Is it my CPU or GPU?

[eastley]

I have a problem when playing games, like in Far Cry i'll take a few steps then my system will jerk majorly, then it'll go back to smooth. And in the 3DMARK03 benchmark when it gets to the CPU tests it does the same but worse, it also does it in most of the tests except for the Fill rate and pixel shader tests.

My system rig link is below.

My question is, is it my CPU or Graphics card making this problem occur? or could it be some sort of setting on my machine. I have tried all Nvidia drivers from 53.03 upwards, and the MSI 5900XT drivers off there site but still the same thing.

On a note though when my pc was built down the shop the CPU wasen't seated propely, it still booted and worked but when i noticed this i took it straight back to the shop and we found that a couple of pins had been bent, we strightened them out and it still worked fine. This problem with it jerking didn't occur for atleast a week of having my new machine. Could it be a heat issue? My system says cpu temp is at 60C but i know my motherboard misreads the temp by 20C so its only just over 40C.

What is the problem here? can anyone help?

 

[eastley]

So no one has any answers?

 

[gotensan01]

I can't get to your system rig, it gives me an error. Anyways, how do you know for a fact that the system misreads the temp by 20C? Okay, here's what I know. I have a laptop and after using it for a bit I noticed that performance decreased significantly. What had happened was that the air vents going from the fans across the heatsink for the processor were clogged with dust build up. Therefore the cpu could not cool properly. This caused all of my games to become jerky and eventually caused my comp to restart due to the overheating safety shutdown of the p4. I opened up the laptop and took off the build up of dust and my comp ran everything smoothly again. This could mean that it is your cpu.

However, I also had this ati radeon dual disply ve card that only had a heat sink on it, no fan. When I used it in my desktop, it would also just cause graphic intense games to become jerky. I replaced the heatsink witha better graphics cards hsf combo and the problem stopped for the most part.

All-in-all I would say you need to cool your system better. If you don't wanna go water cooling, you can still get awesome cooling results with good hsf combos. Or I could just be completely wrong. Oh yeah, I aslo assumed that since your comp is new there is no dust build up anywhere. If there is dust build up, get a can of air duster and clean off the inside of your comp.

 

[eastley]

Well my CPU is the new A64 3200+ Newcastle CG stepping and from what I read it does misread the Temperatures, I live in Tasmania, Australia and its very cold down here like 3C in the middle of the night, if i leave all heaters off my pc gets down to the low 50C and it still jerks, I will take my pc back to the shop and get it tested. even though I have Computer technician Qaulifications, everything is only new and uner warranty so taking it back to the shop is the best thing to do i think. The ram sinks on the graphics card gets hot, you can only just touch it without it burning your fingers.

 

[thelanx]

Make sure you aren't running any cpu intensive programs in the background. Sometimes a program in the background will request priority and cause your 3d programs to freeze for a split second. Your problem may be software. Otherwise I'd run everything at stock and check the temperature manually (by feel of the air, hsf, etc...)

 

[eastley]

With my system at idle there is no real heat in the CPU's heatsink, it gets a little warm when i play intensive games, so it seems to work ok, my case temp to the feel is pretty cool. but like i said to the touch my Graphics card mempry chips are a bit hot. I can do a clean install with nothing but far cry installed and it'l still happen. the funny thing is my last computer, AMD Athlon 1800+ had all the same things installed and had no problems at all.

 

[Shimmishim]

what video card are you using and do you have that overclocked?

jumpy then smoothness also will occur when a video card is overclocked too far

 

[eastley]

I have a MSI 5900XT-VTD and it aint over clocked, I ran prime95 over night it went just over 11 hours with not the slighest problem so my system is stable, even at the temps its showing. I honestly think my card is faulty somehow.

 

[yourdeardaniel]

i have a similiar problem, but with my old system using Fortissimo II sound card and Maxtor 20.4gb (clicking noise/problematic slow HD).

when i play a game, it would randomly freeze up for a few seconds, then resume like normal. so it could be your hard drive if you've notice decrease performance and slowdown. also possibilities could be your video card drivers, sound card drivers. but mine was definately the HD.

 

[eastley]

Its not any of my drivers, i have tried every driver possible for all my hardware and no change, my hard drive is pretty new plus in my other system it never had a problem.