Significant drop in gaming speed! Need assistance!
Significant drop in gaming speed! Need assistance!
Hello, this is my initial attempt at joining a forum. I’m facing some challenges and need guidance, if anything I’ve done is incorrect. Perhaps the page I posted on is wrong, or maybe I didn’t notice it properly. So here’s what happened:
My computer experienced a significant drop in performance recently, especially when gaming. It wasn’t a high-end rig—it was a system I bought years ago for work, then upgraded with a graphics card. It still ran smoothly enough at the time, but now it struggles a lot.
Specifically:
- AMD X2 245 2.9GHz (not overclocked)
- Gigabyte Ati Radeon 6670 2GB DDR3 (not overclocked, brand new)
- 4GB 1066MB RAM
- 500GB Seagate HDD
- Eurotech 420W PSU (previously had a failing one)
- Windows 8.1
I played several games at high settings:
- DMCA at 70+ FPS (1360x768)
- Dead Space 1/2 maxed out at 70+ FPS
- WoW at 80 FPS
- Path of Exile with high settings (60+ FPS)
- League of Legends, Smite, Counter-Strike
- I noticed performance drops when increasing resolution or graphics settings.
Despite tweaking things, I’m now getting around 30–40 FPS in most games, which is much lower than before. Even changing resolutions only slightly affected it. I’m confused about what’s causing this and how to fix it.
I plan to replace the CPU, motherboard, and RAM soon, but for now I’ll stick with this card. If anyone can help me understand what’s going on, or point out any issues with Windows, drivers, or settings, I’d really appreciate it.
Also, I have some screenshots of the system monitoring tools and CPU-Z. Let me know if you need help interpreting them!
You should reinstall the motherboard chipset drivers. The blank fields on CPUZ suggest the system isn't receiving the necessary data correctly. This might explain performance issues if Windows doesn't properly recognize the hardware.
I'm sure I've done that before, but I'm going to reinstall them and check the results, thank you.
The stability improved a bit. I'm currently at 60/50 on Path of Exile, DMc is at 70 with nothing going on and 60's in action, while the 50's are in intense moments. It's puzzling how a friend can play Super Smash Bros. with high graphics at 30 to 40fps on a 1440x900 resolution using an A4 APU, whereas I struggle with 15fps on mine even without shadows at 1360x768. I've tested other games too—Super Street Fighter 4's FPS dropped from 65 to 45 to 55/58, peaking at 75/80, and I've hit 98 FPS sometimes. Benchmarks show it's close to my old 55/60 on high settings, but performance varies. Mostly in MMOs or open worlds with big landscapes, the CPU still lags compared to what I had before.
Did you remove all dust from the system during the GPU upgrade? Also, verify the RAM usage while playing games—any software consuming extra memory might affect frame rates.
In most games, RAM usage stays around 45-55%, which makes me think RAM isn't the issue. It might spike to 60% in more demanding titles.
I'll handle that now, thanks. I wasn't hit with a BSOD, but I hope it wasn't the RAM, and I really wish I had spotted the issue earlier.