460 GTX Hawk - 'Pauses'?

VtPC83

Senior member
Mar 5, 2008
447
12
81
I just got a new MSI 460GTX Hawk from Newegg. I read that it is an awesome 'middle range' card. My system specs below:

C2D E6750 @ 3.2
P5NE-SLI MB
3 GB DDR2 XMS2
460GTX @ 780

When playing games the FPS occasionally drops to sub 10 (every 30 secs to a minute) and then shoots back up to 40-60. It doesn't stay for very long, half a second or so, but definitely enough to create a jarring effect on the game I am playing.

Question:
Is this due to the bottleneck I know my processor is creating for the card or is this due to a malfunction with the card? I get no artifacts, etc. If neither of these are true does anyone have any ideas? (I can get Vid Card data tonight from GPUZ if needed)
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,118
58
91
Install MSI Afterburner and have it running in the background while gaming (specifically making the graphs) . When you experience a fps slowdown, exit the game and switch over the the afterburner and check out the graphs.

See what happened to GPU utilization, memory usage, and GPU clockspeed during the slowdown.

If you are running out of vram (unlikely, but good to confirm) then the slowdown can happen. If your card is overheating or underpowered by the PSU then the clockspeed will have likely been lowered and you'll see that.

If you have enough free vram and the clockspeed stayed "high" during the slowdown, but your GPU utilization dropped then its time to look to some other bottleneck in your system like your hard drive sleeping or something.

If gpu utilization remained high during the slowdown then its simply a case of your GPU not having enough performance to muscle through whatever the game was requiring it to do at that time when you experienced the slowdown.
 

VtPC83

Senior member
Mar 5, 2008
447
12
81
Thanks for the reply Idontcare. I will take a look tonight at the graphs while playing. I get these pauses in FO3 mostly (tried ARMA2 and that stays constant).

My PSU is a SolyTech 600 Watt PSU (review) which, according to that review, should be more than adequate for my system so I don't think it is that.

It's just disappointing, I can definitely see the benefit with being able to play games at >40 but these pauses every once and awhile are driving me crazy...
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
0
what games? you only mentioned two and one of them was not hitching. for Fallout 3 that is a common complaint. I think it had something to do with the 775 chipsets. I say that because both Fallout 3 and New Vegas would hitch every few seconds walking around on my E8500 pc but that does not happen on my new pc even with an 8600gt. now Fallout 3 and New Vegas only hitch a bit when coming into a new area which is normal for that crappy engine. they actually have a mod to help with that stutter.

EDIT: oops, just saw that you said it drops to under 10fps so that is not normal at all.
 
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VtPC83

Senior member
Mar 5, 2008
447
12
81
Well damn, where is that mod? I've also played BFBC2 which seems to be ok. Maybe I'm just overreacting, expecting more than what the card (and my system) can actually output.

I have a slew of games to try out now that I have a new video card (a time honored tradition for me) so I will keep testing.

Edit - Found the mod, going to try that to see if that is the issue here.
 
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Spikesoldier

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 2001
6,766
0
0
you maybe running out of system memory.

try playing a game with task manager open in the background and see how much memory is being used.