My graphics card isn't performing like before

gunmetalTrevan

gunmetalTrevan

New Member
I apologize for the intensive details- I want to be as thorough as possible.

So, I have an HIS HD 7850 that replaced my msi HD 5770 a few months ago. I ran some games and benchmarks and I was fairly happy with it. I wanted to try overclocking to see what kind of performance I could pull out of it, so I set the core to 1050 and the memory to 1450 (stock is 860/1200). I've had it set to those practically since I got it, and I haven't had any performance issues with roughly 10-15fps increase.
Pretty recently, I got that "grey liney" screen (that pops up I believe when a driver crashes and can't be restarted) while playing Skyrim, and Skyrim only. It has happened to me 3 times in the past month (I play it a LOT), but one time it only flashed that screen and the game continued.
TO GET TO THE POINT, I don't know if the info above is relevant, but in Heaven DX11 Benchmark, I got an average of 39 fps with no overclocking- maxed out. With overclocking, I got an average of 47fps. Now when I do it, same settings and all WITH overclocking, I only get an average of 36fps- without OC, my average is 30. My max before was 100fps, and now it's 86, and without OC, it's only 70.
BF3 seems to be running about the same, but simple games like Combat Arms have 120fps at random times and 30 fps at random times. Garry's mod also seems to have about a 10fps decrease. My friend told me about "Game Booster" to fix my Combat Arms problem, and it did, but not the Heaven Benchmark.

I checked my GPU temperatures, for the OC and that's not a problem. The highest it gets it 60c. In Heaven, I've seen it go up to 65c. Also, I just updated my drivers today to Catalyst 12.6 I believe, so that isn't the problem. This didn't start after updating any drivers.

Here are my specs:
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU - Q6600 2.4GHz
GPU: HIS 7850 2GB
RAM: 4GB 800mhz (max my mobo can handle)
Mobo: p5kpl-cm
PSU: TR2 600watt
HDD: 2 SATA's - a 1TB 7200rpm and a 160gb 7200rpm. Windows is installed on 160GB.

I don't know for sure if this is my video card, but I don't know if it's anything else, either.
Again, sorry for the details- I just want a solution to be found.
Thanks
 
gunmetalTrevan said:
I apologize for the intensive details- I want to be as thorough as possible.

So, I have an HIS HD 7850 that replaced my msi HD 5770 a few months ago. I ran some games and benchmarks and I was fairly happy with it. I wanted to try overclocking to see what kind of performance I could pull out of it, so I set the core to 1050 and the memory to 1450 (stock is 860/1200). I've had it set to those practically since I got it, and I haven't had any performance issues with roughly 10-15fps increase.
Pretty recently, I got that "grey liney" screen (that pops up I believe when a driver crashes and can't be restarted) while playing Skyrim, and Skyrim only. It has happened to me 3 times in the past month (I play it a LOT), but one time it only flashed that screen and the game continued.
TO GET TO THE POINT, I don't know if the info above is relevant, but in Heaven DX11 Benchmark, I got an average of 39 fps with no overclocking- maxed out. With overclocking, I got an average of 47fps. Now when I do it, same settings and all WITH overclocking, I only get an average of 36fps- without OC, my average is 30. My max before was 100fps, and now it's 86, and without OC, it's only 70.
BF3 seems to be running about the same, but simple games like Combat Arms have 120fps at random times and 30 fps at random times. Garry's mod also seems to have about a 10fps decrease. My friend told me about "Game Booster" to fix my Combat Arms problem, and it did, but not the Heaven Benchmark.

I checked my GPU temperatures, for the OC and that's not a problem. The highest it gets it 60c. In Heaven, I've seen it go up to 65c. Also, I just updated my drivers today to Catalyst 12.6 I believe, so that isn't the problem. This didn't start after updating any drivers.

Here are my specs:
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU - Q6600 2.4GHz
GPU: HIS 7850 2GB
RAM: 4GB 800mhz (max my mobo can handle)
Mobo: p5kpl-cm
PSU: TR2 600watt
HDD: 2 SATA's - a 1TB 7200rpm and a 160gb 7200rpm. Windows is installed on 160GB.

I don't know for sure if this is my video card, but I don't know if it's anything else, either.
Again, sorry for the details- I just want a solution to be found.
Thanks
Click to expand...

This is why I dont overclock my hardware. Have never seen any real world application where overclocking proves an advantage over not.
 
It never was a problem before... And I don't know if it is now. I just know my computer has gotten much slower for many games. CoD BO goes down to 35fps often and MW2 NEVER went below 60 on my 5770. I don't really understand what's happening.
 
I would have that psu tested. That unit looks to have about a 50 percent failure rate. Other than that, your video card may be bad.
 
My PSU can cause performance problems? I don't think my card is bad... the highest temperature I have EVER seen it is 70c, and supposedly it can be "safe" up to 85c.

I'm not sure... When I benchmark, all the settings, (low or high), even anti aliasing, give me a very similar framerate, besides tessellation, and I believe shadows. Before this random change in heaven, I could keep tessellation and even double the distance and keep the average 45fps. Now I only get that with tessellation completely off. Also, it turns out BF3's performance actually has decreased. Before it would almost never go under 30 fps on large levels maxed out. Now I turn off all AA and put shadows on high instead of Ultra, and I get that framerate on SMALL levels. I don't really understand why this is happening... I just noticed a framerate decrease on day. I defragged my hard drives and that increased 2 - 3fps. I also just did a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, however that didn't seem to increase my framerate at all, but it made it much more consistent without random lag every few seconds. Windows 7 also doesn't blue screen or crash like my Vista started doing when my performance decreased.

If this helps, here are a couple things I remember and noticed:
-Loading times decreased along with the framerate.
-This happened around the same time as when I portforwarded for a GMod Server
-This happened around the same time as when I started playing a game I haven't played in a long time (Combat Arms), but it was already installed on the computer.
-Only certain settings slow my computer down. (Maybe CPU intensive ones?)
 
Okay, I'll have it tested. I think it may be the PSU, because my computer is starting to crash when overclocked more often, and display drivers crash for no apparent reason while just browsing the web.
I suspected that the plug may have gone bad in some way, so I unplugged the 6pin from my card and tried a different one... No difference.

Thanks for your help! If I am able to test it out soon, I'll reply with the results if the problem persists.
 
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