What does it mean when my computer's performance all of the sudden degrades?

[brinstar117]

Well I have a standard love/hate relationship with my computer. When things are running as they should be, I love my computer, nothing will top the feel of having it run at peak performance. However, when the darned contraption decides to act up... it becomes a pain to deal with.

My system specs are as follows:

PIII 800eb
ASUS CUSL-2
Radeon 32 DDR
512 mb Crucial cas2
60 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 60
40 GB IBM GV

Windows 2000 Professional w/SP2 and DX8a

My machine runs everything I need/want usually without problems. However, just recently my system has decided to crap out on me. Games will no longer run at acceptable speeds! That's the main reason I built/have this machine. It's really strange though, at first I thought it was a video card problem (since Half-Life wouldn't run at a playable speed), however even using a Voodoo 5 5500, things would work fine after a fresh OS install but performance would degrade to the point of unplayable speeds within weeks. Just as using my Radeon with a fresh install has done.

The only thing that can/has remedied this so far is reformatting, however that's something I don't look forward to. I'll only reformat as a last resort. I have defragmented my drives, I have used different versions of drivers for my video card devices, and have even used different OS'es (WinME and Win2K, although I greatly prefer Win2K) but my system always ends up crapping out on me within a few weeks. This is really intolerable. If all computers end up like this... then I can't fathom anyone tolerating such a torturous box.

 

[Stargazer]

Just a thought... I've been having some problems/lockups. Now, downloading the Via drivers for my motherboard worked for me for the most part but I honestly think something is up with the new DX8a... maybe that's something to look into?

 

[brinstar117]

Thanks for your input, I'd agree if this were the only instance, but I've had DX7 on my computer (before DX8 came out) and similar things occurred. Now that I think of it, many of my components have been swapped out of my computer but the only thing that remains constant are my processor, motherboard, and sound card. I wonder if I have a faulty motherboard?

 

[Stargazer]

Well, i personally try to rule out just about everything else before I blame hardware. But its possible. Sounds like you have tried to rule out everything else... sooooo...
I wouldn't go and say its your mobo just yet though. Its very strange that it works for a while ok and then just degrades out. That's quite strange. I wish I could be of more help bro. If I think of anything I'll be sure to post it...

 

[sandorski]

Strange. I was talking to a friend a couple days ago and he was complaining about the same thing with a 1ghz PIII. I suggested to him that the PIII might be throttling itself down because of heat, but I don't think desktop PIIIs do that.

 

[Stargazer]

I was thinking... since the only thing you say helps is reformatting and starting over fresh... that really leads me to believe it has something to do with your hard drive. I can't really think of anything else off hand... It seems to me that you start it out fresh and it works good and then as you are adding things back and such and getting it more filled and used it starts to get junky. I was just thinking you might want to check everything associated with the hard drive. Make sure the cables are good... if you have some extras lying around try swapping them out. I'm sure by now you have already scanned for bad sectors but,if not, do that too. Otherwise, maybe its something to do with the controller on your mobo but I doubt it... it generally takes awhile for those things to wear out. Anyway, if I were you I would just focus on the hard drive because I really can't think of anything else that would cause it to just degrade over time like that.