Problems with my FPS

[Caspian]

It just started earlier today. My fps will be running fine, then all of a sudden it will drop to 0, often for several seconds in which I just quit moving, quit typing, and the log screen freezes. It then takes several more seconds for it to start going again. This happens fairly frequently and is really starting to piss me off. It only seems to be doing it when I'm playing, rather than when I'm just on the internet or something. I've also noticed the harddrive chirping every few seconds, it may have been doing that since the beginning and I just never noticed, but I get paranoid when things quit working properly. I asked a friend about it, and he suggested defragging and running a hard drive test. I ran the one that comes with windows, and just d/l'd Seagate's SeaTools app and it passed. The vid card is only a few months old, and basically I have no idea what might be causing it. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Problems with my FPS

Did you update your video card driver recently? Any visual anomalies like "popping" or weird shapes? Are you using windower? If so, see if you can play with Task Manager open, and see what's eating up CPU time.

[Effedup]

Re: Problems with my FPS

This happens to me every once in a while, and I've found in my case it's usually because something starts running in the background unexpectedly. Anything major will crash me out (once had Norton AV start running in the middle of a pt because I forgot to disable the auto-scan @ 3am...was a long night ^^), but minor programs, like windows update notifications will sometimes cause a hiccup for me, or my wireless adapter telling me my signal strength (don't know how to disable that but if anyone does I'm all ears).

Like Ifrit said, it could be your vid card drivers...but if your hd is making funny noises, I'd start looking into a new hard drive in the near future. I've had dozens of hard drives over the years and I'd say 75% of them passed hard drive utilities when they started acting glitchy and then within a few weeks they were dead. I don't know why the utilities didn't pick up on it, bad sector scans are pretty accurate using them, but the actual drive motor failing isn't picked up for some reason. I've had optical drives do the same thing...DVD-rom that's not reading cd's picks up as fine doing diag but nevertheless is dead 2 weeks later.

There's a free program I use, CCleaner, that has some nifty utilities built in, like internet cleanup, startup config, registry cleaner, and a much better add/remove programs interface that works much quicker then the dumpy windows version. You can find it on Download.com. I'd run that and see if it helps anything...I noticed a big difference in overall computer performance when I first ran it.

[Icemage]

Re: Problems with my FPS

I would suspect antiviral software. It's the most intrusive type of program.

Failing that, I'd check for viruses and other malware.


Icemage

[Caspian]

Re: Problems with my FPS

So, miraculously it seems to be working. I'm still gonna run my anitvirus software again, but I don't know. Thanks for the help guys.

[Mhurron]

Re: Problems with my FPS

Best way to fix something is to ask about it. It works perfectly after that then.

[Effedup]

Re: Problems with my FPS

How frustratingly true...

[Feba]

Re: Problems with my FPS

No, best way to fix something is to pay some dude 20$ to look at it. THAT never fails.

Is there anything specific that causes this? I know nVidia drivers/GPUs used to freeze/chop up whenever someone used AoEs, especially firaga.

[Effedup]

Re: Problems with my FPS

I'm not sure of the specific reasons for the problems with the Nvidia-based cards (my knowledge of 3d rendering is quite limited outside of normal usage and tweaks), but I can tell you my nVidia based card (PCI-E PNY 7600 GS) hasn't seemed to have a problem yet. I get stuttering every once in a while, but I'm convinced this is due to lag issues/background processes rather than the GPU chipset itself. It's actually odd, considering my card is pretty much a big. steaming pile of crap, and I've seen people with far better cards than mine have problems, like the guy that's having problems with his 2 8800 GTX's running in SLi.

Anyways, I haven't heard of too many problems concerning this recently, so I would assume that the problem is corrected in a driver update. Based on the limited graphical capabilities of FFXI, maybe the problem is that newer cards are TOO good? I had all kinds of weird problems a few years back with Descent 3 (a great game from back in the late 90's)...anyways, I had recently bought a 128 Meg AGP Vid Card and it was way too much for the game to understand...I think the min requirements for that game was like a 16 meg PCI card (ahh, the good ol' days ^^). Anyways, booted up, game looks great, go to fly my ship around and I'm like flying through walls, enemies can't see me and just sit there...

Good times... ^^

[Feba]

Re: Problems with my FPS

like the guy that's having problems with his 2 8800 GTX's running in SLi.

That's not a problem with the card, it's a problem with the drivers, and that was fixed.

[Mhurron]

Re: Problems with my FPS

SLI has never worked perfectly for any card with any driver with any game for any OS. It has been one of the most irritating setups ever created. Just because one issue with it was fixed doesn't mean that others weren't created by the fix.

This is veering off topic though.

[Macht]

Re: Problems with my FPS

Curious on if Caspian figured it out. A recent hacking attempt on my system had me paranoid were I was monitoring a tracking many registries. I came to find that Window's Auto Update was loading a bunch of crap run silent processes eating my CPU speed, after a few regedits to get rid of this obviously unneeded crap I came to find that crap was also adding to the delays I was experiencing when playing games.

So might be another area to look into is what BS processes Microsoft decided to put on your system from an auto update. I've turned that damn thing off now since finding this crap, I'll just update manually. A pain but I see it as the lesser of two evils. Oh another thing I've noticed since Vista came out, it seems Microsoft has become careless on the program design for XP and older systems. Loading stuff like an up-to-date WMP ends up with the program putting this preloader program to run in the background, even more annoying is they don't give you the option of wanting it to do this or not. This preloader program the longer it's left there the more is starts to eat away are your available RAM.

It's a pain in the ass because even if you kill the process once something goes to refference WMP libraries is loads that damn preloader again.

[Effedup]

Re: Problems with my FPS

That's not a problem with the card, it's a problem with the drivers, and that was fixed.

[Off-topic]

Yeah, I know it was the drivers...SLi seems to be buggy as all hell at this point anyways, and the benefits aren't even really apparent unless pushing monitors at higher than typical resolutions (like the 30" apple cinema display's native 2560x1600 res). I know, I've seen it with my own eyes...one 8800 GTX on a 19" at 1280x1024 looks exactly the same as 2 8800's running at 1280x1024. 768 Megs of DDR3 is plenty of v-memory to handle anything gaming is throwing at it at this point. In a couple years maybe it'll be different, but for right now it seems like it just an easy way to spend a grand.

Anyways, said friend has had nothing but problems with his dual 8800's, and he's since returned one and bought more memory. THAT made a big difference...

[/Off-topic]

I don't think anything is wrong with the cards per se...I think it's just the incompatible driver's at this point. As much as I love FFXI, it's not like it was designed to be run on these newer, better cards, and it seems within reason that there's going to be issues. Unfortunately, I don't think too many people are up in arms over the problems concerning FFXI, so I don't see it being high on the "to do " list for nVidia to rectify.