Experience unexpected delays on your device. Please check for updates or troubleshoot settings.
Experience unexpected delays on your device. Please check for updates or troubleshoot settings.
So roughly a year prior, I bought an Alienware x51 R2 mini gaming machine. In September I upgraded it with a GTX 960 4GB and 16GB of Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 RAM. It originally came with an i5 4460. Everything seemed fine—games ran smoothly and I was pleased. Until recently. After a while, I thought about cleaning up my system by removing unused programs. I used Malwarebytes CCleaner and wiped out a lot of unnecessary files. The result? Only a handful of programs remained, and my game storage dropped to nearly 800GB. It felt better than when the GPU arrived (though that was about three weeks ago). Fallout 4 performed well at 60fps with ultra settings and two items on medium; TW3 also ran smoothly with all settings pushed except two, which stayed at medium, and JC3 maxed out, usually giving me solid 60fps. Everything was fine then. Then a friend suggested I try Planetside 2. I hesitated—back then my setup was basic (i3 CPU, HD 4000), but I decided to give it a shot. During intense battles, framerates dropped significantly, and my GPU usage hit around 45% while CPU usage reached 90-98%. After some research, I boosted my GPU’s performance and OC’d it slightly for stability. Still, lag persisted. I tried restarting, but the issue remained. Eventually, I checked Fallout 4’s framerate in Railroad HQ—it hovered around 30fps—and outside it was in the mid-30s. After a final restart, things improved to about 60fps. I then used Afterburner to monitor resource usage; it showed high consumption in both game and PC. I booted the game again, but framerate stayed low at around 35fps. Reverting back to normal settings didn’t help much. I’m at a loss—what could be causing this? Here’s what I’ve tried:
- Razer Game Booster (no improvement)
- Pressed Ctrl+R, opened msconfig, cleared startup (still no luck)
- Cleared registry with CCleaner
- Ran Malwarebytes regularly
- Disabled GPU overclocking
- Verified game integrity
- Checked for dust inside the case
- Lowered CPU temperature to 66°C under load
- Disabled AVG Antivirus temporarily
- Ensured no resource-hogging apps were running
Nothing worked. I’m stuck, wondering why my frame rates are so low during intense scenes and why my system feels so sluggish. I’m desperate and need guidance.
The temperatures on your GTX 960 are typically within a normal range for its age, usually staying between 50°C and 80°C under load.
GPU activity appears to stem from a driver problem. For the PS2, the CPU handling is notably poor, which likely contributes to your low FPS during intense moments.
Your drivers are reinstalled correctly. The issue with Planetside 2 crashing at 6% after loading might be related to a corrupted save file or a problematic update. Try clearing your save data and re-installing the game again. If the problem persists, check for server issues or contact support.
It's been a few days now and things have come back to normal. My games are still lagging, but they weren't completely broken before. Got any suggestions?
Still only the frame rate drops? Or are you experiencing stuttering, distortion, and network delays too? If it wasn’t cleared before, I’d think the temperature problem is the cause now. Not sure yet. It seems to be a hardware issue—possibly with the GPU. Other possibilities include the HDD, insufficient RAM, or the pagefile getting full.