Framerate falls to 4fps every 5 or 10 mins for about 2 mins

[glennco]

Windows 7
AMD Athlon II x4 2.6 GHZ
NVIDIA GeForce 9100

Over the past few weeks I've had an issue where my framerate drops to around 4fps every 5 or 10 minutes.  This lasts around 2 minutes, and then FR returns to normal.

I'm running gamebooster to shut off unnecessary services, and currently running iobit360 and avg for antivirus.  Both antivirus platforms show as clean.

Thoughts?

[Tigger29]

GeForce 9100?  Are those integrated graphics?  Is this a notebook?

Either it's getting hot, or something is using the CPU and since the CPU is used for video rendering as well... well the rest is obvious.  Check all of your programs for "check for updates" automatically and uncheck that option.

[AAJagerX]

The 9100 is the issue more than likely.  Post a dxdiag here and I'm sure you'll get the answers you need.

EDIT, the 9100 is an onboard GPU (most likely a laptop).  That's the issue.

[clerick]

do you shut down AVG? I know that when i forget to kill my antivirus suite my FR ebbs and flows like crazy.

Wait a second, you are running TWO anti virus programs?? Have you always done that?? Usually a big no no since they often compete with each other.

[Skuzzy]

So many things could be wrong here.

1)  Malware/Virus/Worm.  If you think your computer is immune to them, that is your first mistake.  They can fire off in the background and bring a computer to its knees.  There is no such thing as a computer being immune to these programs.  If you have no taken the proper time to configure the security of your system, and practice safe browsing habits, your computer is open to the world no matter what anti-xxxx software you use.

2)  The 9100 is a very, very, very low end video device requiring the CPU to do most of the work.  If the CPU gets busy doing other things, for any period of time at all, the frame rate will suffer accordingly.  This could be a DoS attack from the Internet, running P2P software (many other games use P2P software for patches and updates and will run in the background when the game is not active.  WoW is one of the more popular games doing that.)

3)  If this is a laptop, and the system gets hot, the system will slow things down to reduce power consumption until the system is cooled off.

Those are but some of the highlights which could cause what you describe.

[glennco]

Well, the issue appears to be solved.  I played tonight for a while without issue.

Troubleshooting steps:

1: disk cleanup
2: defrag
3: Windows Update (This one was most likely the cause)

It appears that for some reason windows update hadn't automagically updated my computer in a couple of months, reason unknown.  So, I had it apply all outstanding updates including Win 7 SP1.

Needless to say, I'm not 100% sure what the issue actually was, or that it is solved in the long-term.

I definitely know the 9100 as an integrated graphics chip isn't ideal for the game, but it does do fine.  This is mainly due to a fair cpu and some decent coding by the folks at HTC.  Typically I run at 59FPS against my lcd display.

thanks for the thoughts

[Tigger29]

Well, the issue appears to be solved.  I played tonight for a while without issue.

Troubleshooting steps:

1: disk cleanup
2: defrag
3: Windows Update (This one was most likely the cause)

It appears that for some reason windows update hadn't automagically updated my computer in a couple of months, reason unknown.  So, I had it apply all outstanding updates including Win 7 SP1.

Needless to say, I'm not 100% sure what the issue actually was, or that it is solved in the long-term.

I definitely know the 9100 as an integrated graphics chip isn't ideal for the game, but it does do fine.  This is mainly due to a fair cpu and some decent coding by the folks at HTC.  Typically I run at 59FPS against my lcd display.

thanks for the thoughts

No one was saying the 9100 isn't good enough to run Aces High.. actually it is.. at minimal settings.  The problem is that since it depends on the CPU for its processing, then anything else that taps into the CPU will cause issues like what you described.  Usually this comes in the form of auto-updaters.

With windows updates, I have mine setup to notify me but not download them.  This gives me more control over when the updates happen.

As far as auto-updaters for other programs.. well they become a real PITA.  I'm usually fine with a program checking for updates when I open that program, but I see no need for it to have its own process running in the background to constantly check for updates.  Usually this behavior can be disabled but they tend to make it a pain to find this option and when you do set this to not check for updates, if you do end up updating it later on it will revert this setting back to ON.

Personally, I think the default behavior of most of these programs should be able to be selected during the installation procedure but for some reason the programmers beg to differ.

[Krusty]

Agreed. As a long-time gamer I found out many years ago (long ago, far far away) that you should NEVER have auto updates on. Remind, maybe. Check only, don't download, don't install.

That will kill your system performance, and if you're playing a game at the time? Forget about it. You'll be better off running the installs yourself every couple weeks or on whatever schedule you prefer.


EDIT: You'll also probably get better FPS and performance if you drop down to Windows XP. Unless you've got over 4GB fo RAM (not likely, seeing as you have integrated graphics?) Win7 will be more of a drain on both memory and CPU than XP is. I don't know if that's an option for you, but food for thought.

[lulu]

2 anti-virus on.

A lots of disk consumption !!!


I don't use anti-virus that runs permanently.

When something new is copied on my HD i use manually an anti-virus  to check its status.

I had two partition too .


 

[Shiva]

Well, the issue appears to be solved.  I played tonight for a while without issue.

Troubleshooting steps:

1: disk cleanup
2: defrag
3: Windows Update (This one was most likely the cause)

It appears that for some reason windows update hadn't automagically updated my computer in a couple of months, reason unknown.  So, I had it apply all outstanding updates including Win 7 SP1.

Needless to say, I'm not 100% sure what the issue actually was, or that it is solved in the long-term.

Another thing that can do it is the Windows Indexing service, which periodically grinds through your filesystem making an index for "faster access", during which time your system performance tanks.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Another thing that can do it is the Windows Indexing service, which periodically grinds through your filesystem making an index for "faster access", during which time your system performance tanks.

Win7 is supposed to be tuned not to do such things while the system is used for something. Vista did that though.

I've never noticed my system would start to index or do anything while working on it.