Help!! Computer just slowed down 50% !!

[Catbird]

I recently upgraded a bit and replaced a few things on my computer. I did the following.

changed the Abit KT7A raid to an Asus A7M266
changed from g force 2 to G force 3
changed from 384 megs of PC-150 SDRAM to 512 of DDR
Changed 1.2 T bird to 1.4 T bird.

Everything went well, all benchmarks went up as expected, and about the amount I expected, and the memory scores jumped as well. I always use several benchmarks, including 3DMark 2000, 3DMark 2001, QuakeIII Arena, several memory testers, etc. I ran the computer for a week, all was well, I changed nothing else since then except I added a USB ethernet hub, which boosted my D/L speeds from 40 K/s to over 100 K/s, and downloaded a few games like Max Payne. There are no conflicts , irq problems, etc.

However, while running tests a few days ago, I noticed that my performance has been cut in half!! I do not know exactly when this happened. I have tried everything, double checked everything in the bios, reinstalled direct X 8.a, even reinstalled Windows ME and reinstalled the AMD Mini port driver. Nothing works. It was running fine for a week, then POOFF!! I even used the ME "restore point" function, ran reg clean, etc but none of that worked either. CPU and Mb are running cool.

I am not near as well schooled as most of the members on this board, but I have built a lot of gaming computers and have learned my way around the bios pretty well by now but frankly I am stumped. I know there is a lot of "should, should not" stuff going on about installing the 4 in 1 VIA drivers, I tried it both ways when I first fired up the computer but the scores were still high either way so I do not think it has to do with the VIA drivers but if anyone knows, how do I ( can I) unstall them?

I would appreciate any ideas any of you have to keep me from having to format this rig, since it is a raid 0 setup with 60 gigs of stuff on it, I would hate to D/L all those Unreal maps again!! Although the scores were never really as high as I had wished for, to give you an example, I went from 125fps in Quake III arena to 85fps!! Lost about 40% in 3dmark2001. I did double check to make sure the V sync was disabled.

Any ideas at all? I will try anything, please let me know if you need anything else from me. I am using the 12.90 drivers for my G Force 3 but have tried several others, does not help or hurt. Thanks guys!!

 

[Bojax]

I know trying to pinpoint a problem can be exhausting.but it must be done. Have you tried disconnecting everything except the video card?It's possible you got a coruption while downloading Max payne. or anything else from a warez for that matter.
I also know that window's ME is not a favorite here on AT but i am not saying that is your problem.I alway's start with the bare minimum when diagnosing a problem. Only the basic's. Video, one stick of ram etc.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Help!! Computer just slowed down 50% !!

Do you have the "TURBO" button on ?

 

[Catbird]

Felix, I tried it both way, no change with the Turbo button. The first week it was on, I tried setting it to normal to see if that helped, but it did not so I switched it back to Turbo. SPD has detected that my DDR is CAS 2.5 apparently since that is what it said and is greyed out, still reports 512 ( Samsung) megs but looking at soft Sandra and other memorys testers, it appears that my problem is in the memory, maybe a stick is going bad? I can reseat it ( big task, I have a broken back and it is a HUGE case), but I hear what you are saying Bojax. Thanks. One interesting thing, soft sandra, while running the tuneup part of the tests, locked up on the network part of the test, perhaps the first thing I need to do is install the USB ethernet device and use the old pci card? Hope that is not it, gained a huge increase in speed with it compared to the PCI card I had. Thanks again.

 

[Catbird]

Found it guys, it was the new USB D-Link 10/100M fast Ethernet adapter, since I uninstalled it and unpluged the USB cable and went back to my cheap ethernet card, got back all my points I lost. Should have know better, should have checked it first.

However, I would still love to use it since it nearly tripled my D/L times. It is an external device that plugs directly into my external cable modem so the only thing attached to the computer was the power cable from the USB port. I did not bother to take the old PCI ethernet card out, I disabled it in all hardware in the device mamager. Do you have any idea if I would still have the same problem if I pulled the card out completly then hooked up the USB? I could not find any conflicts with it checked " disabled" but I must have had one. I can pull the side off and find out, it is just hard on me and I wondered if any of you might know off hand? I thought you could have a bunch of USB things hooked up and they would not cause any conflicts, guess maybe I was wrong. Thanks for the ideas!! I appreciate it!!