Adequate PC specs, choppy games. Need advice

[Teeleh]

I have been having choppy game experiences for quite some time. When my computer was young, games like Skyrim ran flawlessly...but over the last year or so, the games that once ran smoothly have now begun to feel almost unplayable. Even putting games on the lowest settings does not abate the problem. (Addons are not the issue, I have tried this across multiple games, with and without addons.) The more taxing the game, the more obvious the problem.

My video card recently stopped working, and I had it replaced. Still the problem persists. The issue I'm having is, I don't know where to start. I'm unsure what could be causing such awful frame drops. Could it be the hard drive's capacity? Is my Processor dying? My basic system specs have been listed below. The specs aren't incredible, but they should be more than enough to run games like Skyrim.

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965
Mobo: Gigabyte Technoloy Model GA-870A-UD3
RAM: 12GB DDR3 G.Skill
GPU: NVidia GeForce GTX 760
HDDS: Western Digital 500GB / Seagate 2TB
Power Supply: COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M700 RS-700-AMBA-D3 700W

If you have any ideas on what I should look for, or how I can see what is holding me back, please respond. If you need more information, I can oblige.

Thank you for your help!

 

[marshal11]

What you should do is download and install MSI afterburner http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm . After that, run it in the background while you play a game where the issue occurs. You'll want to look at the GPU usage, which should be around 80-100% most of the time (higher the better), look at the GPU clock speeds (look for big drops in clock speeds), look at the GPU temperature, look at the memory usage (if it's close to 2GB, you're running out of V-RAM which will cause frequent stuttering and FPS drops), and check your CPU usage and see if it's close to 100% all the time (it may not be fast enough, especially in skyrim which prefers Intel CPUs). Also, it monitors your FPS, so look for patterns like when your FPS drops, make sure your GPU usage or CPU usage or GPU clockspeed etc etc haven't changed when the drop occured. This will help figure out what exactly is causing the problem and make sure your hardware is in good health. Do you have games like BF3 or BF4? If so, it would be good to do this on there as well as they are well optimized games and therefore good to use while diagnosing/stress testing your hardware.

 

[MightyBoyGaming]

I have a bit of an extreme solution for you but if you treat it like a mini project then I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with it to.

Firstly you need to open your case and clean out all the dust and muck that has accumulated over time. There are a bunch of Youtube videos that you can check out to see exactly how to achieve this without damaging your components.

From there, you should set a goal of performing a clean OS install. Take your time in backing up important data and having all the necessary info at hand when you do a clean install. You should benefit immensely from this part.

Next up is installing up to date drivers, then windows updates, then finally ghosting your drive(or whatever you youngins call it these days) so that you have a restore point for next time.

From there, what I want you to do is to stress test your CPU using prime95. You'll need software to monitor your temps and fan speeds whilst this is happening. Do some research of the safe operating temps of your CPU/RAM and cut the test if it goes too high.

If all is good there then I want you to do a stress test on your GPU. Same thing goes, monitor the heat and fan speeds and do your research of safe operating temps and cut the test if it overheats too much.

By the way, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the geforce card you have installed. It should be able to max setting almost any game right now.

After you perform the stress tests, you can report back to us with some facts and figures and hopefully you will have found whatever is it that is causing the issue

 

[gamerk316]

Well, a PII X4 is getting rather old, so that could be your limiting factor. I wouldn't expect newer games to run smoothly on it.