HELP!

[Seanicy]

I have an AMD Athlon 64X2 @ 2.7GH, MSI 750a SLI MOBO, Mois 500W PSU, 4GB Ram, EGVA 9800GTX+, running Vista 64 bit....Based on these specs when I play any game could be GTA4, Burnout Paradise, Assassins Creed my CPU is always at 80-90% used. When I bought the PC it was put together and shipped to me with overclocking to the CPU @ 3.2GH and with 2X9500GT. When I recieved the PC nothing was stable and even trying to install the service pack 1 for Vista it would get 3/4 of the way done and out of nowhere the PC would crash. I went into my BIOS and loaded optimized defaults and now the CPU was stable. I did an RMA for the 2X9500GT for an EVGA 9800GTX+ 512mb. I was able to load up windows and install the SP1 and all seems well. Now I have my 9800GTX+ installed and it seems like the CPU is holding back the video card. Is there any way to get the overclocking back the way it was? I am no computer genius and have no idea how to overclock. Any help would be great. All the game i play are all on medium settings can't go to high b/c of frame loss/ lag. The MOBO I have is NVIDIA based and is Hybrid SLI which I have enabled in the BIOS at 256mb to give me a boost in which it seems like it is not. I will try to get a screen shot of my specs using the CAN I RUN IT TOOL. Sorry for the lack of info its b/c I am at work. All the drivers are current for video/mobo

[staticbuddha]

Its a bit hard to say at this time, but here are a few things I would check

1) most people have there antivirus to check the machien when they switch it on , so when you boot up your machine at 6pm after work , you laod your games and bang your antivirus is also running in the background. Make sure it isnt scanning as this will use up CPU and kill the speed of your hardware.

2) Make sure there is no spyware on your machine , maybe use spybot or adaware both are free

3) Temputure, If your CPU, Ram is over heating your poformance will drop drmaticly , Does you bios have temputure readings?

4) Make sure you have th latest Nvidia drivers, and also that none of your motherboard drivers etc need updating??

5) Open task manager when you in a game and check the processes to see whats happening, what is using it

6) Make sure programs like, msn , phone apps and all that are shut down

7) Maybe goto Start menu/run/ type in msconfig - Goto startup - click disable all , reboot and load game again, this will stop all you backgorund programs from starting you can do the same to enable it all or select which ones you want enabled

8) right click on MY COmputer (on desktop) - properties - Advanced tab - Performace settings - Advanced tab - make sure its adjusted to best for programs not background services and memory for programs

hope some of this might help, if you get stuck on any either ask or try youtube theres tons of videos,

[oldskool73]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 826,00.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you google a bit I'm sure you can find a guide for your particular mobo.

But... I don't think you'll really notice a great difference between 2.7 & 3.2, staticbuddha's ideas for cleaning up your system are more likely to help.

[Seanicy]

Thanks for the info guys. I am pretty much running on a clean install of Vista. I currently have no Anti_virus protection installed not even Spybot yet. I am trying to get the most performance right now before I call it a day if you know what I mean. I had some driver issues with Assassins Creed and Ubi told me it was my drivers. So I will uninstall them later 182.08 See I was thinking its my CPU bottlenecking my card. I will try what you suggest and post back with my full specs. Thanks again guys!

[Seanicy]

I updated my specs in my signature. Please tell me what you think. Is this a good setup? Or is something causing a problem?

[staticbuddha]

thats sounds like a good system you should hve no problems running things,

Its better then mine and I have no troubles, however Crysis kicks the poop out of mine, its a bit better since the new nvidia drivers..

oh another think your PC dont back onto a radiator, common issue as it will be sucking and blowing hot air but defo dont sound like its something like this, somethings eating your CPU, yum yum

[Seanicy]

Yes something is eating my CPU but I have no idea what it is. I was told today to check my BIOS and make sure I have the PCI-E as the default display in which I don't think I do since I loaded optimized defaults. About the sucking and blowing of hot air I really don't think that should be a problem since my MOBO has its own circular piping w/ a huge fan and has really good airflow. I am thinking its something in the BIOS cause when I received the PC the first time the CPU was OC and since the first time I started it up and tried to install SP1 for Vista 64-bit the PC kept on crashing with no luck besides downclocking the CPU

[Neil]

Here is a crazy idea.

Check the Vista power settings. Maybe the OS is down-throttling your CPU. I had this problem before.

Regards,
Neil

[Seanicy]

Neil, you were right about the power managment. I did an install of the hybrid sli drivers and enabled it in my BIOS. I think it is acctually working better with hybrid on. I say this because I tried playing Left 4 Dead before I enabled hybrid sli and the before and after was no comparison. Even Crysis ran smooth for me which was not the case before. For some reason though if I go into my Nvidia control pannel and click on system info at the bottom of the window, when I looked at the onboard GPU which is 750a SLI, it was telling me I had 1,989mb memory onboard. Does that sound right? Almost 2GB of video memory onboard just seems like overkill. I checked to see if any settings were causing this in the BIOS and found nothing. I also changed the windows power managment to Performance in which the CPU is 40C in the BIOS. Well thanks for your help and we can consider this problem solved!
Oh by the way Left 4 dead and Burnout Paradise are F'n amazing. The amount of detail that is created is unbelievable. Thanks for all your help and tips, it worked out great for me. Consider this problem solved!