it and upload it to www.imageshack.us (just make sure to select "DO NOT RESIZE" option!) and post the link here.

Just make sure to watch when performance drops, not just at any time!

 

[Sentoryu]

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/6/95309948.png/

here is the link to the image. As you can see, I'm using MSE now.

 

[Sunius]

Is the screenshot from when it's lagging?

 

[inzone]

How many fans do you have in the case? What are you using for a heatsink/fan for the processor? Do you have an anti-virus program? If you are using the most recent drivers from AMD yiou can consider going back the the previous driver because people are reporting issues with the latest driver release. In Skyrim you can go into the settings of the game and turn off AA and Antricsopic Filtering , this will make a difference and most likly get rid of your lag problem. You can also try this with your other games as you may need to play with the settings to get a good smooth gameplay , sometimes lowering the settings or turning off features will help.

 

[Sentoryu]

the screenshot is taken whenever I take the lag.

I removed Avira and changed it into MSE. Before, I can play Skyrim smoothly with medium settings and without changing anything on it.

My memory is only 2GB. If I add another 2GB, will it cover the problems? And umm... my processor and video card only has a fan... I hope I answered properly.

 

[Sunius]

It doesn't seem like temperature issue. About RAM, could you take a screenshot of task manager (ctrl + alt + delete -> task manager) processes tab, when sorted by User Name and while lagging? It might be that something is eating up the precious resources on your computer!

 

[Sentoryu]

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/809/62786334.png/

this is the image from the task manager whenever I feel the lags. Also, I noticed I cannot alt+tab Dead Rising 2 properly. Whenever I switch to another app, I cannot go back to Dead Rising 2. Before, I can properly switch between programs and to this game.

Do you think it's broken(in what way?) or a virus is responsible for this?

 

[Sunius]

Definitely something is happening with computer. Could do it with "Processes" tab open and the box maximized so I could see what's taking up your computer's precious resources?

 

[Sentoryu]

Best answer selected by Sentoryu.