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Some games lag / freezes from time to time when playing.

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lonerunner

I have a weird problem that i noticed lately on my pc. The games are freezing from time to time for a few seconds like 2-3 seconds than continue to run, and i noticed it only happens with a picture while sounds continue to run. And some time they just lag like running on 10 frames but the steam with his frame counter option reports that it runs smooth on 30-40 frames. And i recently played Torchlight 2 and Test drive unlimited 2, i didn't noticed this on playing Trine 2.

My pc is not so bad, and i constantly clean it off of dust. I monitored temperature and everything is fine.

I have

Nvidia GTS 250 graphic (1GB DDR3 256-bit 128 cuda cores... the graphic is capable to even run some newer games on max)
4GB DDR 2
AMD X2 2700 mhz

It is a few years old pc build and nothing changed since that except few months ago i bought new SSD because my old HDD was dying. I don't know if it have some impact because before i had HDD where all my data is and steam and windows and games all was installed on the same partition.

Now i have SSD and Windows on it, and steam games are installed on second HDD.

Edit
My wife have Radeon 4850 with 512 mb and almost identical pc and she runs the Test drive unlimited 2 with no problems lags freezing etc... and my graphic card is faster than hers. This started to happening now. I didn't played games for like 2 months ago. And at that time i played resident evil revelations with no problem and lags/freezing.

Edit Again:

Could it be maybe CPU something, bad driver or something because when it freezes i hear like cooler of CPU slows down for a second than speed up again.

New edit :)

So as i read on the net someone suggested to change my sound settings, so i changed it to 16bit, 48000 hz and unchecked exclusive mode. I also reinstalled my graphic card drivers and tested it with Test Drive Unlimited 2. The game now runs a bit smoother on 15 min play it freezes only 2 times for a few seconds. but now the frame dropped from 30-40 as before to 25-35 and it have some black hickups like when you blink from time to time. so it could be driver related issue ill reinstall motherboard drivers too and see what will happen.

9 years ago*

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19 Comments
SquishedPotatoe

Sounds like not enough ram on that video card

9 years ago
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lonerunner

I don't think so, it's 1GB DDR3 on it. The graphic is pretty solid, at least was at the time i bought it, and it was able to run even newer games at medium or high details.

9 years ago*
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romv

Not enough VRAM

9 years ago
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lonerunner

I did played games before on same setup and pc, and i had no issues before, i don't think 1gb ram is not enough for game like test drive unlimited specially when i was playing it before i didn't had any issues with lags.

9 years ago
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DukeyDowns

Trust everyone when they tell you the 1GB of VRAM is the issue. Lots of games nowadays require more than that, doesn't matter what your past with the issue was.

9 years ago
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Pangalaktichki

Hm, that GPU should run even Titanfall (been playing it myself for the past several months). I'd check whether an application causes conflicts, some antiviruses used to cause problems when loading games. If you have any benchmark app (unigine or something similar) test it with that.

9 years ago
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NFSkil

Remember a GTS250 it's a renamed 9800GTX+ = HD4850 in performance ;)

I've played TDU2 with my HD4850 512MB in medium setting without lags, but using a Q9550 @ 3,4GHz
For testing purposes, you can try installing one of those games in the SSD.

9 years ago
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lonerunner

I didn't know that, although the specs says 9800 is a bit slower, i have 9700GTS on my laptop and 4850 on my wife pc, both are 512 ddr3 but mine turns out it's a little bit faster. I thought of that that SSD or because second is HDD might be a problem, but honestly i don't know when and what drivers i did installed when i re installed my windows, and i bought SSD like in november and reinstalled my windows at that time maybe i forgot some drivers, or maybe windows have some different cache, read/write buffer when SSD comes to use. Ill specifically test with Test Drive Unlimited 2 game by copy it to my SSD drive in default Steam folder installation and see. But first i reinstalled my graphic drivers now and test it to see if it fixed something.

9 years ago
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StraussVanDor

I would put my money on that HDD. Try with a problematic game on the SSD.

9 years ago*
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Jhobzky

+1

9 years ago
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CommissarStrayed

CPU overheating or fans clogged up with dust? I know you've said you checked but are you 100% positive?

Only thing I can think of that makes sense if you VRAM is meant to be enough.

Or SSD is out of harddrive space and not enough free cached memory to run the game properly?

9 years ago*
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lonerunner

It might be overheating but it would shut down at 70c as i set it in my bios, and i cleaned it recently so no dust. I clean my pc's every 3 months :)

9 years ago
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CommissarStrayed

Hmm random question but motherboard? I recall there was a driver issue with some Dell motherboards recently where it caused either fans or multicore CPU's to start working incorrectly. It's a stab in the dark but it's only thing I can think of.

9 years ago
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lonerunner

Yea i had some hickups and cpu (specially with amd cpu) issues on some motherboards before. but not on this one. to cause cpu to go up and down on ussage incorrectly. I just reinstalled graphic driver and it's a bit better, ill reinstall motherboard drivers too to see if it will work better. Btw my motherboard is a crap it's Biostar A780G.

9 years ago
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jmif

Did you optimice the system for a SSD? if you follow a tutorial, many of them told you to disable the pagin file (virtual memory). I dont think that this could be your problem, because when you are out of memory windows told you, but you can try.

9 years ago
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Khalaq
(Senior Moderator)

I had a similar problem, years past. It turned out to be the drivers, in large part. This is something that just started happening recently, right? And the games worked fine before you updated your drivers? That could be it.

9 years ago
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lonerunner

That worked most of the problem, i have a minor problem now with some flickering and black screen from time to time, you can read my other comment below :)

9 years ago
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uprauda

Video cards have fan and can accumulate dust too, I had to open my HD5870 to clean it,
also I dont believe in updating drivers, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
for video I use AMD 13.152.0.0 and catalyst 13.9 (09-18-2013) and they run both old and new games alike
Also shutdown at 70c is way too low... I use PC Probe (old asus software, came with MB) and can see CPU and MB temps on desktop all the time (also has an alarm function for whatever temp I set)
1GB DDR3 VRAM is not the problem, only a few brand new games want more, Shadow of Mordor or Carmaggedon Reincarnation for example
If truly needed, an easy "free" (adware, easily avoided) driver updater is IOBit Driver Booster 2. The paid version also offers driver backup and restore. I have the free version, it says all my drivers are out of date but they're all working just fine as is.

9 years ago*
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lonerunner

I know about the fans, the motherboards have them too(but mine don't have it) and power supplies have them, i clean all that regularly, and from time to time i check the paste(i think that's the word) under the coolers of cpu, gpu, motherboard chips, and put the new one if old one is hard and dry. I know 70 is a low temperature but i had an issues with breaking amd processors before with overheating although mine is supposed to be able to take up to 100c but better safe than sorry, usual temperature when on high usage is about 60c to 65c.

I have just tried some software called DriverPack Solution and updated all the drivers it showed me and the game (i tested on Test Drive Unlimited 2) now runs smooth on 1920x1080 on all med all the freezing are gone but now i feel some flickering and black screens from time to time. It could be because i connected my tv over dvi to hdmi converter because this card don't have hdmi and possible refresh rate don't match.

9 years ago
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Closed 9 years ago by lonerunner.