Hey all,

I recently upgraded my pc, my new specs are:-

Athlon 64 3800+
Asus A8V-VM SE
Corsair 2gig matched pair
Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS

All these parts were brand new.

I use my pc mainly for games and wanted to play them in high res & detail.

I now find when I play games in the highest res and detail it works ok for a while then the framerate seems to drop to an unplayable amount, it doesn't matter at what point in the game it will randomly drop for a few minutes then go back to smooth again.

I thought it might be the graphics card as it has no fan on the heatsink, but i monitored the temp of the card and it didnt go up much when the games framerate slowed.

I pulled off the side of my pc case and got a 240v fan blasting into it, while the fan is on the pc, everything runs fine with no slowdowns at all.

To me, this means that something is overheating but as I have ruled out the graphics card I can't put my finger on it.

Would appreciate any help whatsoever as it has me stumped.

A final piece of info on this I just found out, the framerate slows even when the game is in the LOWEST res and detail, this mystery just gets deeper and deeper!

Many thanks in advance for your help.

- Steve

Download/install speedfan from my sig.
You can go into the "charts" settings at the far right-- and set it to run a log/chart of your temps and voltages to help you see what's going on.

You said all those parts were new-- did you check the Power supply-- as well? It might be the PSU is overloading.

I would check out the PSU calc from my sig-- see what you need, too as a precaution.

Thank you for a quick response.

The PSU is 400w and is also brand new.

I downloaded the program you suggested and monitored the temps.

These were the results:-

Core Started at: 46 Framerate dropped at: 57 - Up 11
Aux Started at: 46 Framerate dropped at: 55 - Up 9
CPU Started at: 39 Framerate dropped at: 48 - Up 9
System Started at: 40 Framerate dropped at: 48 - Up 8

I went back to the Speedfans - readings page, and it showed a flame next to Core and Aux. Does this mean that the standard fan that came with the CPU isn't able to cope and I will need a better quality one?

Also i'm not too sure what Aux is.

Many thanks for your help, if you could shed anymore light on this it is very much appreciated.

- Steve

I have a standard troublehooting suggestion... It helps ID verything you have in each post-- saves time for us both.

I suggest-- when you repost-- go into "My PCHF" under site navigation under "edit options" --scroll down the list.List all your hardware in the spaces-- at the top-- there is an option to "allow others to view my specs" click on yes. It saves a lot of time between posts if while you check something I can go look up your mobo manufacturer's site and read the manual.
You can also list your OS...all this is a great time-saver for us-- we can view everything quickly to refresh our memories... as we are all working multiple threads at once.This would be automatic from that point on-- so if you have another problem six months from now-- we can instantly know what you have.

Well when i tried to play halo before my 4200 overheated and my pc shut off so im doing the same as you with a 120 volt fan until i can get a better cooler.And my pc case has more than good enough coolibng with 4 case fans but they still dont work enough.

Speedfan's one flaw-- is that it can be tough to find out if your particular sensor-chip is:
a) compatible
b) functioning correctly
We will look into whether it is reading right-- give me a bit

That should be plenty of processor, to me.