ATi: [HD 4850] sudden drop in fps, why?

[blufox]

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I was about to put my HD4850 PCS edition for sale.
But suddenly I noticed something strange that I had to pull it off in best interest of both me and someone who *might* have purchased it.

So here is the problem -

Temps are fine, everything looks great as per GPU-Z.
But when I play TF2 sometimes fps alarimgly drop down to 25-30 fps for few secs, perhaps for 2-3 secs and then resorts to normal 100+ fps. Or is that because of lag on starhub servers? But why would lag cause a drop in fps?

Any idea why is this happening?

I have cleaned everything this weekend itself, so no issue of dirt.
What could be the reason?

Is my HD4850 dying?

[Hitesh]

check if its happening in other games also.

cause TF2 is just weird in these kind of things. I've had these kind of issues and they have resolved themselves or with some little tinkering here and there.

[blufox]

^^^ Can you kindly share the tinkering?
How fps drops are significant as I am playing vast maps like orange .

Something is wrong somewhere...but what?

[ViKiD]

Well most probably its a HDD/Page File issue....

Do try out some tweaks ...else a reinstall might also help....

But again....Only in Tf2 or other games also?

[Hitesh]

defrag and verify your game files.

backup your tf folder and launch TF2 with default settings (use -autoconfig in launch options)

also check whether some other process is eating up resources via task manager.

[blufox]

Surprise thing I found today while GPU-Z was logging GPU activity in the background. After few hrs of TF2, I see this ->

Date , GPU Core Clock [MHz] , GPU Memory Clock [MHz] , GPU Temperature [°C] , Fan Speed [%] , GPU Load [%] , Fan Speed [RPM] , GPU Temp.(DISPIO) [°C] , GPU Temp.(MEMIO) [°C] , GPU Temp.(SHADERCORE) [°C] ,

2009-12-05 01:10:23 , 625.0 , 990.6 , 46.0 , 27 , 98 , 1 , 46.5 , 46.0 , 46.5 ,

2009-12-05 01:10:24 , 625.0 , 990.6 , 46.0 , 27 , 67 , 1 , 46.5 , 46.0 , 46.5 ,

2009-12-05 01:10:25 , 625.0 , 990.6 , 47.0 , 27 , 35 , 1 , 47.0 , 46.0 , 46.5 ,

2009-12-05 01:10:26 , 500.0 , 700.0 , 46.0 , 27 , 0 , 1 ,


I do not think so much load should be there. Something is wrong, but what????
TF2 earlier never taxed my CPU more than 1%-2%.

Someone please suggest me something.

[wingzero]

^^test ur hdd.....if its having read write probs.

[blufox]

When you have loads of RAM (I have 4GB), data is cached in memory.
So your load time should suffer because of a slow disk , not the running time. Right?

[blufox]

Thanks everyone.
Fixed it finally .

Cu,

[KiD0M4N]

Originally Posted by blufox Thanks everyone. Fixed it finally . Cu,

Do share the fix with everyone

[ManISinJpr]

Yes, share the solution of the problem too.

[Aumkar]

Yes, please share the source of the problem and the method used to rectify it. It'll save me from making another thread.

[blufox]

Somehow either display driver or source engine led to screen tearing.
Mind you this tearing was not there earlier. It appeared suddenly, perhaps as part of tf2 update or driver update. I am not sure which one is to blame here.

But yes, I had to finally turn on the vSync and also used mat_vsync 1.
Used mat_multithread(not sure what is the correct config name) as 3.

And fps are limited to screen refresh rate but almost no tearing.
Just mouse is smoothed out and I now find it very difficult to play with smooth fixed frames .

HTH

[ViKiD]

Did you try reinstalling??

And/or De fragmenting the drive?