Hi Computing.net! About every 5 minutes I play any newer game, my computer lags for about 2-3 minutes, and then runs smoothly again. The lag reduces framerate to less than 1/sec. It's all very weird, for instance, it happens in Fallout: New Vegas, and Civilizations 5, but not Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
The computer does not make any unusual sounds during this, except the fan spins a bit louder, as I guess it's working hard to keep up what ever trickery it's trying to do.It started when I reformatted my computer, and upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 (through deleting vista, and installing windows 7, not by upgrading), before that, there were no problems.
My spec:
Motherboard: abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 8GB RAMHere is a list of things I've currently tried with no result:
Changing settings in the games from high to low to high
Deleting the graphic card driver, and reinstalling it.
Changing settings in the NVIDIA controller, such as, disabling anti-alias, setting all settings to low, or disabling what ever was possible.
Tried various patches for the games themselves.
Online games or stand alone? Have you checked to see if any backgroung apps are causing the lag?
It's all stand alone, no online gaming. I have checked to see if any programs could interfere, but I can't see what that should be. The computer is newly formated, so there are only the basic windows 7 applications, steam and avast! anti-virus. Closing the 2 last is making no difference (as expected).
When I check the task manager performance tab, there are no other heavy programs running, apart from the game, nor is there if I alt tab during the lag.
FOLLOWUP:
I reinstalled my chipset driver (nForce 650i), and tried loading my bios with fail-safe defaults. Alas, no difference.No one has any idea what could be wrong?
I finally made a breakthrough. It turns out my 9600 GT heats to over 110 degrees celcius! I tried getting fan-control software, Nvidia's own nTune, RivaTurner, speedfan, but apparently, the 9600 GT cannot be manually controlled. What do I do? I'm guessing Windows 7 must have changed something fundamental because the fan doesn't seem to cool the card properly. It doesn't make any noise anymore, and it spins so slow I can almost count the spins.
What do I do?
Add more case fans?
I'm having the same problem...I just bought the game today and there's a HORRIBLE lag once I have the option to customize my character.
I REALLY don't want to return this game! TT~TT
I managed to solve the problem now, as suggested by jdfry, I replaced the 9600GT fan with an awesome Zalman VF900-CU. Not only did it solve my problem, it also reduced noise and increased the GPU speed, due to better cooling.