Weird slowdowns happening.

[baterax]

Hi guys!

Ok so, I'm having weird issues.

I've been playing Call of Duty: Ghosts for months now, as well as other graphically intense games like Far Cry 3, Batman: Arhkam Asylum and Arkham City, among others.

This machine has run all of these with everything on maximum with NO issues whatsoever.

But recently, I've been having this weird issue where frame rates drop vertiginously after playing the games a while. The two games where it's happening are Metro: Last Light, and Bureau: XCOM Declassified.

Now, the graphic requirements for these aren't very far from the other games I've been playing, right...

I've done all the usual procedures, such as updating every possible driver on the machine, especially the video one...and still. What a nuisance.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Oh, and here's my machine's specs (the RAM isn't listed, I have 16GB of crucial memory):

My system

 

[lfkfkfkffs]

The frames on games like metro last light normally happen in parts of the game that have a lot of lighting effects, like when you go through that big crowd of people during the first part of the game, if you have things on like AA the frames will drop a lot more than other games.

 

[baterax]

See, but that's the thing. That part, for example, ran SMOOTH as butter.
The slowdown happened quite after, in a fight scene.
And it doesn't make sense that it would happen in XCOM either, that game is FAR below Metro's requirements, or any of the other games I mentioned.
Like all of them run smoothly at first and then start decaying the longer I play.
This seems to me like it's maybe a cooling issue? Like as the system heats up it drops performance or something?

I had a post recently here about how I got an overheat warning from the ASUS application.
Since I'm using the stock CPU cooler, people suggested I replace it.
But I don't see how a CPU heating problem would make a difference on graphics, since the video card is handling that...
Or am I off base on that?

 

[lfkfkfkffs]

Download msi afterburner and monitor your temps and fan speed, you may also want to download true temp to see if your processor is getting to hot while you play a game

 

[baterax]

Ok so I wanted to make sure about the graphics thing, so I bought 3DMark and it turns out that my machine is pretty good... it says my results are better than 66% of all tests. Here's a link to the results:

My results

Meanwhile I'll download the other software you suggested and see what that says.

 

[baterax]

Yeah, downloaded it. Nothing looks too hot. I'm starting to run out of options here...maybe upgrade RAM? It's running at 667MHz which to me seems slow. Or the video card? Or both?
I was looking at video cards and most aren't a huge upgrade to what I have... I got a RADEON 7970. The top RADEON right now is $1,500. That's almost the full amount I spent on the entire computer building it...
And below that, I'm not sure a 1GB of video memory upgrade would be worth $400...
Help?

 

[baterax]

Another thing just ocurred to me:

I used to be plugged into my TV with only the HDMI port.
Now I still use it as the main display, but I added a 24" monitor as a second screen via the DVI port on the video card.
Could this be the problem?

Also, I'm thinking that, if it turns out that a card upgrade is a good idea, would it be worth it to just get another of the same card I have and go crossfire? It would be cheaper...

 

[baterax]

Ok so I just tried unplugging the DVI. Didn't solve the issue. So it's not that.

Any more tips on this?

 

[lfkfkfkffs]

Are you using something like and older core 2 duo or something? Also two games that you listed don't work that well on AMD cards, some games really only play well on nvidia.

 

[baterax]

No, I have an AMD FX350 8-core.
But a dude on the game forums helped me out.
The issue was the Physyx.
For some reason I don't see an option to disable it in game, so I had to track down all user.cfg files and change it to off manually.
Runs PERFECT now.

 

[bretmh]

Have you completely uninstalled your drivers and do a fresh install? BIOS updates? Did you update from an older card?