games are choppy

[bohicam1]

Hi,

I just upgraded a system,

windows XP home
Asus AM2 motherboard
AMD 6000+ processor
2GB DDR2 ram
Nvidia 9600 GT 512MBDDR3 vid card

The problem is when I play 3d games like WoW, or star wars my gameplay is very choppy. With my old system I never had this problem. I have the latest Nvidia drivers installed and directx10 that came with the cd for the card. The fps during the game averages around 60. Whether I am online (wow) or offline (star wars) I get this choppy gameplay. I took out the vid card and tried an ATI HD3450 card thinking it may work better as the board has ATI graphics but same thing. According to the wow helpsite I deleted the cache, interface and wtf folders. I have tried windows mode, lowest resolution, no sound and windows updates all to no avail. Also, according to the wow website, the geforce 9 series is not listed. I figured it is still new and they may not have tested it yet as it is not on the unsupported list either.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

I was just looking around other sites that answer questions and the issue came up of which port the monitor was plugged into on the vid card. Could that be a problem?

Also,directx 10, is it not supported for games yet?

 

[Megabite]

Is there an option to run it in DX9 and see how it plays

 

[Tanis]

Is Dx10 even compatible / installable (is that a word? haha) with XP? I thought it was primarily (poss only) for Vista.

 

[bohicam1]

I guess I am mistaken. The driver cd for the card had directx 9/10 on it and I figured it would just load the latest. I have since read that dx10 is for vista only.
Thanks for your reply

 

[Mayor Quimby]

wow, with those spec, you should be albe to max out WoW and it should still run nicely.

Check out all the programs running in background. Are there any that are using up way too much processing power or memory?

there could be soo many things here going wrong.

-How was window installed? Clean installed or updated on another OS?
-Check out system temperature, is anything overheating?
-Check out your system, is your memory, video card, and processor spec getting detected properly?

-make sure you window is up to date. HAve Service PAck 2 installed if you dont have it installed.

 

[bohicam1]

ok, I reinstalled all drivers...no luck. reinstalled windows and everything all over again....no luck, removed the ram and replaced them with fresh sticks...no luck. removed the video card, bought an older model, MSI NX8600GT, put in the latest drivers...no luck. I guess it is on to the processor and mobo next. Each time I did remove/replace the vid card I did remove the drivers first.
Windows xp with sp2 and all latest updates. DirectX9c installed as well.
Thanks again in advance for any help.

 

[bohicam1]

I replaced the cpu and motherboard and I still have the same problem. I ran memtest and everything checks out fine. I ran 3dmark5 and for the first few tests it ran great and for the last half (it runs the same things twice) it ran choppy like the games but it didn't say what the issue was???? because there were no other tested systems to compare the results to. I don't understand that one at all! As for drivers, I downloaded and used driver cleaner pro when uninstalling /reinstalling drivers. All windows updates and driver updates and game patches are installed.

Asus M3A78-EMH motherboard
AMD 6000+ cpu
2GB Kingston 667DDR2 Ram
EVGA eGeforce 9600GT 512MB graphics card

In every other way this system runs flawlessly until I play a 3d game. The game will start up fine, no problems with trailers and such. As soon as you want your character to move though, it will become choppy and stutter.
I thought the power supply might be an issue too as this card demands alot of power (it wants 26 amps on the 12 volt rail) but even the less powerful cards I tried which don't have those demands have the same problem.

I'm really stumped here and I appreciate any help in this matter.
Thanks again in advance for any suggestions.

 

[Mayor Quimby]

Maybe its a heat issue?
What are your system temperatures at the time when games become choppy?

Also, how fast its your harddrive?

 

[bohicam1]

The cpu is 42 c and the graphics card is 53c
the hdd is 7200 ide but I can't see that having anything to do with it. If I leave the game running unattended, all the other "soldiers" keep running around doing their battles no prob. As soon as I use the arrow keys to move my guy it just stutters. Sound and video. Like I mentioned previously, I have switched out the hardware....vid card, ram, processor and mobo. It must be a setting somewhere.
Thanks

 

[sup2a]

could it be your connection? what is your latency sitting at?

 

[bohicam1]

Not a latency issue as this happens with cd based games as well as WoW. Whether I play online or against the computer from my cd like star wars battlefront2 I get the same thing...only moving my man does the game get choppy.
Thanks

 

[RevisionZero]

Alright first off there is no way legitly to run the Dx10 Engine on Windows Xp, there are ways but thats up to you to find. Dx10 games a majority of the time support Dx9.

Alright now on to the problem, when your playing these games that you are getting low FPS in, pull up process manager, go to performance tab, then go back to the game and play for 1min. How much Ram is being Used? Mainly how much of your cpu is being used?

You may also want to try go to a older driver is possible, helps alot of the time.

Hope to hear your CPU results soon.

Edit - Do you have the latest bios revision? Many throw this idea out, but it has done wonders for me and many others I know multiple times.

 

[bohicam1]

yes, we already established I was running dx9c.
as for task manager...ram as is is using 142mb and with game running is 180 to 190mb
processor at rest is obviouslu zero, during game seemed to go anywhere between 20% and 80%
I will try an earlier driver tomorrow as well as update the mobo drivers.
Thank you

 

[bohicam1]

sorry, I meant bios update

 

[bohicam1]

OK, as we speak(figuratively) I am playing call of duty 4 and my ram usage is at 992Mb and my processor is at 72-75% the game is running without my interaction. as soon as I press W to move my soldier, the stuttering starts. This is just frustrating!