Do I really need to upgrade?

[KeithTalent]

I've recently started getting some serious frame drops in certain games, mainly in Giana Sisters and Team Fortress 2 where the games slow down to a crawl. I can't tell the actual FPS in Giana Sisters, but in TF2 it will spike up to over a 100+ FPS in certain areas, but once I go out into the battle field, it drops down into the teens and even lower, making it nearly unplayable.

I've updated my drivers and have nothing going on with respect to malware or anything (at least as far as I can tell), so is my system really that outdated for these games or did something change in TF2 to make it more resource heavy? I'd been playing it maxed for ages and this issue only came up in the past few months.

Relevant parts I am running (everything stock, never overclocked):

Intel Core i5 2500K Quad Core CPU @ 3.3
Powercolor Radeon HD 6970 880MHZ 2GB 5.5GHZ GDDR5
MSI P67A-C43 DDR3 Motherboard
8 GB of DDR3 RAM (forget the brand)

So do I need to upgrade? Anyone have any ideas on this? Thanks.

KT

 

[master_shake_]

update your gpu and overclock your cpu.

before you overclock get a new board, there are no vrm heatsinks on yours.

problem solved.

 

[KeithTalent]

Well I'm not overclocking anything, but thanks anyway.

So my system is really that out of date and I should not be able to run those games maxed out? They don't strike me as the most demanding games, but I guess it has been a few years since I bought those parts. :hmm:

KT

 

[mnewsham]

If I can max out skyrim with my rig, I see no reason why TF2 should be slowing you down that much. It's the same game that's been out for ages, and AFAIK resource requirements haven't gone up.

 

[KeithTalent]

If I can max out skyrim with my rig, I see no reason why TF2 should be slowing you down that much. It's the same game that's been out for ages, and AFAIK resource requirements haven't gone up.

That's what I thought. So any ideas on why I may be having issues?

KT

 

[z1ggy]

Sounds like something fishy is going on... Your rig should handle that game plenty fine.

Are you running any programs in the background while you game?

 

[KeithTalent]

Sounds like something fishy is going on... Your rig should handle that game plenty fine.

Are you running any programs in the background while you game?

Usually just Chrome, MSE, CCC, and I think that's it? I'll have to take a closer look when I get home.

KT

 

[DSF]

I agree with everyone who has said something is wrong. TF2 should play just fine even on lesser hardware than what you have.

master_shake_'s advice might just end up wasting money.

A few common Steam game fixes strike me as worth a try.

1) Backup clientregistry.blob somewhere else and then delete it, forcing Steam to redownload it. Google this if you want specific step-by-step instructions.
2) Play with your "rates". Again google TF2 rates and you'll get more info than you ever wanted.
3) Toggle the multicore rendering option and see if it makes a difference.

 

[toughtrasher]

Try closing out those programs while you play TF2.

Also, I remember playing the game last year and there were common problems of low FPS, so I'm not sure if they fixed that or not. Definitely overclock though, it seems like you hardware is aging.

 

[KeithTalent]

OK, thanks guys. Definitely not overclocking, but I will try those other steps listed above.

KT

 

[DaveSimmons]

Can you alt-tab out of TF2? If so, try running Task Manager while TF2 is slow to see what other processes are running. Also check the network traffic.

Remember to show all users.

 

[toughtrasher]

I remember Skype being an issue too if you're running TF2

 

[DSF]

Try closing out those programs while you play TF2.

Also, I remember playing the game last year and there were common problems of low FPS, so I'm not sure if they fixed that or not. Definitely overclock though, it seems like you hardware is aging.

Aging hardware? A 2500K is more than competent for any Source Engine game.

 

[KeithTalent]

Can you alt-tab out of TF2? If so, try running Task Manager while TF2 is slow to see what other processes are running. Also check the network traffic.

Remember to show all users.

I can alt-tab out without any problems but yeah, I will check to see what else is running and eating up while in game. Was rushing this morning, so did not get a chance to look. Thanks.

I remember Skype being an issue too if you're running TF2

Interesting. I don't use Skype though, so that should not be a problem.

KT

 

[mnewsham]

Yeah I would monitor CPU usage, GPU usage, temps, etc. See where your faults are, then assess from there.

 

[destrekor]

Windows can sometimes get bogged down with bad drivers or screwed up registry entries. The longer you have a Windows installation, especially if you upgrade to newer versions and continue to go through software and peripheral changes on the same "original" installation, the more prone you are to instances like this where you get unexplained performance loss.

I've always been of the mindset that it CAN be prevented, but more importantly, it CAN be discovered and fixed if it does occur. The reality, however, is that even the most experienced pros can fail to actually find the real result.
I myself am not at all sure of the many ways to find and fix deep issues like that, but I do know there are communities that will request any number of system logs and results from third-party utilities. Such folks may never be able to find the issue either, but I've seen some weird solutions to such generic problems.

I think I had a keyboard driver causing conflicts that crashed Battlefield 3 (or was it 4? hmm) that came out of nowhere at one point. That was a bitch to track down. Who thinks to uninstall a keyboard driver? lol
That's what led me to start looking far more carefully inside Device Manager whenever the weirdest problems start occurring. I think I have some kind of driver conflict yet again for a monitor calibration utility and device, but only with one piece of software (the bundled software works fine). I haven't been able to squash that one yet, which is infuriating.
I've been tempted to nuke this installation, but I've had so many things installed and customized and calibrated and whatnot... I absolutely dread the slow restoration to normalcy, especially since some things wouldn't even get re-done and re-fixed until I got around to something I took a long break from (like racing wheel and configuration changes for racing simulations - which alone can be nightmarish).

 

[KeithTalent]

Hmm, yeah, to be honest I never really delve into Device Manager all that often anymore. There very well could be conflicts I'm not aware of, though I don't really update drivers or anything all that often; I only tend to do that when issues crop up.

I guess you never know with all of those Windows Updates. After running Win 7 since it was released, there very well could be all kinds of crap built up. I will run through some diagnostics tomorrow, taking some of the advice here. Hopefully that will help clear things up, otherwise I will be back asking for more help!

KT

 

[KeithTalent]

So I uninstalled MSE since it seemed to be hogging resources whTle TF2 was running, but it did not do much. Then I just ran some clean up stuff including the Windows clean up tool...and now I can't even start my PC. It spins up but then it just shuts back down before anything even pops up on the screen. Good times.

I'm going to bed. :\

KT

 

[nsafreak]

Ugh, well I guess you could see if you can at least get into safe mode but it sounds like one of the clean up tools cleaned up something that it shouldn't have. At this point it may be less time consuming to simply do a re-install of Windows. Save any data that you can access, wipe the drive and re-install.

 

[destrekor]

Ugh, well I guess you could see if you can at least get into safe mode but it sounds like one of the clean up tools cleaned up something that it shouldn't have. At this point it may be less time consuming to simply do a re-install of Windows. Save any data that you can access, wipe the drive and re-install.

That just got me thinking:
What version of Windows, exactly?


I haven't worked with recovery options in Windows 8, and I think it has changed some... and a lot of people unknowingly lost a lot of restore/refresh capability when upgrading to Windows 8.1 by not creating a new restore/install image/drive... I didn't, like an idiot.


If prior to Windows 8, you get a few options for sure. You might be able to select Boot from Last Known Good Configuration, which can work some magic.

Either from Safe Mode or from installation media, you can also use the Restore Point feature, which if the previous option does not fix it, this route has a very high chance of success for this kind of issue.

Lastly, you can also run a Repair install from the install media, or if that some how fails, you can then do an upgrade in place (I think... these two are basically the same thing, the Repair install is just a fast-track version iirc... been a long while).

I cannot see any of those options making the situation any worse. As in, it should get you back to where were you, AND I cannot see performance being any worse at that point. If you did some good cleanup and got one file you shouldn't have, perhaps performance might be a little better once you repair the system files or whatever is screwing with your boot process.

 

[mfenn]

So I uninstalled MSE since it seemed to be hogging resources whTle TF2 was running, but it did not do much. Then I just ran some clean up stuff including the Windows clean up tool...and now I can't even start my PC. It spins up but then it just shuts back down before anything even pops up on the screen. Good times.

I'm going to bed. :\

KT

Normally I would suspect the power supply for that sort of issue, but since you were having performance problems beforehand, it makes me think that it's not the PSU. (PSU issues would not change the performance of the PC.)

So now I'm thinking motherboard or GPU, leaning towards GPU. Unfortunately you have one of the original Sandy Bridge chipsets which doesn't give access to the IGP on your CPU, so you'll need a spare GPU to test with. Do you happen to have (or can borrow) one?

 

[aigomorla]

+1 on reformat / reinstall windows.

 

[destrekor]

+1 on reformat / reinstall windows.

I always considered this the proverbial throwing in of the towel.
I refuse to believe a Windows installation is ever so far gone that you can't manually bring it back to health.

It's just... how long do you wrangle your brain, and/or the brains of others online, before you begin to believe it is indeed hopeless?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating against it, and it can be the better idea, especially when it looks like the time to repair it will take longer than the time to start over and bring it back close to what you had.

Or you reach the point where frustration finally boils over.

 

[biostud]

I always considered this the proverbial throwing in of the towel.
I refuse to believe a Windows installation is ever so far gone that you can't manually bring it back to health.

It's just... how long do you wrangle your brain, and/or the brains of others online, before you begin to believe it is indeed hopeless?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating against it, and it can be the better idea, especially when it looks like the time to repair it will take longer than the time to start over and bring it back close to what you had.

Or you reach the point where frustration finally boils over.

While I do tend to agree (I also like looking for problems), then time consuming wise a fresh install is sometimes faster than debugging until the problem is found.

 

[destrekor]

While I do tend to agree (I also like looking for problems), then time consuming wise a fresh install is sometimes faster than debugging until the problem is found.

't'is true.

I've personally been staving it off for some time. I really should, but dammit, I'm stubborn and really, really just want to tackle the issue my own way.

It's like reverse laziness. I don't want to do all the past work AGAIN, so you know what I'm going to do? Far, far more work, more painful and brain-racking work, in order to prevent re-doing past work. :biggrin:

Sometimes I hate myself. lol