Built a higher end PC about 9 months ago and it's been giving me nothing but grief.

[downtempoed]

Hello everyone.

So, here are the specs of my build:

Intel i7 3930k @ 3.2Ghz, EVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 680 the overclocked version, 12GB of G.SKILL Ripjaw RAM, Asus Sabertooth x79 Motherboard, Western Digital WD Green WD20EARX 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

So, I've noticed that I'm getting rather substantial frame rate drops in the games that I'm playing, when I think I shouldn't. I'll go from a smooth and stable 60fps down to 45-35fps. I'm running games on their max setting, and my build outdoes all of their recommended specs. I've return the motherboard and graphics card once, assuming they were faulty. I've since gotten new ones returned to me and nothing has changed. Any benchmarks I run seems to score appropriately, but I still get drops in fps where I shouldn't be. Friends of mine playing the same games with lesser PC's report that they're not seeing lag in the same spots that I am. It's baffling, really....

Sorry if I left out any pertinent information. I tried to keep the post brief. If anyone out there can help, It would be much appreciated!

 

[sparkz89]

Ahha your system is more than enough to run half the current games on max. I feel like this could be the cause of software clashing against each other. I don't want to suggest the more dramatic solution (which is to do a clean install of EVERYTHING) you could first check and see if your bios is up to date. Second you could also do a clean install of the drivers, could also be a bad coding within the game when you updated. Pretty much you are going to have to do these one at a time and narrow down the issues.

What ssd/hdd are you using? os?

 

[rothingham]

What kind of games are we talking about?
Does this happen to every game?
Have you got the latest drivers?
What resolution are you running these games on?
How often do these drops occur and how long do they last?
What power supply are you using?

Sorry for the annoying (and maybe lame) questions.

 

[downtempoed]

It's possible that it's your monitor. What are you using?

I'm using an ASUS VS248H-P Black 24" HDMI LED Backlight Widescreen LCD Monitor at 1920x1080. I've tried switching from a DVI cable to an HDMI cable with no avail. I've also tried changing the monitor out to my tv screen using the HDMI cable, just to see if that would make a difference and it didn't.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[downtempoed]

Ahha your system is more than enough to run half the current games on max. I feel like this could be the cause of software clashing against each other. I don't want to suggest the more dramatic solution (which is to do a clean install of EVERYTHING) you could first check and see if your bios is up to date. Second you could also do a clean install of the drivers, could also be a bad coding within the game when you updated. Pretty much you are going to have to do these one at a time and narrow down the issues.

What ssd/hdd are you using? os?

I really hope it's not that complicated! But, I assume it could get that way considering I don't know exactly what I'm doing! haha.
I'm using a Western Digital WD Green WD20EARX 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive and running Windows 7 Permium x64.

Thanks for replying!

 

[sparkz89]

Well this isn't the solution, but IMO i think you should get a 128 SSD and put your heaviest game + windows 7 on it and store whatever you want on the HDD. so that when you do reformat you are just doing the OS + games

 

[downtempoed]

What kind of games are we talking about?
Does this happen to every game?
Have you got the latest drivers?
What resolution are you running these games on?
How often do these drops occur and how long do they last?
What power supply are you using?

Sorry for the annoying (and maybe lame) questions.

No worries! They're not annoying or lame, you're trying to be helpful and I certainly appreciate that.

Yes, this does happen in every game that I play.
I do have the latest drivers. Currently I'm using the latest beta driver from Nvidia (326.80).
I'm running the games on a resolution of 1920x1080.
I get fps drops most often in areas where there could be a lot of things going on, or more often when I'm looking at big complicated structures in the distance. They last pretty much until I look away. It will instantly smooth back out. Like, if I just pointed my camera to the ground, it runs smoother during these instances.
My power supply is a Thermaltake Black Widow W0319RU 850W ATX 12V.

Hope that was somewhat useful!
Thanks for the response.

 

[downtempoed]

Well this isn't the solution, but IMO i think you should get a 128 SSD and put your heaviest game + windows 7 on it and store whatever you want on the HDD. so that when you do reformat you are just doing the OS + games

Alright. I'll definitely look at doing that.
Thank you.

 

[rothingham]

What kind of games are we talking about?
Does this happen to every game?
Have you got the latest drivers?
What resolution are you running these games on?
How often do these drops occur and how long do they last?
What power supply are you using?

Sorry for the annoying (and maybe lame) questions.

No worries! They're not annoying or lame, you're trying to be helpful and I certainly appreciate that.

Yes, this does happen in every game that I play.
I do have the latest drivers. Currently I'm using the latest beta driver from Nvidia (326.80).
I'm running the games on a resolution of 1920x1080.
I get fps drops most often in areas where there could be a lot of things going on, or more often when I'm looking at big complicated structures in the distance. They last pretty much until I look away. It will instantly smooth back out. Like, if I just pointed my camera to the ground, it runs smoother during these instances.
My power supply is a Thermaltake Black Widow W0319RU 850W ATX 12V.

Hope that was somewhat useful!
Thanks for the response.

Well, it seems everything should be okay...
Then I suppose the only thing you could do is buy an SSD (as suggested by sparkz89), so textures can load faster, which MIGHT be the reason of the frame drops.
I don't know if you got the budget for it, but I'd go for 240-256GB instead of 120-128GB.
I have a 120GB SSD (which is actually only 111GB) alongside 2X2TB, and I wish I had bought a bigger one.
Windows easily takes up 20GB, Office, anti-virus, some other small programs, add a few games and you've (by you I mean me) only got maybe 15~20GB left, which is, in my opinion, not a lot.

You should be fine with 128GB, but you know, if you've got the money, get a 256GB one. (So your future-self has one less reason to hate your past/current-self)

 

[chriss000]

A similar post today the guy took his problem game off his WD Green hdd and the lag was solved.