[SOLVED] Small Lag Spikes

[JayJ24]

Hello all

I have been getting small lag spikes when playing sof2 or cod4.


My system specs are

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GPM-DS2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Brisbane 2.8GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor Model ADO5400DOBOX
650watt powersupply
4gigs of RAM with winxp so it only sees 3.25gigs
bfg 8800gt 512mb graphics card
Cable 6meg speed net connection
Play all my games on a 19inch monitor
1024 x 768 resolution
240gig HD


Things i tried

Thinking it was the internet at first i did abunch of research on packetloss and ping test and tracert test. Ran a program called visualroute which shows one of the comcast losing about 40 or 50% packetloss sometimes more everytime same hop. After speaking with comcast for few weeks there answer was it was ICMP timeouts to prevent from DOS attacks. Just did not understand why just that one Hop and not a little from all of them if it was ICMP timeouts. I ran some dsl reports and line tested out ok and connection tested out fine.



Well after that now im lead to believe it is something with my system causing the small lag spikes. Not too sure what to try with that though. If anyone has anyone suggestions on what to check with my system to see if it causing the lag some how.

I read something about changing the virtual memory do you think that could be causing it.

I was thinking maybe since i had 4gigs of RAM and winxp only sees 3.25 that was causing the problem maybe windows was trying to access memory it could not see so i took out one of the 2gig sticks and still does the same thing.

Any suggestions would help please


Thanks

[JayJ24]

Not to be rude but is anyone going to help with this

[JayJ24]

Please can someone give me some suggestions

I tried uninstalling the mods and reinstalling them i went through that list and its still doing the same thing. It happens on multiple servers and its for probably second or two that my sound stops and then i end up dead or someone standing right in front of me. Of if i move around too fast its really choppy can

Thanks again

I have an ocz power supply by the way

and nothing is overclocked

[koala]

Have you installed the latest AMD Dual Core Optimizer (Aug'08)?

Have you installed the latest chipset drivers, device drivers, DirectX and MS Updates? Any problems in the dxdiag tests?

Which graphics driver version are you using, and have you tried any other versions, including Omega?

Are you playing at your monitor's native resolution?

How much free hard drive space is left, and have you defragged recently?

[JayJ24]

Thanks for the response

I installed the amd dual core optimizer

I was using 175.19 version of nvidias driver. I went to go and try and install the omega one but it says its for vista does that matter. So well instead i went to the NVidias 169.21 version and am trying that right now.

I also am playing on my monitors native resolution

and my hard disk space is 28.8 gb used and 120gb free space

I attached the dxdiag report and also the speed fan results while i was playing the game

DxDiag.txt

softemplevels.jpg


So far with changing the drivers and installing the dual core optimizer also making sure i am playing on the monitors native resolution has not seemed to help. I am also playing on a couple different servers to make sure its not the server.

Thanks again

[koala]

Your SpeedFan report shows a few problems. The +12V value is just outside the accepted range of 11.4-12.6V. System monitors like SpeedFan aren't always 100% accurate, but it still looks high. What value is it in BIOS? Also, try another program like Everest or SensorsView to confirm the reading.

If the PSU is struggling under stress from a 3D fullscreen game, this could be contributing to the high ambient and CPU temperatures. How many case fans do you have and how are they positioned?

Blow out any dust around the slots and heatsink with a can of compressed air.

Check the graphics card temperature with ntune in the nvidia control panel.

Have you reapplied the thermal paste on the CPU recently?

Do you get these lags playing in single player mode (offline)?


EDIT: You can download the Omega driver for XP from here, but we'll come back to that later if necessary.

[JayJ24]

Playing the game in single player is choppy also

Its a brand new build and i applied artic silver paste

There is no dust also as its a brand new build

+3.3v 3.344v
+12v 12.492v
Currentsystemp 31c
Currentcputemp 44c
CurrentCPUfan 2481RPM
CurrentSYSfan 0rpm
CurrentNBfan 0rpm



I also have 2 fans the one directly on the heatsink and there is one attach to the side of the case facing the heatsink also there is the one on the videocard too. Think i would need another?

Thanks again.nvidiamonitor.jpg


i attached my nvidia monitor also doesnt say much

[koala]

Yeah, ntune isn't very good. I get the same kind of blank entries, but thought it might just be a problem with my setup. Good to see I'm not the only one. Think I'll use RivaTuner in future.

As well as the fans on the CPU, graphics card and PSU, you should also have one at the front of the case pulling cool air in and one at the top rear blowing warm air out. This is to create an airflow path over the motherboard and components, keeping them cool. 80mm fans are ok, but 120mm fans are more efficient and quieter if your case can take them.

Apart from that, I can't see much wrong from a hardware point of view.

A 650W OCZ should have no trouble with an 8800GT unless you have some other power-hungry devices not listed above. Enter your full system specs into this power calculator and set Capacitor Aging to 25%. Click the Calculate button, then add 30% to the total to allow for PSU inefficiency.

[JayJ24]

yea that ntune seems to do that to more than a few people i read something about getting the nvidia chipset in order for that to work but yea i use to use rivatuner also need to download that again.

Also i do have a fan in the front sorry just wasnt paying attention and after doing that power calculator it says i need about a 400 watt power supply with your extra 30percent.

do you know any free memory test to see if its my memory causing it for some reason

thanks for all your help

[koala]

Do you also have a fan at the back of the case blowing out warm air? (not the PSU fan)

Memtest is the standard way of testing RAM.

Direct link to pre-compiled bootable ISO: http://www.memtest.org/download/2.01...+-2.01.iso.zip

Unzip the file and burn the ISO to CD (as an image, not as data) to create a bootable CD. Reboot and go into the BIOS. Change the boot order to 'CD first', save settings, insert the CD and reboot. This will start the program. Run for one stick at a time (very important, to prevent false readings) for at least 10 passes each.

[JayJ24]

No i dont have a fan in back besides the PSU i will have to install one and see if that helps going to work on the memtest thing for now

thanks again for everything

[koala]

You're welcome. Keep posting and we'll get this fixed.

The rear fan is probably the most important one. Without it, there is no airflow path, meaning the hot air inside the case is circulating around the components, heating them up with nowhere to exit.

See what the temperatures are like after fitting the fan (make sure it's blowing out and not in). They will almost certainly drop, protecting you from future hardware problems, but this might not be the only cause for your games lagging, so we might still need to look at software and drivers.

[JayJ24]

I added a 120mm fan in the rear of the case so now i have 1 120mm fan at rear and 2 80mm fan also one on video card and 1 on the heatsink

I also did the memory test wow that takes a while. But it all tested out good did the two memory sticks separate but it had 10 passes on one and 14 passes on the other before i finally stopped it


It has improved a lot thanks for all your help well for the 10minutes i was playing it was a lot better. There was only one time where things got a little choppy but thats probably the server

I attached my new temp levels with the fan

Well thanks again for all your help i guess if it gets bad again i will try the omega driver

[koala]

Your temperatures have dropped slightly. I would have expected more though. You might want to replace the thermal paste on the CPU with some Arctic Silver to bring the temperature down even more.

I'll mark this thread as solved, but post back if you have any more problems.

[JayJ24]

Thanks again

i went ahead and reapplied some artic silver thermal paste

also when i took the heatsink off the processor was stuck to the heatsink not sure if that is normal but it took a little force to pull the two apart. But after i did that i wipe off the old thermal paste and reapplied the new one.

These are the new temps seems like it went down even more which is good


thanks again for everything