Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of kevindelaney
kevindelaneyFlag for United States of America

asked on

System Stuttering after 10 minutes of Gameplay

Hey there, EE

Let me start from the top. When I was sleeping one night, some drunk idiot took it upon themselves to spill cream soda on my desktop while it was on. It seeped into the case, dripped onto the video card and motherboard, frying them both. I cleaned the video card (BFG GeForce 8800GT 512MB) and RMA'd it, which got approved. I also bought a new motherboard (going from an ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe to an ASUS M3A78 - didn't need alot of the features that came with the M2N-SLI).

After reformatting the system and installing a few games (World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: World at War) I seem to have a bit of an issue. The game will play perfectly for about 10 minutes until it very suddenly goes choppy and drops to 1 or 2 FPS, sound stuttering along with it. I'm able to ALT+Tab to Task Manager to close the game, but that is quite laggy as well.

Here are my specs:

        * 3GB DDR2 RAM
        * AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Black Edition (With a Zalman heatsink)
        * BFG GeForce 8800GT 512MB (latest drivers)
        * ASUS M3A78 Motherboard
        * 250GB Western Digital Hard Drive (Windows XP Pro)

I have tried the following to solve this issue:

        * Reformatted twice (once with stock drivers, once with most recent)
        * Swapped video cards for a brand new one.
        * Memtest'd all RAM - Passed
        * Swapped/alternated RAM modules when reproducing problem
        * Ran full PC Check diagnostics - All passed.
        * Ran Winstress at 90% load for 3 hours. Passed, but crashed about halfway through.
        * Reinstalled DirectX (all latest versions) and did all Windows Updates
        * Monitored all temperatures for all of the above, nothing went outside of normal ranges.

When I had initially removed the motherboard to make the switch, I did notice some cream soda stains along the outside of the CPU socket, but none inside the socket holes themselves. I'm wondering if the problem may be with the CPU, or if anyone else has any other suggestions. I'm tearing my hair out. This seems to be happening with all games and it's driving me nuts.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Avatar of dbrunton
dbrunton
Flag of New Zealand image

Possibility.

Overheating?  Intel CPUs throttle back if too hot and that's what this seems like.  Unsure about the AMDs however and I note that's what you have.  You could open the case up and have big desktop fan blowing in and run it like that.  See if that cures the problem.
do you have the same problem when playing a video ?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Callandor
Callandor
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of kevindelaney

ASKER

I reapplied my thermal paste and manually increased my fan duty on my video card. The problem is no longer happening. Thank you!
For the record, that did not solve the problem. It ended up being an overheating northbridge on the motherboard and I had to replace it. Just in case we get any archivers looking at this :)