Major Lag Spikes when playing Games

[Billytehbob]

Alright, I've come to you guys in need of support. I'm currently playing Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, and for the first few games, it runs perfectly. Now, recently, I've been getting Lag Spikes that would drop the performance down to unplayable, making me minimize to desktop to wait for it to stop. It'll work fine for about 10 mins, then BAM! FPS would drop immensly. When I minimize, everything else runs fine, it's just the lag in the game. It used to be I could just delete a few unneeded things and gain a few gigs in memory, and everything would be fine, but now it's not doing a thing Norton 360 didn't find an viruses or spyware, either.
PC Specs:
Vista Home Prem.
3 gigs of RAM
32-Bit OS
AMD Turion 64 X2 2GHz
Nvidia geForce 7150M 64Mb Dedicated.

Anyone know where the problem may lie?

[OrganicSalt]

I refer you to the Sticky at the top of this section^^

Optimising Your System For Games

[5NIPER_WOLF]

Try going here !---IMPORTANT: Please Follow These Steps Before Posting---!

[Mcninjaguy]

Windows - Vista, Xp need at least 15% hard drive space for games to run efficiently

you should try removing Norton and see if the game runs better

you could try a trial of NOD32 (you could re install norton after if you see no performance increase)
http://www.eset.com/download/free_trial_download.php

[5NIPER_WOLF]

or try the free unlimited use AVG 8.0, www.avg.com

[OrganicSalt]

also free Avast Anti-virus

[Mcninjaguy]

I also forgot remove Norton with Revo uninstaller
http://www.revouninstaller.com/

people are giving you options those are always good to have but NOD32 is the best option out the 3 so far but its not free

[dai]

is this a laptop

[5NIPER_WOLF]

Originally Posted by dai

is this a laptop

Yes dai, it is, just look at his graphics card, it's a mobile version and I've never heard of a mobile graphics card on a desktop.

[5NIPER_WOLF]

Originally Posted by Mcninjaguy

I also forgot remove Norton with Revo uninstaller
http://www.revouninstaller.com/

people are giving you options those are always good to have but NOD32 is the best option out the 3 so far but its not free

I disagree, I've tried nod32 retail and it has worse customer support, less frequent updates, less features and a worse detection algorithm than both avast and avg.

[RockmasteR]

does this lag happens when it rains??
try to update the game to the latest patch
the game is a lot buggy
also have you tried the AMD dual core optimizer?
AMD Dual Core Optimizer

[Billytehbob]

Thanks for the reply guys. I ran a disk clean up and Disk Defragmenation, and got about 25 Gigs cleared up, which brings me to 63 Gigs, I still get the problem. Like I said before, it only recently started to happen, it ran perfectly fine when I got it and for about 3 months after that. I'm going to try Avast and see if there is anything on there, but I don't know what could be at fault
I am running a mod, but I've ran the mod before with no problems. Game is patched up to 1.5 (1.6 is MP). I shall also try the optimizer.



Edit: This is on a Laptop as well.

@Rock: Download Link doesn't work.

[RockmasteR]

I just tried the link and it's working :
http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dyna...42f&ItemID=153

if not just go to amd.com choose drivers and support
choose your CPU type
and search for the optimizer and download it

[Billytehbob]

What are you using? I tried IE and Firefox, and I get the little typing symbol

[RockmasteR]

just go to www.amd.com
and download the optimizer manually

[5NIPER_WOLF]

Your not the only one whom can't download from that link, but don't worry, using any browser go to www.amd.com and download the dual core optimiser there

[Billytehbob]

It's still leading me to the link Rockmaster posted :(

If this keeps up, I'm going to see about getting XP again... probably really stupid, but is it possible to install XP for an HP 503n desktop onto my HP Dv6700 laptop? I've got the recovery disks for my 503n, and It's been sitting there collecting dust since I got my laptop.

[5NIPER_WOLF]

It may work, I would try it, you can talk to HP and see if their XP discs will work on multiple HP platforms.

[Billytehbob]

Ok, I looked through another thread, saw that they had pretty much the same problem as I. Rockmaster suggested (In the other thread) to download SIW from his sig, which I did, and I looked at my temperature for my hardware, and the lowest temp I've got is 88C when not in game. The picture is when STALKER isn't on. It's pretty much the same when it's on.

[5NIPER_WOLF]

88C is very high when not playing a game. Make sure there is no dust in any fans ports