• Sudden FPS Drop Accompanied By Crackling Audio
    23 replies, posted
Lately in certain games such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, Half Life 2, Second Life and etcetera, I'll often get noticeable FPS drops and crackling audio. This started about a week and a half ago and there's no possible reason why that I can think of (no new drivers, hardware replacements etc). Sometimes it'll be much more noticeable when doing a certain thing in-game, like using a scope in S.T.A.L.K.E.R will halve the FPS accompanied by a hell of a lot of crackling, or an explosion going off in HL2. The strange thing is that the issue seems selective as to what game it'll occur in, games like Dead Space and Morrowind run fine. [B] [U]System Specs[/U][/B] GPU: nVidia 9800GTX+. RAM: 2GB. CPU: Intel E6850. Sound: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio. MoBo: Asus P5K-SE. OS: Windows XP Home. Page File: 3110MB.
Open your taskmanager and place it on graph mode. Then go play a game. When you have had a few of these errors go back to your graph and post a screenshot of it here. Also download HW monitor and post your temperatures after 20 minutes of play.
Here's the Task Manager graph after about 15 minutes of playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I'll post the temps in a moment.[IMG]http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3341/panzerwmtgraph.jpg[/IMG]
Well besides the fact that Stalker Is horrible optimized For Multiple core's it seems ok. Does Hl2 ever reach the 100%? (I doubt it but still)
Here are my temps after playing HL2 for 30 minutes. [IMG]http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/7533/panzertemps.jpg[/IMG] It never reached 100%. Also, it might be worth mentioning that lately we have been experiencing extremely humid weather. (Australia).
You need more ram as your going over into the page file. And temps are high on the cpu.
[QUOTE=1239the;19520631]Here are my temps after playing HL2 for 30 minutes. [IMG]http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/7533/panzertemps.jpg[/IMG] It never reached 100%. Also, it might be worth mentioning that lately we have been experiencing extremely humid weather. (Australia).[/QUOTE] What part of Australia? And you might be blocking a fan if it is a desktop, if it is a laptop then don't put it on your bed, it heats it up.
[QUOTE=broo20;19521084]What part of Australia? And you might be blocking a fan if it is a desktop, if it is a laptop then don't put it on your bed, it heats it up.[/QUOTE] Brisbane, QLD. And no, fans are working fine. Like I said, the issue only started lately out of the blue.
90C is way too hot for a 9800GTX+. My old GTS250 (which was a rebranded 9800GTX+) would start failing at around 70C and usually BSOD the system. use Rivatuner or install the Nvidia OC utilities and crank the fan up to 50%. Most manufacturers usually set the fan to something retarded between 20-37% which is the reason they overheat.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;19523258]90C is way too hot for a 9800GTX+. My old GTS250 (which was a rebranded 9800GTX+) would start failing at around 70C and usually BSOD the system. use Rivatuner or install the Nvidia OC utilities and crank the fan up to 50%. Most manufacturers usually set the fan to something retarded between 20-37% which is the reason they overheat.[/QUOTE] Can't change the fan speed, RivaTuner reports that it keeps reverting to 39% even after cranking it up to 50% and applying.
My 9800GTX+ gets higher than 90c when my fan speed is at 30% because sometimes fixed fan speed doesn't stay on. This is when I don't notice it this high. :saddowns:
[QUOTE=1239the;19524050]Can't change the fan speed, RivaTuner reports that it keeps reverting to 39% even after cranking it up to 50% and applying.[/QUOTE] Are you keeping Rivatuner running and did you save the settings? If you close Rivatuner, the settings will go back to default. You may have to get the Nvidia OC utility for the Nvidia control panel to force override the fan speed.
[QUOTE=Thor667;19520911]You need more ram as your going over into the page file. And temps are high on the cpu.[/QUOTE] I agree, and you mean GPU.
[QUOTE=taipan;19525227]I agree, and you mean GPU.[/QUOTE] no, cpu temps are high too.
Argreed this is most likley why mine failed and i would consider moving your aussie ass to milford sound :P jks increase fans and clean out dust and check also that your are not running high use programs like any 16 bit managers, nero and firefox etc.
Installed new codecs, used nVidia tools to up GPU fan speed to 50% (and stuck there), cleaned out every mote of dust in the case and reseated all my cards and the issue still persists. It's really odd because it only happens in certain games and even then, doing certain things often triggers it. For example, in STALKER, using a scoped weapon will suddenly crackle and skip audio, while halving my FPS, whereas in Second Life, the slowdowns and crackling and skipping is constant while its running (making other programs like WinAmp and Ventrilo stutter as well until I close SL). Again, this only started recently and for no reason of my own that I can think of. I'm down to thinking that perhaps its a hardware fault, or maybe I should try reformatting first before replacing hardware.
If the slowdowns only happen when you have a load, you might have defective hardware. You can try and rule the CPU out by running prime95 on max and play some audio in a loop and see if the popping happens. The GPU could be damaged, but I've never heard of it causing popping / crackling on audio, it usually just BSODs or gets massive artifacts.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;19527122]If the slowdowns only happen when you have a load, you might have defective hardware. You can try and rule the CPU out by running prime95 on max and play some audio in a loop and see if the popping happens. The GPU could be damaged, but I've never heard of it causing popping / crackling on audio, it usually just BSODs or gets massive artifacts.[/QUOTE] Running Prime95 and playing WinAmp at the same time yielded no audio glitching, even after about an hour.
[QUOTE=1239the;19541989]Running Prime95 and playing WinAmp at the same time yielded no audio glitching, even after about an hour.[/QUOTE] Then it's most likely the GPU. If you have another GPU lying around, you might want to try it.
Well, uh, consider case closed. My PC totally carked it an hour ago.
What do you mean?
I assume he means the machine died. The word "carked" means "to worry" which would be used in improper context in that post.
[QUOTE=1239the;19520631]Here are my temps after playing HL2 for 30 minutes. [IMG]http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/7533/panzertemps.jpg[/IMG] It never reached 100%. Also, it might be worth mentioning that lately we have been experiencing extremely humid weather. (Australia).[/QUOTE] Where can i find that temp reader?
[QUOTE=a-cookie;19556210]Where can i find that temp reader?[/QUOTE] On your Motherboard. Scratch that didn't read. google HWmonitor, get the free version.
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