Weird FPS dropping on computer games

[loic2003]

ok, so here's the spec of my machine:

Abis NF7-S mobo,
AMD XP 2500 OC'ed to 2004MHz
Barracuda SATA HD
Radeon 9800 pro
1 Gig PC3200 @ 334MHz

So it's a pretty good system. I've got desert combat running at max res and quality settings and looking at the FPS counter it never ever drop below 45FPS and is usually at the 80FPS zone. The problem I'm having is that there seems to be a slight pause when it loads a texture for a first time. It also does it in DOOM3. What is the cause of this slight lag? What's not providing the texture quick enough? The MOBO is set to AGP 8x and I beleieve that all the fast write to GPU gubbins are turned on (although a list of what affects GPU performance in the BIOS along with how they should be set would be very handy).


Has anyone else experienced a similar problem and been able to sort it?

Thanks for the help!

_loco_

 

[Caramon]

I've experienced similar problems with games. Basically there's nothing you can do for it... The system needs to load information and sometimes there are small delays in order for it to load sound files or textures. I noticed it big time on Far Cry, especially when you would first use a weapon in the game. There was a 1 second pause...

The machine i'm running on is 2.8 ghz, 512 RAM, ATI Radeon 9700... It's just one of those things we have to get used to. If you have Symantec running in the back ground you may want to disable it while you're playing. Zonealarm too will slow down your system. Just some thoughts...

 

[loic2003]

I believe I hove found the solution to the problem for those who are interested. I think the problem was the driver for the USB ADSL modem plugged into my machine. the computer has been misbehaving since I installed the thing (lags, not shutting down, randomly dropping internet signal) and it was also lagging games. Now that I have wireless setup in my home the problem has sorted itself.

Interestigly, i had checked for a program that was eating resources whilst I had the problem and the offending process was not registering as anything significant in the processes list.