ok, i know the title's a little general.. but that's exactly my problem.
my box is pretty fast i think, here's my specs:
a8n-sli premium mobo
athlon64 3200+
evga 6800gs
1gb ram
hitachi sata2 80gb hdd (boot drive)
2 maxtor ide 40gb hdd (just additional storage drives)
sb audigy 2
antec 400w
i did a clean install of xp32, installed and updated all the drivers fine, avoided installing the swe ide driver for the nvidia chipset, and the comp is running smooth.
here's my problem:
whenever the pc reaches 100% cpu usage, it takes a while to drop down, and the pc gets super laggy. the main problem happens when i try to play UT2004, w/ all the settings cranked up. the main menu loads fine, but after about 30 seconds, everything gets laggy. the mouse even lags like hell. if i don't exit out, the pc freezes.
i remember when i first upgraded my comp to this setup, i played ut all the way cranked up just fine. also HL2 all the way. i don't know what happened since then that caused this problem.
i defragged my hdd, ran antivirus.
i tried testing both sticks of my 512 ram, that's not the problem. i tried switching around the psu cables so there's nothing else attached to the wires that's attached to my gfx cables. i tried using forceware coolbits2 to make the 2d and 3d clockspeeds the same.
the only thing i didn't try yet was changing my psu. my 400w antec is 20 pin, but my mobo takes 24 pin. but i plugged in the 4pin ez-plug on my mobo, which is what users of 20pin psu have to do.
can anyone think of any suggestions? thanks a lot.
my box is pretty fast i think, here's my specs:
a8n-sli premium mobo
athlon64 3200+
evga 6800gs
1gb ram
hitachi sata2 80gb hdd (boot drive)
2 maxtor ide 40gb hdd (just additional storage drives)
sb audigy 2
antec 400w
i did a clean install of xp32, installed and updated all the drivers fine, avoided installing the swe ide driver for the nvidia chipset, and the comp is running smooth.
here's my problem:
whenever the pc reaches 100% cpu usage, it takes a while to drop down, and the pc gets super laggy. the main problem happens when i try to play UT2004, w/ all the settings cranked up. the main menu loads fine, but after about 30 seconds, everything gets laggy. the mouse even lags like hell. if i don't exit out, the pc freezes.
i remember when i first upgraded my comp to this setup, i played ut all the way cranked up just fine. also HL2 all the way. i don't know what happened since then that caused this problem.
i defragged my hdd, ran antivirus.
i tried testing both sticks of my 512 ram, that's not the problem. i tried switching around the psu cables so there's nothing else attached to the wires that's attached to my gfx cables. i tried using forceware coolbits2 to make the 2d and 3d clockspeeds the same.
the only thing i didn't try yet was changing my psu. my 400w antec is 20 pin, but my mobo takes 24 pin. but i plugged in the 4pin ez-plug on my mobo, which is what users of 20pin psu have to do.
can anyone think of any suggestions? thanks a lot.