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[BigMike]

For those interested in this sort of thing, I have developed the strangest problem with my computer you have ever seen. I am in the process of trying to narrow the problem down to either the motherboard, or the processor. If you want to take a crack at guessing which is bad, then here is my system, and my problem:

MCI K7T266 pro motherboard
AMD AthlonXP 1600|PLS| 1.4 gig cpu
PC2100 DDR ram - 256K
ATI Radeon 8500 video card
Sound blaster live
Network card
ATI tuner card.

Here's the STRANGE problem: When playing 3D accelerated games, such as Jedi Knight Outcast, or Medal of Honor AA, I get very fast framerates - until I turn and face an animated object(s) such as AI characters. For example, if I turn and face my computer controlled teamates in medal of honor, my framerate drops to near zero. It becomes a slide show. Turn away from them, and my framerate shoots back up to normal. Better yet, the characters don't even have to be visible! If there is an enemy in a building in front of me, but he is not visible, my framerate still drops to near zero if I am just facing the direction of the building he is in!

Keep on mind that this problem just started. A week ago, all was fine in the same games. I was sure it was simply a driver issue, so I updated all my drivers. No help. Tried a different video card, no help. Tried different memory sticks, didn't help. Updated my MB bios, didn't help. I even backed up my hard drive to a ghost file, and did a complete re-install of windows, didn't help. Now I am stuck with having to decide whether its my processor, or motherboard. How on earth am I suppose to know? I showed the problem to a friend who is a professional programmer, and he just scratched his head. He had never seen anything like it. I called a computer technician at a local computer store, and he didn't have a clue. Anybody want to throw out a guess, before I pony up the bucks for new hardware?

[Mirko]

Did you check the CPU?
If I read you right, the games slow down if the CPU has to work (AI). The graphics are rendered by the video card and as your fps are high, there should be no problem.
Did you change some BIOS-Settings? Try setting them to defaults.
Did you change some hardware?

[Swordsman74]

Interesting...I'm not any type of hardware expert, just my tech support experience.

My first guess is it is something with your video card.  It seems to handle high frame rates on a limited amount of data, but bogs down with larger amounts of data.  That could be related to the processor or even the memory modules on your graphics board.  Depending on your finances (and ethics) there could be an easy test: buy a new graphics card (same one) from a place that doesn't have restocking fees...A quick install then test will immediately confirm/exclude your card as the faulty component.  You could then return the card the next day.

The reason I would say it is not your motherboard or CPU or RAM is that you would likely notice it in other areas - not just gaming.  You could confirm this with a few CPU/RAM-intensive tests that don't stress your graphics (convert large data files, big spreadsheet tasks, etc).

Whatever you decide to do - let us know how it turns out!

[Scronch]

Run some hardware diagnostics.  The full tests take several hours.  They should be able to nail it down.

Scronch

[BigMike]

Mirko - I tend to think its the cpu also. I have tried all kinds of different bios settings, including defaults, and upgrading the bios. No hardware has been changed, other than trying a different memory stick, to make sure that wasn't the problem.


Swordsman74 - I have tried a different video card - A GEFORCE 3. Didn't help the problem though.

Scronch - Intensive hardware tests sounds like a good idea, but what program does anybody recommend to do this?

[Endymion]

Virus or trojan eating up cpu?

[BigMike]

Not A virus, because I reformated the drive, and did a clean install of windows to see if that would fix the problem, which it didn't.

[Mirko]

Full usage testing:
Maybe SiSoft Sandra is the choice. It allows to do longtime-testing (e.g. overnights) on CPU, GPU and so on each _seperatly_.