Strange Game problems with new hardware

Even since i have gotten involved with computers I have always ran across really strange computer problems.

My system
I just upgraded to a PCI express system. This includes a new AMD duel core, DFI lanparty SLI-DR motherboard and Geforce 7800 gtx, with 2G ram

My problem
Ok now this problem is really hard to explain. Well basicly when i play a game from a fresh restart everything is awesome and kick ass. However, as i continue to play games my performance generally degrades into something much less favorable. The visuals look fine, no rendering problems at all. However, it seems that after a while of play my games will start to skip entire groups of frames at once. Almost like your lagging in a online game or something. It just gets all stuttery and shit.

Now this isnt the first time I have had this problem. I remember a really long time ago I had this problem and the reason was because of sound blaster live. It was messing with something on my motherboard which caused my performance to degrade over time while playing games. I think it had something to do with the way it was caching sound files. I got rid of my sound card and got a new one and everything ran great after that. Anyway the problem i have right now feels extreamly similar to that same exact problem i had in the past. I have gone through the whole driver update crap. video, sound card, and I also did my mobo. I have the full version of power strip, and one of the features it has is a complete ram refresh. I tried doing that and it didnt help at all. The only way i can totally fix this problem is by restarting my computer.

if someone could help me i would be very thankful.

Sounds like a memory leak.


Do all your games do this, or only a few?

overheating. open your case and direct air flow in while playing and see what happens.

Good call, definately check your temps.

On the Temp thing. I know my temps are fine i have therm gauges all over my case. Also i have 4 fans and the zalman 120 CU cpu fan. I am usually running pretty damn cool. I am pretty sure thats not the problem.

Also yes this happens to many of my games i have tried. DS2 primarly since i have been playing that a lot recently. But i have tryed far cry and started up the game and have it do the exact same thing. The only way i can remember fixing far cry is by restarting. It really is quite weird. I am playing DS2 right now, when it starts to get bad ill go play some other games besides far cry and DS2, but my guess is that the problem isnt game dependent.

but what does your CPU's temperature actualyl read? because from what you're describing, it sounds like your cpu's being throttled from heat.

Define "other games". If those games are easier on your graphics card then it's possible that you vid card is either overheating or has faulty memory. Could be your RAM too, do a memtest on it.

If "other games" are equally demanding in the graphics department then it's probably the CPU overheating or bad RAM. And of course, there's the sound card that produced a similar error for you before, so you should check that out too. Try onboard sound for a bit and see what happens.

As far as temps go my cpu is at 56c and my vid card id at 64c

when i do the memtest exactly what am i looking for, just errors on the memory?

Yeah, basically.

your cpu's at 56, idle or load?