Losing performance! ACK!

Geminiwave

So I was going to enter the DH fastest rig contest with my rig. I was looking at the scores and thought that I actually had a decent chance at it just going off of my old scores...but then I went to benchmark and things were very odd. My performance ratings have been slipping and I figured it was just from all the stuff ive installed on my computer, you know? But lately games have been suffering too. I've noticed little by little more lag in games. It wasnt serious though and it was only with Halo, Farcry, and Doom3. Well this was the last straw. I opened up Aquamark3 and ran it...I got a score of ~28000!!! ITS PATHETIC I TELL YOU! The framerates were so godaweful it made me feel sick!

Is this really just something that could be fixed with a reinstall of the OS? (I need to do it anyway to fix some other shit) or is this because my card is trash and its giving up on me.

Btw my card is a Powercolor 9800SE @ Pro.

Overclocking does absolutely nothing for the tests which makes me wonder what the deal is.

Also the best score I can get in 3dmark2003 is 6287. I use to get 6900. One time even 7000 with some artifacting.

Son_of_Thunder

try formatting, that is if you've already run driver cleaner, cab cleaner, and re-installed chipset and agp drivers.

eggs420

microsoft's oil change == format C:

I've yet to last more than a year on an OS installation that I use daily..It really doesn't come to the point of not booting, but eventually it draaaaaags.

sacrifice

maybe you havent got enough cooling for the gfx card and its cooking? (if youre getting artefacts)

sacrifice

oh yeah not all cards (ati) overclock, my 9600xt doesnt >< (something to do with its drivers o.O)

Shinjikun

If it isn't some crap background application messing with your system's performance I'd say it's time for the oil change as someone put it. Every 3 months or 3,000 miles.

eggs420

I hate suggesting formats too, but when the performance degrades over time more and more, it's usually faster to do a fresh installation.

What I do, to ensure I have all my data I need to keep, is this:

Use partition magic if not done already and make a new few gb partition to hold my stuff. You can use an additional drive or a dvd burner too, depends on what you've got.

Save "Documents and Settings" folder. Then, I can access my software registry keys and everything without worry, restore my outlook profile, etc etc etc. All desktop items and my documents contents go in there, along with user-specific app settings (often). Copy that over to the new partition.

Sometimes I'll keep the windows folder and move it over to the new partition, but thats only if I have some crazy driver stuff going on and I dont want to hunt for them again.

Program Files always gets saved and copied to the backup partition. That folder is easy to clean up, and doesn't cause performance issues really by having things in there.

If you don't save your windows folder, saving the folder WINDOWS\system32\config can be a good idea as you can load those registry hives for hardware data/etc down the road if you need to know something about your previous config.

That's about it! Format during xp installation, and its done. Just remember to unplug yourself from the net when you install the OS until you get a firewall or at least sp2 on there..Avg time is about 18 minutes between attacks, and an unpatched system is exactly what they are looking for. Sucks to get an infection on that brand new OS install before you can even patch it..

Just 2p..Eating breakfast and got a bit carried away I think.

GutterPunk

Okay, if i am right you said you oc'ed ur processor. Did you use AGP lock, because if you didnt you can see performance changes, especially if you touch the bus speeds. Be sure AGP lock is on, when i was ocing by moving the fsb i was getting loss of performance and if i went too far it'd freeze on a shockwave game lol

Son_of_Thunder

hey, lol, i've been using that oil change analogy on my dad for 6 months now

he's a doctor, and the only thing he loves fixing more than people is cars, so it's the best thing i can use to get him to format his pc. 3 years and no format, and he blames me for his pc performance

Shinjikun

That's funny.

I used to be the assistant manager at a Jiffy Lube many moons ago.

Geminiwave

Oh dont worry...the AGP lock is on. And besides that I turned OC off to see what was going on. CPU OCing does do a difference for performance but GPU OCing...it does NOTHING right now except make artifacts. My framerates are EXACTLY the same. its crazy. First I thought it was vsync you know? But that is firmly off.

uhg okay I REALLY dont wanna do this but I guess its time for a format. God when am I gunna do it...I have to do it before monday cause college starts then. BAH.

shame I dont have a DVD burner.

GutterPunk

what a pain i hate doing a format... i am about to do my 2nd one in 2 months

Pman

lol i get 28,000 in aquamark3 but i got a 9600 pro!

Geminiwave

in 2 months?!

why so soon?

Son_of_Thunder

i format once a month

Geminiwave

WHY?! it doesnt seem to make sense. I guess you just have more time than I do though.

the FIRST time I formatted it was so lame. I hate doing it.

Son_of_Thunder

i dunno, it only takes me like, an hour and a half or so. i've got everything backed up so i almost never have to re-d/l anything. the biggest problem is .gcf files for steam because their constantly getting updated and i don't want to use two disks each time to back up the most recent ones. so i end up doing like an hour of d/ling before i can play.

Geminiwave

hahah ouch.

thats a good point though I should check into that.

ACtually I only ever play Counterstrike so i guess that doesnt matter. I'll just DL that.