GTX 260 Stuttering/Frame drop when playing games PLZ HELP!!!

[Hussein Mansour]

Hello, I have built a computer before and chosen to upgrade the graphics card to which I did because I wanted a smoother gameplay on my simple games ( LoL and CSGO ) they are not really graphics demanding and I thought a GTX 260 would do the job. I have gotten the GTX 260 from Gainward its the Golden Sample edition and I load up a game and every 2 minutes I get frame drop to about 1/3 fps and there is a lot of stuttering and I can't take it. Please help me I can't tell if its my drivers or my system is being bottlenecked as I never really faced these problems with my old 8400GS. My Nvidia Driver is updated to 341.81. Thank you for your help

My system:
Custom Case
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core @ 2.51GHz
160GB and 60GB HDD
Gainward GTX 260 Golden Sample
Brand New EVGA 500W 80+ PSU
DVD drive

Also can you recommend drivers as I did not receive a driver disk. So if you know what drivers came on the CD please let me know and I will try them out

 

[stavrosmast]

Probobly bottleneck by cpu and slow hdd. Download msi afterburner enable on screen display and post a screenshot when playing a game. how much ram do you have? does the hdd light open lots of times when gaming?

 

[Hussein Mansour]

Probobly bottleneck by cpu and slow hdd. Download msi afterburner enable on screen display and post a screenshot when playing a game. how much ram do you have? does the hdd light open lots of times when gaming?

I have 4GB DDR2 RAM my HDD used to work fine with my old 8400GS. Also I will give screenshot as soon as possible but the lagg drop and stutter only happens like every 1/2 mins although it is still very very annoying

that happens for atleast 30 seconds to 1 min straight or more

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Your core clock is 301Mhz, the stock GTX 260 is 576Mhz, does it ever go higher than 301? Your memory is also downclocked severely, it's not overheating by the looks of it, have you tried using DDU to reinstall your graphics drivers?

 

[stavrosmast]

Probobly caused by DDR2 ram and only 512mb of vram.

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Probobly caused by DDR2 ram and only 512mb of vram.

The VRAM should be running at full speed anyway, the only reason the Core would downclock is if it didn't think it was under load, that's why I suggest a display driver clean and reinstall. I know people who are running similar PC's for CS:GO and it works fine.

 

[stavrosmast]

i think 512 are too low thats why he has fps drop

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

i think 512 are too low thats why he has fps drop

This is true yes, but the core clock shouldn't be that low, it might stutter a bit if it's using pagefile but with 1fps, I'd say the card isn't running at a speed it should be, something is limiting it.

 

[Hussein Mansour]

Could you recommend some overclocking speeds that I could use in EVGA Precision X16. I think it goes higher than those speeds but thats when the lagg is not happening Ill try get another screen shot of when it is not lagging

 

[Hussein Mansour]

i think 512 are too low thats why he has fps drop

This is true yes, but the core clock shouldn't be that low, it might stutter a bit if it's using pagefile but with 1fps, I'd say the card isn't running at a speed it should be, something is limiting it.

Could you recommend some overclocking speeds that I could use in EVGA Precision X16. I think it goes higher than those speeds but thats when the lagg is not happening Ill try get another screen shot of when it is not lagging

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Could you recommend some overclocking speeds that I could use in EVGA Precision X16. I think it goes higher than those speeds but thats when the lagg is not happening Ill try get another screen shot of when it is not lagging

That's more normal, for some reason it's throttling, try setting "Prefer Maximum Performance" in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

 

[Hussein Mansour]

Could you recommend some overclocking speeds that I could use in EVGA Precision X16. I think it goes higher than those speeds but thats when the lagg is not happening Ill try get another screen shot of when it is not lagging

That's more normal, for some reason it's throttling, try setting "Prefer Maximum Performance" in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

I have changed it to Prefer Maximum Performance for power settings. Anything else I should be trying. I haven't tested yet but i will get back to it as soon as possible

 

[maxalge]

Could you recommend some overclocking speeds that I could use in EVGA Precision X16. I think it goes higher than those speeds but thats when the lagg is not happening Ill try get another screen shot of when it is not lagging

That's more normal, for some reason it's throttling, try setting "Prefer Maximum Performance" in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

I have changed it to Prefer Maximum Performance for power settings. Anything else I should be trying. I haven't tested yet but i will get back to it as soon as possible

your cpu is what is causing your issues most likely, do you monitor it's temps?

you can also try to overclock it, though upgrading it would most likely be needed

 

[stavrosmast]

Probobly caused by vram. If his vram is full then his clocks dont need to go up cause he doesnt have enough vram. And when i tryed to play a game on 4gb vram settings (i have 2) fps drops to 1 or more are normal. What happens if you lower the settings very much and the resolution on unheavy games like cs go?

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Could you recommend some overclocking speeds that I could use in EVGA Precision X16. I think it goes higher than those speeds but thats when the lagg is not happening Ill try get another screen shot of when it is not lagging

That's more normal, for some reason it's throttling, try setting "Prefer Maximum Performance" in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

I have changed it to Prefer Maximum Performance for power settings. Anything else I should be trying. I haven't tested yet but i will get back to it as soon as possible

Doing a clean install of graphics drivers may help.

 

[Hussein Mansour]

Could you recommend some overclocking speeds that I could use in EVGA Precision X16. I think it goes higher than those speeds but thats when the lagg is not happening Ill try get another screen shot of when it is not lagging

That's more normal, for some reason it's throttling, try setting "Prefer Maximum Performance" in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

I have changed it to Prefer Maximum Performance for power settings. Anything else I should be trying. I haven't tested yet but i will get back to it as soon as possible

Doing a clean install of graphics drivers may help.

I have done clean installs multiple times but I always choose custom and I only download the display driver and Physx driver. Can you recommend a stable driver. Also I overclocked my cpu by 7% and its now @ 2.67ghz . Not much change, I just dont understand what the problem is. I dont think it is the graphics card. Also when it is running stable and not lagging it gets up to 70 degrees, is that classed as overheating?

I don't know what to do. I can try overclock my gpu but I don't know what too. Also I was thinking about getting an AMD Phenom ii x3, would that make any changes?

Any help is greatly appreciated thank you

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

What temp is your CPU at when this happens?

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Why do we speculate oh why? There are monitoring programs that show you exactly your GPU utilization as well as vRAM usage.

 

[Hussein Mansour]

What temp is your CPU at when this happens?

It seems to run stable at this rate. But isn't it still classed as overheating as it is right now?

This is when I was just browsing the web and using skype and spotify.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

What temp is your CPU at when this happens?

It seems to run stable at this rate. But isn't it still classed as overheating as it is right now?

This is when I was just browsing the web and using skype and spotify.

Yeah that's far too hot for just that stuff, gaming is probably downthrottling the clock rate.

 

[Hussein Mansour]

What temp is your CPU at when this happens?

It seems to run stable at this rate. But isn't it still classed as overheating as it is right now?

This is when I was just browsing the web and using skype and spotify.

Yeah that's far too hot for just that stuff, gaming is probably downthrottling the clock rate.

What do you suggest i do?

 

[stavrosmast]

Also you have no lag when you dont use 512mb of vram so turn the settings down until you dont use 512 and buy hyper 212 evo cpu cooler and undust pc, defrag hdd, and increase core/memory clocks and fan speeds. Problem solved

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Temps should not be that high with any cooler. I'd redo the thermal paste and buy a new cooler, and I would make sure the cooler is not loose and make sure the fans are actually running.

 

[Hussein Mansour]

Temps should not be that high with any cooler. I'd redo the thermal paste and buy a new cooler, and I would make sure the cooler is not loose and make sure the fans are actually running.

This image is when I reduced the overclock to just 5%. It now runs at 2.6ghz but it still seems quite hot

I have noticed that the inside of the case is very dusty so I will be getting to cleaning very soon. I should get some new thermal paste and hope to get another cooler. Anything else I could try?

 

[Hussein Mansour]

I am ashamed to say that all that was needed was a thorough cleaning as I hoovered the whole case which was very very dusty. Thank you all for your help.