GTX 460 Help

Coud be a driver issue, have you tried updating the drivers?

Yeah i have the latest driver 296.10 and i have tried downgrading to a previous version but no difference in performance

and you've changed the video settings in the games to be... not maxed?

As the others have said.

As long as nothing has changed between these 2 times (latest/working driver + ALL games settings IDENTICAL) then there shouldn't be a difference (new nvidia drivers won't degrade performance).

- Try completely uninstalling then reinstalling the NVIDIA drivers.

- Check the Processes tab on Task manager and confirm there is nothing hitting the cpu that shouldn't - or wasn't before.
- You might want to check windows resource monitor to zoom into some areas.

- Check both your cpu AND gfx cars benchmark results - make sure that both are performing as they should (cpu-specific and gpu-specific tests).

Yeah i will try reinstalling the NVIDIA drivers and i have checked the processes tab while on some games and i shall benchmark my cpu and graphics card later, any other tips because i find this very strange that it is suddenly ver slower than it used to be

more ram prob ddr2 not the best  

Ok i have done all the things you said apart from the benchmarking because i have no idea what im doing when it comes to that, nothing has worked so far but i have no idea why i am getting such bad performance

Try a complete driver wipe including the physx drivers, I had a lot of issues my self until I rolled back. A lot of people who are using older Fermi and vintage cards are having issues with the latest drivers in one way or another (likely to help drive Kepler sales) so newer isn't always better.

Yeah i have tried rolling back to previous versions to when i first had this GPU but nothing changed i shall try again now and get back to you

Driver problem or CPU bottleneck

Well it shouldn't be a CPU bottleneck because ive had these specs the whole time i have had my GPU and when i first had it it was running much better than what it is now

What are your full system specifications?

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q8400 @ 2.66GHz
RAM: 4.00GB DDR2
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 460 OC edition 2.3GB
OS: Windows 7 Professional 32-bit

I don't know what else to put 0.0

Ok i did a full wipe of physx drivers etc. but still no change

There has got to be something that was missed or overlooked. Did you wipe the drivers with driver sweeper in safe mode? I had enough with the newer version enough to roll all the way back to 258.96 and it still works with skyrim ect. 27x.xx and 28x.xx sometimes worked but tended to be buggy regardless of what cards that I used. Some of the 29x.xx had some real problems and so there was a lot of posts on the net. The 3xx.xx isn't worth it all except to maybe hope for support for one of the latest released games for Fermi or older cards.

I only wiped them with the add or remove program through control panel, i shall try driver sweeper now

Yeah just finished doing that... still the same fps

Then something else must have been changed. Did you change any of the system settings in windows or change any of the bios settings?

Second when you uninstalled the games did you download any new data that would have used up the space prior to reinstalling the games? Last but not least what model is your hard drive? Some drives are pretty slow to begin with but all get much slower as you fill up most of the free space especially for random 4k reads and writes.

I don't know the model of my Hard Drive and I don't think I did anything that you mentioned. I have Defragged my Hard Drive and am thinking of installing a fresh version of windows if that may fix the problem?

Download auslogics disk defrag and hdtune, if you only defraged your free space and not the actual files then it can hurt the performance even more especially if it only moved the data closer to where the servo data is stored. That is the high performance area of the hard drive and further away the worse the actual performance is. Random 4k read and writes have the greatest impact on day to day performance.

Ok i will try those now, i was using Defraggler before but have not tried auslogics yet

Ok found 909 problems in my registary cleaned that, Defragged my Hard Drive and optimized it and now i think it is running at its full potential once again, thank you for all the help  

OK great glad that worked well  

Ugh its back to what it was, i thought it was ok but its not, but i think i have discovered the problem. I downloaded msi afterburner and checked my GPU usage when i am playing Saints Row The Third. Turns out it is only at 50% which must be why i am getting bad performance, any tips?

Also i ran the nvidia heaven benchmark and my GPU usage is at 99% but every other game that i have tested this on: WoW, Skyrim, Mw2 my usage has been at 50%

OK there has to be something software wise that is wrong. If the card was bricked then it wouldn't go full in heaven but then drop down in general games. Wow isn't demanding so low usage is to be expected, skyrim can go low usage but that is dependent on the game settings, Mw2 well I don't play that game so I don't know but it depends on your settings and ress that sometimes will determine the actual load. If there is a software cap somewhere then I don't know what settings that could have been changed to limit gpu load at 50%

Well in GTA 4 my GPU usage was 99% when i had like 60 fps in a house but then when i go outside and the fps drops, then the GPU usage drops this is the same with Saints Row The Third

Check the temps, that is trotting and that usually only happens when the temps go up to high. Second what is the load on the cpu in some of these games. I already know how gta4 goes.

The temperature for my GPU ingame is 52 and my CPU temperature is practically the same, and erm how do i check my loads?

^ It was the new settings could not be saved to the registry

^Ignore that woops  

Just load task manager and then load the game, give it min or two of actual play then exit as quick as you can or ctrl+del with the game running.

Right well the CPU usage is practically identical to the GPU usage....

Then there is something wrong software wise, do you have a old drive so that you can load windows onto just for testing?