PC on Whack?!

Don't know where to post this, but I believe our "senior" members may be able to pull one switcheroo of a solution, as I don't want to format this unit yet.

I got a desktop last December with these specs:

Intel E2200 2.2GHz Dual Core
nVidia GeForce 8500GT 512MB DDR2 128-bit
a 160GB SATA Hard Drive, by Seagate perhaps
4GB DDR2 of Kingston RAM
An ASUS Motherboard, SATA-enabled
An ATX casing with 550W power supply.
...
and a generic DVD writer.

I get to install and run Fallout 3, Mass Effect, NBA 2K9, Burnout Paradise and Oblivion well enough. That is until last Tuesday, when my younger brother was playing Fallout 3. He told me that the game suddenly ran slowly, like your friendly FPS drops. And when he restarted F3, it didn't run until the third try.

It was like Fallout was running smoothly for 5-10 minutes and it will lag like that.

So I guess it was just the game, as I've reinstalled it, updated the game to v1.4 and added the DLC's. It's still the same. I reinstalled the graphics driver and it's still the same. I checked on Burnout Paradise and it's the same as Fallout now. The game runs smoothly at first then the FPS gets whacked.

Wonder what in hell got wrong.

how much free space do you have on your harddrive?

Check to see if you have a bunch of eye candy turned on at the video card settings. This isn't one of those situations where the game is running fine for a few minutes then just goes choppy, right? You don't get a blue screen after leaving your computer on for a while, do you?

Edit - some links

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/22/2126205

You may want to test your RAM with memtest or a similar program. I don't really think it could cause this, since it seems to work fine at first before running slow, but just in case one or more sticks are busted...
If it was just with Fallout 3, it could be the infamous memory leak that happens sometimes with it, but it's strange that it does that with other games too.
It actually sounds like a possible overheating problem, it wouldn't necessarily manifest itself right away, but it'd start messing things up after a few minutes depending on the amount and complexity of the 3D that's being loaded. You should check if your video card's fan is properly working (or your CPU's).

Thanks for the tips, apparently I forgot to put in the first post that I've ran all those before in Ultra High. Then since that whacked-up framerate, even at low the games stink.

I got the old IDE drive setup as my OS drive, while the SATA one as the slave drive and where all the programs are installed. So far the free space is half of the drive's total.

If it was just with Fallout 3, it could be the infamous memory leak that happens sometimes with it, but it's strange that it does that with other games too.

Which confuses me, since I've played the game, even finished it last December, in Ultra High settings with no issues like now.

Check to see if you have a bunch of eye candy turned on at the video card settings. This isn't one of those situations where the game is running fine for a few minutes then just goes choppy, right? You don't get a blue screen after leaving your computer on for a while, do you?

I don't get a blue screen, but I do get the choppy part.

Here's the update, haven't done anything because my last resort is a format.
Yesterday night, I told my brother to run Burnout and see if it would screw up again, but it didn't. The game ran smoothly. After an hour, no choppy-framerate happened, and he ran Fallout 3. Same thing, the game was fine.

Earlier today he ran Fallout 3 again, there were some points that the game goes choppy for a few minutes, then would run normally afterwards.

I will continue my "investigation."

Sounds like an overheating problem. Check your temperatures and whether all the fans are running.

Could be, but the temperature has never made it past 45 degrees. Plus I have 3 more auxiliary fans.

There is more than one temperature.

CPU
Chassis
Videocard
and possibly Hard Drive

Do a simple test. Open the side of your case and put a house fan right next to it blowing right into the side of the case. Play your games and see if the frame rate drops. If it doesn't, then it's a heating problem.

Also, I thought the 8500GT wasn't a very fast videocard. I have a 3850 256mb 256-bit which beats the 8600 and I can't run Fallout 3 on ultra high.

Compare what else you're running when it runs fine to when it doesn't.

And get it into a rehab program so it can finally kick its whack habit.

CPU
Chassis
Videocard
and possibly Hard Drive

I got that covered. P.

Compare what else you're running when it runs fine to when it doesn't.

Oblivion is running fine while the others don't. Right now F3 is on whack again.

Probably overheating. Dust accumulation? Since it worked badass before until now.

Yeah could be. The recent week was rainy, temp's a bit low, and everything was fine. Now it's shitting again.

Could be the Vid card overheating. Up ur video fan speed manually and blow the dust off the fans.

Got a new driver from nVidia (185.50), the games improved slightly, with the choppy gameplay not occuring much. And it isn't as choppy as before.

Alright, I quit.

Monday last week, the unit ran fine. Until yesterday. Seems that I hoped that the fix was the "dusting-off" and the new ForceWare driver.

Let's go warranty!

I reformatted my unit hoping that the problem is the memory leak. After hours of putting all software back, I ran a 3D game, and ended up with the same frame rate drop. I now conclude that this is a hardware problem.

It seems that way. You wouldn't happen to have a spare PC you could cannibalise (if only temporarily) to try out a different video card by any chance?

Have you tried my suggestion about putting a fan next to the case while it's open? Try it and check the framerates.

Maybe you will need to cannibalise your brother. I stopped letting anybody fuck with my computer after the first couple times because it would have problems after other people used it.

Nah not yet, but we do that before in the old unit. I'll try it on this one.

It seems that way. You wouldn't happen to have a spare PC you could cannibalise (if only temporarily) to try out a different video card by any chance?

I have the sold the AGP FX5500.

Maybe you will need to cannibalise your brother. I stopped letting anybody fuck with my computer after the first couple times because it would have problems after other people used it.

I ended up buying my brother a laptop. As I became a first time system builder with the unit that I'm using right now, I am somehow emotinally attached to this unit. There're stuffs that you don't really want to share, and this is one for me, but occassionaly, what the heck...

The old skool fan-by-case is working, so far.

So find out which fan(s) failing. It's most likely your videocard fan failing, or the heatsink is not touching the chip.

It could also be some throttling feature that underclock's your processor when it reaches a certain temperature. Check your Bios.

It was the video card's fan. And I returned it to the retailer since it's still under warranty. The thing here is, I have to wait for up to 2 weeks to get a new one from them.

ooh, you're still lucky. my cousin returned a videocard for the same reason to octagon. they told him he had to wait a week and they gave him the videocard back after a month. they really have poor after-sale services.

Really? (EDIT) Is that why Octagon has less customers?