I'm having problems with multimedia performance under heavy load.

[epoloski]

Hey, guys. I'm starting to think there's something grievously wrong with the PC I recently built -- specifically, when I booted up Starcraft II and tried out a Special Forces map, the game was lagging considerably on Ultra -- although my PC blows most other custom games and campaign games / cutscenes out of the water. Crysis and Crysis 2 also seem to run fine on their respective max settings, netting a comfortable 25 - 35 FPS on Ultra / DX11 on Crysis 2 and 30 - 42+ on Crysis. It also seems to run Diablo 3 like butter on its maximum settings / resolution, netting over 100 FPS in most cases (although I begin to chug a little during intense action).

So, what could be the reason some Starcraft II / Diablo 3 games are lagging under some circumstances? I have 4 gigs of installed RAM, a 4-gig paging file, and 2.87 gigs of available physical memory (which has never been fully used; that Special Forces map only used about 1.7 gigs). As far as I know, I don't see any issues with my RAM, unless it's something subtle -- maybe electrostatic damage to one of the modules or something.

At any rate... I'm baffled. My friend, whose hardware is slightly inferior to mine, can easily run the aforementioned Special Forces map until it starts to become extremely crowded with enemies on Ultra. He's using a 6850; I'm using a 6870. He's using a somewhat low-end phenom quad core that hasn't been overclocked; I'm using an i3 2100k (also low-end, but meh). He's using DDR2 RAM at 400 MHz; I'm using DDR3 RAM at 1333 MHz. Why, then, is he having an easier time playing some games than I am? What could possibly be the issue? I'd like to think that it's a recent Starcraft or custom game patch, but... Meh.

If it helps, I have my chipset's / motherboard's / video card's drivers all installed and up-to-date. I can run Heaven DX11 at an average of about 45 FPS with Normal tesselation, x4 AF, x2 AA, and at 1680x1020 (my monitor's max resolution), and it seems pretty smooth. I haven't tried any other benchmarks, but if anyone has something in mind, that'd be nice.

 

[suteck]

Are you talking about while you're playing online? If so it could just be your internet connection that's actually bogging down. I see what you mean about the differences in equipment between yours and your friends. Yours should have no problem playing those games, or, less problems than him.

 

[epoloski]

Well, if it's my internet connection, how would I go about troubleshooting to see if there's a problem, or what that problem might be?

 

[epoloski]

Oh, and... This just slapped me in the face: I've played a couple of other online games in Starcraft II, and I've easily netted 100 - 130+ FPS in some games with full houses. To that extent, I rather doubt it'd be my internet connection.

 

[suteck]

It's not necessarily the games themselves but more likely the combination of server, (of which there are many and sometimes just the server your on is struggling) and the amount of traffic, meaning both how many other people and how much action you're seeing along with your internet speed and bandwidth. Does it happen everytime under more or less the same circumstances or at random times? The only ways I can think of to test that is take your machine over to your friends house and see if it plays more like his. and/or, play strictly on your machine without an internet connection (if that's possible) and see if the lagging persists. Or vise-a-versa with his machine to your place and see if his performance drops off.