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November 24, 2008, 11:24 AM
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#1 (permalink) |
 
Status: <Demon Trainer>
Character Info
Pernicious 80 Blood Elf Warlock Dark Iron US PvP Guild: Allmacht Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58 |
Sudden Performance Issues.
Hi everyone, Recently I've began to have issues with my computer. I've racked my brain to figure out what the issue is and how to resolve it and I have come up with some theories as to what it is. However, I figured that you all might be able to help me figure out if I'm right or overlooking something else it might be. The Setup My PC is custom built. It contains: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Socket 939 CPU Mach Speed MSNV-939 nForce Socket 939 Motherboard BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB There are enough fans that the CPU remains in the high 30/low 40 degree range. This setup initially had 2gb memory with 1gb readyboost flash drive. Now it has 4gb alongside that 1gb of readboost memory. The Symptoms Everything ran great when I installed the Graphics Card about 3 weeks ago. That is, until Thursday Night last week. I suddenly noticed two things. One, Warcraft began to chug very badly. I ended up having to drop everything to its lowest settings for smooth playback. Two, the hard drive was making normal hard drive noises at four times the volume. They rest inside the case on rubber pads to reduce noise, and I could hear the noise pick up whenever I told the computer to do something. Opening WoW, Opening Fire Fox, Really opening anything would cause the Hard Drive to get noisy. It also seemed to always be active and never really stop. My Findings I first attempted to resolve this by using some scans in Windows. I did a Disk Defragment, Virus scan, a Spyware scan, Disk Check, ran some Heat Scans to see if anything was overheating. Everything turned up clean. I also checked to see what programs were running to keep the Hard Drives so active, only windows related services/programs were running. I turned off all unnecessary services, and restored Vista to the Windows Classic look (gray bars). I also uninstalled a lot of programs that i no longer needed or used just to free up disk space, and then defragmented it again. I also had been meaning to pick up some more Ram, and given the sales right now, I bought enough memory to max my computer out at 4g. The issue still persisted. My Theories The first thought that crossed my mind was that something happened to my Video Card. However, logic seems to dismiss that option. For one, if the Video Card Died, I wouldn't be able to do as much as I can right now (play wow, use windows, load the computer). My second thought seems more realistic. My hard drive is about to fail me. Given how noisy it is and that doing the simplest task sends it into over drive, I can understand how that might be the case. I originally thought that it wouldn't really impact WoW anyways given that everything should be preloaded into the Ram. But given how huge the game is, everything cannot be in the ram, and must be loaded from the Hard Drive as needed. I'm thinking that I'll need to buy a new Hard Drive soon and migrate over to that. But first, I wanted to see if any of you had any thoughts I should try out first, after all who better to ask about issues with a gaming computer than gamers? Thanks in advance!
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November 24, 2008, 11:35 AM
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#2 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Barkle 80 Undead Warlock Rexxar US PvE Guild: Corpus Vile Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/41/30 |
Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
How much memory do you have? Check the error logs in Event Viewer Right click My Computer \ Manage Go into Event Viewer \ System 3 types of events:
What do the errors say? Source and Event ID are the important items. Double click any item to view details, and then you can click the button to copy the entire error. Generally, hard drives suddenly making lots more noise is a bad sign. |
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November 24, 2008, 11:45 AM
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#3 (permalink) | |||
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Status: <Demon Trainer>
Character Info
Pernicious 80 Blood Elf Warlock Dark Iron US PvP Guild: Allmacht Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58 |
Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
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November 24, 2008, 12:14 PM
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#4 (permalink) |
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Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
First off, I'd say that your system is CPU limited. I know you don't want to hear that as it takes a core system rebuild to get away from it -- I have that exact same processor, just ordered a new mobo, cpu, and ram from the egg last week to replace it. That gfx card is more than enough horsepower to drive WoW at max settings, but that CPU will limit what you can do. WoW by nature is also more dependent on the CPU as well -- especially if you have a lot of addons installed. As far as it just starting to chug last week -- have you installed any new addons that may have coincided with the slowdown? How full is the hard drive the game is on? You need at least 20% of the drive free at all times, more is better. With regard to the hard drive thrashing (that's what I call what your hard drive is doing), sometimes Vista picks bad times to index the drive or do a system restore. I personally turn both those options off, as I don't need quick drive searching and I back up with a third party ghost program. You may consider disabling both of those for a spell to see if that's the cause. Not sure if any of that helps, good luck though -- I hate having to screw with computer problems when I'd rather be playing. |
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November 24, 2008, 12:25 PM
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#5 (permalink) |
Character Info
sassyevil 80 Undead Warlock Garona US PvE Guild: The Sesame Street Gang Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 02/14/55 |
Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
Don't forget about your internet connection as well. I had the same problem with all my settings having to be lowered to the min. when I was used to having everything at the max settings. It was suggested to me that my wireless signal was at fault. So I called Time Warner and had them up my speed and it seems to have solved my problem. I was on Road Runner Lite which is a reduced bandwidth to compete with DSL is what I was told. Even now I am only getting 30 FPS at best when I used to get 50 or better so something changed in the graphics engine. |
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November 24, 2008, 12:57 PM
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#6 (permalink) | |||||
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Status: <Demon Trainer>
Character Info
Pernicious 80 Blood Elf Warlock Dark Iron US PvP Guild: Allmacht Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58 |
Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
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Thanks for the help though, I do have some network issues that I'm sure are contributing to things. I'll have a look at them when i get the rest of this resolved.
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November 24, 2008, 01:13 PM
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#7 (permalink) |
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Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
Sounds like you're eliminating things anyway! HD Tune That's a decent program to test your hard drive -- you can benchmark it and then compare to its database to see if there's a huge difference. I haven't used that one in a while, I used to use HD Tach but it doesn't support Vista. Free for 15 days. Your drive maker will also have diagnostic software on their website, that could help as well. Last edited by Trizzig; November 24, 2008 at 01:15 PM.. |
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November 24, 2008, 02:28 PM
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#8 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Lavath 80 Blood Elf Warlock Shadow Council US RP Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 3/13/55 |
Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
The issue I had with my system drove me crazy. I would get game crashes or blue screens randomly which made the game unplayable after that. I checked my event log and it had events talking about the hard drive or controller having errors. Since this tends to mean either the drive or the the motherboard is going I ran a few tests to verify this. I, too, came to the conclusion that it was the hard drive. After replacing the hard drive things seemed fine for a while, until finally the problem came back in full force. I ran my tests again and the new drive seemed to exhibit the same issues. This time I took a chance and blamed the motherboard. I took the drive into work and tried to test functionality there and the drive was actually fine (I even took the previous drive that I thought was bad and it seemed fine too). I finally got a new motherboard but from the same manufacturer. I put in the new drive and things seemed fine for a while until, you guessed it, blue screen. I grabbed a memory tester (memtest86.. great tester) and checked out my memory. The memory I thought might be good but I was getting some issues with it occasionally as well. To be safe, I changed out the memory. I finally grabbed a temperature monitoring program that point out something really important. I got it thinking that perhaps my video card might be running too hot when I am in heavy graphics situations (fighting Kael in TK for instance). What I found was that the GPU and the rest of the system was actually running pretty cool.. but my VCore voltage was WAY too low. This was causing all sorts of system instablities. I tried getting a new power supply, ran the program, and saw the same issues. So, not the hard drive.. not the memory (though the memory I replaced the original stuff was actually better for my board), not the video card and not the power supply. Long story short, all I had to do was make sure that some poorly implemented and documented voltage settings in the bios were set differently. The board's automatic settings were not configuring the CPU core voltage correctly. Once I changed that things seemed to clear up. Make sure your voltage settings are where they should be when you are running WoW. I noticed that when I just left the monitor running, outside the game everything was fine but as soon as I launched WoW the VCORE dropped like a rock. I'll try to find the name of the program I used as I can't recall right now. This may have nothing to do with your issue, but I'd hate for you to have to go through everything I did just for a simple fix. Now I have almost a second system with all the replacement parts... which reminds me, I need to get some for sale posts up soon. Good luck. |
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November 24, 2008, 03:07 PM
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#9 (permalink) |
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Status: <Demon Trainer>
Character Info
Pernicious 80 Blood Elf Warlock Dark Iron US PvP Guild: Allmacht Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58 |
Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
Absalom, thanks for sharing. I've been through similar frustrations as you've mentioned in the past. I had just upgraded my computer (as mentioned above after that $700 crash i had) and put in a new processor/motherboard/video card/hard drive. After a few minutes in WoW my computer would suddenly die. I first thought it was an issue with my monitor as the screen went black, but the computer appeared to be running. After a little while I learned that the computer went into some sort of protective mode that I had to do a hard restart to get it back running again. It took a while for me to figure out the issue. Since it only happened with WoW, i first blamed my video card. However, trying 2-3 other cards that I have laying around resulted in the same crash. I checked out my Hard Drive, Memory Units, and even considered it a bad Windows Install but couldn't find anything that had an issue. So next I thought that perhaps it was a heating issue. I checked that out and discovered my CPU was running about 40 degrees higher than it should be, and shot up even higher when WoW was running. Turns out the Heat Sync I had was not doing me any good. So five fans and a huge Nvidia crafted Heat Sync later, my core temp dropped to well below where I was aiming. I'll be sure and check out my voltages, though I'm pretty sure they are correct. This machine has been stable for the better part of this year, and even a few weeks after my new Video Card was implemented (it has slightly higher power requirements).
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November 24, 2008, 03:52 PM
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#10 (permalink) |
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Re: Sudden Performance Issues.
It may sound like a silly thing, but have checked your system for malware/virii/etc? there are some very nasty progs out there which can make your drive spin as its doing something for them -the same time it tries to run WoW- resulting in very low frame rates. The extra noise is the drive trying to read multiple sectors at the same time, making the head going back and forth. You also mentioned " It also seemed to always be active and never really stop." That also indicates that something is running at the background. Check your cpu usage when your system is idle. If you're not doing anything and you notice spikes of cpu usage over 10% something is running in the background. On the other hand, if you dont find anything, then probably your drive is dying. Oh, and re-install your gfx drivers too. Good luck.
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