Nvidia 9600GT Poor FPS?

I have had a EVGA 9600GT SC card for a couple of months now and have noticed that my FPS have been dropping more and more the longer i play a game. In Call of Duty 4 with the current settings: 1024x768, 4x AA (all optimal settings per COD4) i usually start out with 50-60FPS, then about a hour into it they are low 30's to high 20's.

I originally thought heat, but I have the fan on 100% through RivaTuner. Even loading the game takes longer and is MUCH lagier. Any thoughts? Bad Card?

-Kyle

 

It could still be heat-related, you might want to add another exhaust fan to your case. Even a lowly passive-cooled GeForce 8500GT generates enough heat to require a case fan.

 

Sorry I should have mentioned that I have a intake fan underneath my GPU, and a 120mm exhaust fan above it. Another exhaust fan on the top side of my case, A intake fan on the side panel feeding the CPU cool air, and finally two more 80mm fans in the front of my case for intake.

Recorded data via RivaTuner and the hottest it gets while playing COD4 is 48*C

 

Sounds like a heat issue to me as well, but it seems you have tested that it is just fine. Something on the card could be failing, but that generally results in a full shutdown.

On a side note, can you tell me how you were viewing you fps in COD4? I can't figure out the console command...if thats what you were even using.

 

http://www.fraps.com/

Free to use, works great

 

Have you kept your task manager running while playing a game with the CPU usage tab open? Just to see if there's some spiking thread that periodically demands the CPU's attention and trips up performance?

 

This is what I am pulling as far as resources go when I'am playing COD4



Looking at my CPU usage, I'm wondering if going to my XP x64 edition would help out any

 

Looking at my CPU usage, I'm wondering if going to my XP x64 edition would help out any

^ Any thoughts on this? ^