Severe performance lag in certain games

[Tutey]

Please help with this "strange" problem.

It started when I bought a new Samtron 72V monitor, to replace my old 17in TFT which was a struggle to take to LAN parties.
Anyway, I connected it, fired it up, and WinXP correctly detected and installed the native driver. After setting it to 1280x960 60Hz through nView settings, and using the screen's built in "Auto" setting function (which makes it calibrate itself), I fired up some games to test it.
Games such as BF1942, UT2004, and Call of Duty work and look beautiful. I recenly built my rig and the framerates are high.
However, FIFA 2005 never worked again. It runs, but stutters so badly, I swear the FPS is less than 1. Rather than having rendering problems, it looks as though it's dropping frames. It's ridiculously unplayable. I ignored this and just took FIFA 2005 back, thinking it was the game.
Now the problem has surfaced in Need for Speed Underground and NFSU2 as well. It's very annoying as I wanted to play this demo badly.

System specs are the following. Athlon64 3400, DFI LanpartyUT 250Gb, 512MB RAM, Leadtek Ti4200 8x, 36GB Raptor and 120GB Caviar, DVD Drive and CD-RW Drive.

I can provide stuff like SiSoft Sandra reports, DxDiag reports, etc.

Thanks in advance,

Tute

 

[asm0deus]

that is a weird one, it would seem like a setting in the games that are having problems could potentially cause that (though unlikely, maybe you have FSAA enabled), i usually wouldnt blame a monitor on a problem like that, maybe try different resoltions and refresh rates, perhaps also it could be a driver and/or directx thing. maybe try reinstalling the newest directx and/or video card driver. wish i had a solid lead for you but a full system analysis/diagnostics might reveal some bottlenecks. good luck!

 

[Uncle Bob]

ditto, I've never heard of a monitor change affecting game frame rates. I'm not a big gamer myself but couldn't your bottleneck be the Ti4200? It's a bit old-tech as far as games go

did FIFA2005 play OK before you changed monitor?

 

[Tutey]

Thanks. I took the plunge and went for a full XP reinstall. And it's now fixed. I never got to the bottom of the problem, although www.windowsupdate.com keeps hassling me to install monitor drivers, which I refuse. Maybe it could've been this?

How strange. Thanks anyway

[Edit] The Ti is surprisingly fast, I have the CS Source Beta and the framerates are ~60fps so that's not the problem, everything was running beautifully before. And, whilst XP is a great OS, I can't help but feel it's a bit shaky when you change hardware.

 

[Uncle Bob]

OK, nice to know you got sorted

 

[Tutey]

Hey, sorry to say it but it's back!

I got up this morning, booted up the computer, and the problem is back! It's the same games... NFSU, NFSU2, and FIFA2005. The severe lag, all from games which worked fine just 2 days ago. The monitor drivers were never installed to my knowledge, so that can't be the problem. I'm starting to suspect the Ti4200 is dodgy, my mate tells me the cooler's been replaced once already, but it's strange it does this and yet in BF1942 and even CS:Source it's flying.

Another thing i've noticed, the 61.77 drivers for nVidia Geforce Ti4200 w/AGP 8x are NOT WHQL Certified. Does this really make a difference? On the nVidia site it claims this card is supported by those drivers.

It just seems strange that the card works so beautifully and chucks frames out smoothly on even brand new and unreleased games, yet it does this on some others. I think it's safe to eliminate the new monitor, even though it "seemed" to trigger these symptoms.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated, asmodeus, uncle bob, what do you suggest?

Thanks in advance,

Tute

 

[Sideswipe001]

I would eliminate the monitor for sure. Do you have another other computers around to test the video card on? And did you change ANYTHING in the last two days? Install any other software, etc?

 

[Tutey]

I can't test it anywhere else unfortunately. Not at the moment anyway, until early next week. All i've done in the past 2 days is transport it 200 miles by train, I tried my best to make sure it didn't get bumped around, which i'm sure it didn't.

As for software, well it was defragged by Diskeeper, but nothing new as far as games. I tested it and it worked fine since UT2004 and BF.

Tute

[Edit] Tried another monitor. Problem is still there.

 

[Tiamat]

Long shot: could norton be running in the background?

 

[Tutey]

Still does it. I'm gonna try some older nVidia drivers tonight and see if that helps. I've been told that the newest ones are quite dodgy.

Tute