Problems with gaming

[Nicoli]

Hi, I'm a first time poster here, so go easy on me.

Recently, I've been having troubles with my computer, outlined below:

AMD Athlon64 3200+
Radeon 9800 Pro 128
1 gig RAM
250 gig S-ATA HD
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound
Windows XP service pack 2
And a few other details not too important for this topic

To get to the point, my computer has begun hitching and stuttering, badly, in most games I play, noticeably Tribes: Vengeance, UT2k4, Halo, and Postal 2. Half Life, not so much.

I don't know what's causing these problems. I've ripped my RAM out and dusted it off, and the slots they sit in. Same with the vid card. Everything hardware-wise is sitting nice and tight in their respective spots. My heat never gets above 55 degrees Celsius, far below the 65 heat spec for the A64. Voltage is automatically controlled, and hasn't been a problem until now.

Things I have tried BIOS-wise: BIOS caching disabled (nothing), AGP fastwrites disabled (still nothing, but will try again)
Windows-wise: Various memory management tweaks with Tweak XP and X-teq X-Setup

I'm running out of ideas, please help me out.

-Nico

Edit: Listening more carefully sans-headphones, there seems to be a rather loud "click!" from my computer whenever it hitches like this, occuring as soon as the graphics start moving again.

 

[CobraJet]

Is this on a periodic interval or randonly. Mine does this one about 1 second intervals, that like yours?

 

[Nicoli]

Sorry I haven't replied, I thought I had it under control...

No, it's not regular, in fact it's very irregular depending on the game. It happens in, say, UT2k4 sometimes not very often, sometimes almost constantly when I so much as try and move. I move for a few seconds and BAM, a long hitch. That clicking still unnerves me, and I don't know where it's coming from.

 

[ZachMarius]

Does the clicking happen just during games? You might want to run a game with the side of the comp off and when the clicking starts start looking for the clicking. I don't recommend touching anything while your comp is running though.

Good Luck

 

[LiLithTecH]

What Motherboard and BIOS version are you using?

What type\make RAM modules?

 

[Nicoli]

The clicking happens mostly during games. I think I heard it all of once outside of a game, but don't take my word on that. I already tried to listen for it to no avail; my best guess is somewhere on the mobo.

Speaking of Motherboard, I have an MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R, latest BIOS (version 1.8). My RAM is unknown for the make, it's a pair of Kingston 512mb sticks (I ordered the barebone PC from AICMicro, and they have it labelled as Kingston ValueRAM 512MB PC3200 400MHz DDR SDRAM. My best guess is that this means Kingston 512MB 400MHz DDR PC3200 DIMM 3-3-3, as found on their site, which is the same timing settings benchmark utilities return from my RAM when set on 'auto'