[Junior2613]

Hey all, I was wandering what could be causing this, Yesterday I was able to run CoD4 with shadows enabled at a steady 25 - 40 FPS, and other games with pretty good settings considering the hardware, but today CoD4 would barely go past 10fps :S any ideas what could be causing this ?

My specs are;

Intel E2140 @ 1.6Ghz
2Gb ddr2 667Mhz ram
GeForce 7300GS @ 625/800
250W PSU (soon to go)

Could it be the PSU is ready to go ??

[Zenskas]

Have you installed anything new? Could be a virus or something nasty. Update your drivers too. Scan for viruses with your fav virus cleaner and also try Spybot S and D.

[Junior2613]

Just gave AVG a full run and picked up nothing :S strange becausee today its picked up a bit more performance

[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

I'd just like to ask, how do you know the PSU is about to go? I'd just like to know, it might help us all find out what's up.

Now, Zenskas asked a very good question which you didn't really answer. Has ANYTHING, anything at all on your computer changed since the FPS drop? It doesn't matter how small it is, anything different, modified, installed, whatever. Any Windows Updates? Any other side effects? Has anything changed in the game? How are all your other games performing?

How about your hardware? I'd like to know if the hard drive activity light is on much during gameplay (or generally in Windows). You could also check your system temperatures while you're at it, using an app like SpeedFan. To be honest, it could be anything.

Good luck!

[Junior2613]

What I meant was im replacing it. I mean its a 250W GENERIC PSU not a lot of power coming from it and that COULD result in poor performance ? Only thing new is maybe a Google Sketchup update and a HD defrag. The HD activity light only really comes on like once in a while when the game needs to access some files, in windows it occasionally blinks once in a while.

A snapshot of coretemps and Gpu tools, my cpu temps really max out at 45 during any game, and gpu goes anywhere between 60 - 85.

Come to mention it I did run windows update last night it installed 4 updates for windows and 2 for IE8 it also wanted to download 1 for WDDM drivers for nVidia but I rejected because I have the latest drivers

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[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

Whoa, that graphics card is a tad hot. My 9600GT gets nowhere near that hot, idle or playing games on the highest settings. I don't like the look of that.

Just to make sure though, I'd recommend a system restore. Restore to before you had the FPS drop. If that doesn't fix it, my bet is on the graphics card.

[Junior2613]

I reinstalled windows 7 and installed nvidia forceware 187.62 and it seems to be ok now :S I think it might have been a driver problem I was on 191.07 that I downloaded from windows updates. By the way can you reccomend the 9600GT as a good step up from my current hardware ?? or will i need to look a bit higher ?

[Zenskas]

Sl@y3D for my n@me, on Nov 9 2009, 06:52 AM, said:

Whoa, that graphics card is a tad hot. My 9600GT gets nowhere near that hot, idle or playing games on the highest settings. I don't like the look of that.

Just to make sure though, I'd recommend a system restore. Restore to before you had the FPS drop. If that doesn't fix it, my bet is on the graphics card.

I'd say his 7300GS has a tiny fan or is fanless. So over 60C aint so bad. It could handle 85C but that is not very safe or good at all! My 9600GT only does under 60C at all times no matter what but would have a much larger HS and fan than any 7300GS!

Junior2613, on Nov 9 2009, 10:28 AM, said:

I reinstalled windows 7 and installed nvidia forceware 187.62 and it seems to be ok now :S I think it might have been a driver problem I was on 191.07 that I downloaded from windows updates. By the way can you reccomend the 9600GT as a good step up from my current hardware ?? or will i need to look a bit higher ?

Any GPU drivers downloaded from MS ain't gonna be good! Always download from NVIDIA's site. The MS NVIDIA drivers are not meant for gaming if they are the crappy ones I'm thinking of.
The 9600GT would thrash your 7300GS by a huge amount. It would be around ten times faster in pure shader power and also has 57.6GB/s of memory bandwidth versus the 7300's 6.48GB/s!

[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

Zenskas, on Nov 9 2009, 05:55 AM, said:

Any GPU drivers downloaded from MS ain't gonna be good! Always download from NVIDIA's site. The MS NVIDIA drivers are not meant for gaming if they are the crappy ones I'm thinking of.

The ones that come with Windows are. The Windows Update drivers are the real drivers that NVIDIA issue. I'd suggest using the Windows Update drivers if it offers them.

Good to see your problem is cleared up!

[awergh]

When I used to use a 7300LE I think I got it upto 90, although it was in summer. 9600GT would be a good replacement for a 7300GS particularly on heavy games like Cod4

[Zenskas]

Sl@y3D for my n@me, on Nov 10 2009, 04:28 AM, said:

Zenskas, on Nov 9 2009, 05:55 AM, said:

Any GPU drivers downloaded from MS ain't gonna be good! Always download from NVIDIA's site. The MS NVIDIA drivers are not meant for gaming if they are the crappy ones I'm thinking of.

The ones that come with Windows are. The Windows Update drivers are the real drivers that NVIDIA issue. I'd suggest using the Windows Update drivers if it offers them.

Good to see your problem is cleared up!

Hmm it was just on one particular PC a year ago that the MS video drivers were absolute crap and it wouldn't do anything. It would be better off NVIDIA's site still though as you can easily select a place to save the download.

[Junior2613]

I've just seen why my 7300GS is soo hot.. its 90nm I will most probably get a 9600GT or 4650/70