new system: problem with video or mobo, don't know

[thefish]

First post for long time admirer of the good advice here. But now I have problem I can't solve or find here already discussed. I think the problem is with the motherboard or some video card setting that I am not aware of. The problem is this: when playing games, my framerate drops 50% every 2 seconds. This looks like a pause or like it hangs for a second. It occurs in all my games in the same manner. For example, while playing Medal of Honor with the fps display enabled, it runs at over 90fps constantly except for an every two second hiccup down to 50fps. This happens no matter is going on in the game. I could be staring at a wall with no action on screen at all and the rate drops every 2 seconds like clockwork. This problem has become so annoying since I am using some pretty decent components at totally default settings.

I recently purchased some upgrades with the following specs:

AMD xp2000
Gigabyte 7vaxp VIA KT400 chipset
Samsung 256mb pc3200 ram
Xtasy Geoforce 4 128mb ram

I combined these with a decent case, 400W power supply, 80GB Western Digital drive and some other stuff (CD Burner, DVD, etc). Everything during installation ran fine. I put a clean installation of Windows XP on it including SP1. I have flashed the bios with the latest version, loaded the latest VIA and Nividia (40.71) drivers. BTW, this problem was happening with my games before I updated the drivers from the CD's with the products to the latest releases. Nothing is overclocked on this system at all. CPU runs on 133mhz bus and I have run the RAM at 266 and 333. I am waiting to try overclocking after I work this out.

After the clean install, I added the Geoforce card. First it was a ti4200 Xtasy which had these problems. I thought it was the video card so I took that back and ponied up for the ti4600 Xtasy and still had same problem. Updated the driver - same problem. Change some of the video settings - same problem. I even ran the games on low resolutions and low detail settings - same problem. I have run all these games with no other programs open.

This has happened while running MOH, Max Payne, Madden NFL 2002, NFS Porsche - all at difference resolutions. I have my monitor at 1024x768, 32 bit and 85 hz on a Samsung 955df. The agp bus runs at 4x. My 3dmark 2001SE scores were about 8900 with the ti4200 and 10200 with the ti4600. The graphics with these cards have been great, very sharp - but I don't understand these hiccups in the fps which is very noticable.

For cooling, I have one front intake fan 80mm and one rear exhaust at 80mm. The power supply exhaust feeds from the bottom and I have a thermaltake volcano 9 hs and fan on the chip with thermal grease. The temperature node is on the chip and attached to the fan. Room temp varies from 24-27c, case temp is 36-39c and cpu temp is 49-52c. The CPU volt is 1.82.

Right now I am waiting for advise - please help. If you need more detail, let me know.

 

[WhoDeeny]

Welcome to a brand new Via chipset...

 

[thefish]

So am I supposed to interpret that to mean I should wait for updated VIA drivers and updated mobo bios? I have no problem waiting for the payoff. I suppose I could get a kt266 chip board and try everything out on there. Any body else recognize this problem?

 

[WhoDeeny]

Assuming that is in fact your issue, then yes an update will hopefully address and fix that issue. I can't think of anything that would create those symptoms (and I'm not proclaiming to know it all, far from it) but outside of some app running in the background I couldn't tell you what it is. I do know one thing, VIA's notorious for bad chipsets and the newer a product is, the more bugs its likely to have...

 

[thefish]

I checked and nothing is running in the background while playing the game. I did a minimal boot with only system processes running and still the same problem. Then I rolled back the driver to 30.82 (which appears to work best for most) and still the same. I think I will try to isolate the problem to either software or hardware. The way it is acting it seems to be a software issue because I would think a hardware issue would lead to failure/blue screen. I am going to partition and format a new drive and install Windows 2000, the card and one game only and see what happens from there. If I still have the same problems, then I suppose it is hardware and then I will try some other RAM and then RMA the mobo if I can't find it. I just hate to wait on bios/drives updates and then find out it's errors in the RAM or a bad mobo after I can no longer RMA it. I am on my second g4 card with this so it's unlikely to be the problem. Maybe I will try an ATI card.

 

[spanner]

I would switch to a nforce mobo. Whenever a VIA mobo is being used it tends to be the problem. Does the system access the hard drive during those pauses? As for trying an ATI card over a nvidia card, I think that would only cause more problems.

 

[thefish]

Thanks for the advice. I'll stay away from the ATI cards. Is Nforce 2 available yet - I saw the review but thought it would be a couple of months before it was widely available. Good point on accessing the HD - I do see the HD led blink every few seconds also. That's what could be happening. Right now my main HD is daisy chaining with a 40gb drive and jumped to CS. Perhaps I'll disconnect the slave drive on the cable and see what happens. Is there any utility that will chart my HD access? Does that mean I need more RAM.

BTW, I ran memtest86 3.0 all night with no errors found on my RAM.

 

[thefish]

Added another 256 of ram for a total of 512 running at 266 speed, modified swap file to zero - still no change in problem. This even occurs while running the marquee screensaver.

 

[thefish]

Problem fixed for now I hope. In my process of elimination, I removed a zip drive attached via serial cable, rebooted and it was fine. My system must have been checking the drive every few seconds. Thanks for all your advice. My 3dmark score rose to 11500.