Big lag even in older games

[Darth Windu]

Hi folks,

I recently upgraded my RAM, CPU and Motherboard, and since have been having issues with games that would run on my older system config just fine. Every component other than the RAM, CPU, and Motherboard is unchanged. The games I'm running are Company of Heroes, the original Crysis, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3 - in all of them they run okay, but I get a semi-regular BIG pause in graphics on each of them, it's not smooth at all. There are smooth sections, but then it will pause, go, pause, go, pause, go - this affects both graphics and sound as well.

I used memtest but it didn't find any errors, I'm now wondering if it might be a motherboard or PSU problem? My system specs are:

- Asus P8Z77-V-LX
- Intel 3570 CPU
- XFX 1GB HD5770 Graphics
- 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
- Windows 7 Professional
- 650W Thermaltake Toughpower QFan PSU
- 1 x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD (system)
- 1 x 1.5TB WD Green SATA HDD (games)


For comparison my old setup, which ran them fine, was:
- AMD 6000+ dual core (two 3 GHz cores) CPU
- Gigabyte M61-PM-S2 Motherboard
- XFX 1GB HD5770 Graphics
- 6GB DDR2 800 RAM
- Windows 7 Professional
- 650W Thermaltake Toughpower QFan PSU
- 1 x 160GB WD Black SATA HDD
- 1 x 250GB WD IDE HDD
- 1 x 1.5TB WD Green SATA HDD

 

[4745454b]

I would think its the green drive. My WD 2TB green that I use for general storage behaves the same way. When I go to save something if I pick a drive on the green drive I have to wait for the green drive to spin back up and windows to show the folders in that drive. You say you have the games on your green drive, so I'm assuming the pauses are the drive spinning up and sending the data.

I understand some green drives you can get software from the manufacturer and change how often it spins down. I'm not sure if WD allows this. You can check their site and see.

 

[stewartc]

The power supply should be fine for that setup.

Do you have Lucid Virtu installed, which is GPU visualization? It's a software package that most current vendors with newer motherboards have on their websites and allows the system to switch between intel graphics and the more powerful graphics depending on what you are running, or use both to boost games.

If you have it then try disabling it or upgrade to the current version of the Lucid website.

Good luck

 

[Darth Windu]

I figured the PSU should be okay, but you never know.

One odd thing - I just tried installing the latest version of Lucid Virtu and it gave me an error message saying that "Integrated Graphics was not found" even though it lists this program in the features for the board.