Video Card on the way out..?

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Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 18, 2004
Messages
110
Hey all,

Starting today I've noticed a problem when playing any games that was not happening at all yesterday... I'm not entirely sure if it is the video card responsible for the problem, however it is troubling none the less... Basically whenever I launch a game, it plays smoothly for about 10 to 15 minutes, however it then starts to get very choppy... the FPS might read 50-60fps however the it drops to 0 every second or so, creating a semi-slideshow appearance... if I stop looking across and look just at the floor, the games run smoothly...

My graphics card is a 6870 which I've only had for about a year and a half... my case doesn't run exceptionally hot or anything...

Outside of that, there haven't been any graphical artifacts, something I noticed on a much older card when it was on the way out...

Any help as to what could suddenly be the problem would be much appreciated!
 
Have you updated your drivers recently?
Are you running with ALL the eye candy turned up and running out of VRAM?
What resolution are you gaming at?
Is your page file turned off?
Are you using an SSD and is it full?

It is possible that once loaded, the GPU has a minor heat sink attachment and is having difficulties.
 
My drivers were updated a week ago or so. I had no problems running anything during that week. I uninstalled and re installed my drivers today to see if that would help at all.

I'm running at my native resolution of 1920x1080

I'm running the full graphics settings but I had no problem running at these settings for months before this issue raised.

I have not disabled the page file... I've never encountered problems in the past... should I?

I'm not running off of an SSD, but a 1TB Caviar Black.

The strange thing, again, is that this problem seems to have popped up out of nowhere.
 
It's almost as though the computer is "catching up" and thats where the hitching is coming from. Could this be the HDD? If so... I just got this disk 6 months ago.,!
 
Actually, I just noticed again that if I'm looking at a "busier" area, things start to slow down as described... I go from 60fps to hardly any and back up to 60fps... almost rythmically...

And then if I look at a very bland/normal area with hardly any geometry or details, things are buttery smooth.
 
+1 to Skillz this sounds like a heat issue to me as well. Not just the gpu temp, cpu temp and what kind of output are you getting from your psu?
 
i had a weird issue with my gtx 680 that sounds similar. Evga precision X registered a power fluctuation at that moment any game i would be play would drop out on fps. However, this issue occurred within a month of owning the card, not nearly as long as you had your 6870.
 
Hey guys, thanks for the responses.

My processor (i7 920 @ stock clocks/cooling) runs around 60 to 65 when under full load gaming.

The video card I'll have to monitor after a good session... just running the game for about 15 minutes (and the problem didn't develop in that session) the card got up to nearly 80...

I'll give it a good run and then check the temps.
 
My processor (i7 920 @ stock clocks/cooling) runs around 60 to 65 when under full load gaming.

i just want to address this part, gaming won't typically put that processor at full load (maybe a couple cores, but not all 4), and 60-65 for that processor while gaming seems high, but i never used stock cooling when i had that processor. I had my 920 under a hyper212+ OC to 3.8 and didn't see 60 degrees while priming.

Also, I may have missed it, but did you ever mention what game you are talking about?
 
80*C after only 15 minutes of gaming seems really high, what game was you playing? Also what PSU do you have?
 
It sits closer to 73* consistently it seems...

As far the games, I'm mostly playing Planetside 2 and SWTOR on it right now.

I actually reseated the graphics card and have yet to have replicated the problem... the strange thing about it is that, as I stated earlier, I had made 0 changes to my settings or the device before it started acting up.

My PSU is actually pretty old... a 650w PC Power and Cooling that has served me through many, many builds...

Yea the CPU does get hot... I've read a lot about it and with the stock fans it's pretty normal, or so I've read.
 
So the problem started up again and I opened up the case while running and it appears my video card fan is turning off and on...

Could this be related to the PSU? What could I test around w/ to find out what seems to be the problem?
 
hahah for sure eh? I suppose it is one of the oldest components in my system.

Is there any kind of test I could do to make sure?
 
Well what's interesting is that if I run SWTOR in its lowest settings, the issue doesn't arise - the card never gets too hot.

I unfortunately don't have access to a multi-meter... I guess I'm just trying to deduce the source of the problem so that I can replace the faulty part... I'm leaning towards it ultimately being a PSU issue simply because most of the other components are much newer.
 
I would just suggest you to get a newer gen card. The 6870 isn't bad by all means but if you want to play on higher settings you should expect a stronger card
 
Is your card an XFX like the youtube users? If it is it seems they replaced it for him and will hopefully do the same for you.(or if its common with all/most manufacturers of that model)
 
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