Is my CPU 'Throttling'?

[jooshie]

I've recently had this very annoying FPS drop during games, it's definitely not my graphics card as it's a brand new Asus GTX 660TI DirectCU II, I have no problem running games like Battlefield 3 & Farcry 3 on ultra at a steady framerate. But recently I have noticed during my gaming sessions my FPS drops from around 60-70 to 11-12 FPS. I've checked the task manager while this happens I see the CPU Usage is 89% or more and when it's running perfect it's usually around 65%-75% usage. I've looked around for a while but finally resorted to coming here..

Specs:

AMD Phenom II x4 955 3.4Ghz - No OC
ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760G.
4GB (2x2GB) PC10666 DDR3/1333mhz Dual Channel Memory
Asus GTX 660TI DirectCU II 2GB GDDR5
CoolerMaster Elite 500watt Gaming Power Supply
1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16M Cache Hard Drive

Latest drivers installed, this also happened with my last graphics card: GTX 550TI.

I did read somewhere that the AMD option "Cool 'n Quiet" could be a cause of this, but I preferred to come here and hopefully find a good solution. Thank you.

 

[noob2222]

the pheonom 955 is starting to show its age, in bf3 multiplayer it does stress the cpu pretty hard at times.

Best option right now is to learn a bit about overclocking. If its the 955, it should be a 3.2 ghz part, not 3.4. If you can push it to 3.9-4.0 ghz it will help considerably.

another issue could be memory usage. If the system is loading too much into memory, it will try to utilize the hdd instead to make up for what it needs. the lag spike could be trying to read some data from the hdd. might be a good investment to add another 4gb of memory, and its cheap.

 

[jooshie]

I was thinking it's about time I buy more RAM, but i've never been sure what type to get. Thanks for the reply

 

[jooshie]

On a side note also, i'm pretty sure my cooling wouldn't be able to handle a 3.9-4.0ghz OC, right now i'm running at 52-53 degrees while doing nothing.

 

[noob2222]

the coolermaster hyper 212 is about the best value heatsink on the market, it will handle the 955 quite well.

on the ram, try to pair it with the ones you have if its available, if not, make sure its at least as fast, faster is ok, but will run at the speed of the slower ram installed. The memory should have a sticker on it with the part number, you should be able to google it to see the specs then match it up.

 

[jooshie]

Alright i'll probably purchase 4GB later tonight, the problem with OC'ing and cooling right now is the fact I have a closed loop asetek liquid cooling system and honestly I don't have a clue..