Something very strange is happening to my games...

[Ironclad]

Lately my computer has been having odd performance-related (I think) issues whenever I play Crysis or Crysis Warhead. I do not know if this issue is specifically related to the series or if its a problem with all such games, but these are the symptoms of what is happening:

* every 1 second exactly, the game pauses for a fraction of a second, just enough to mess me up while I'm trying to shoot
* there is NO drop in my FPS whatsoever
* it does not matter where in the game - it happens during the pause menu, on the main menu, and during the game
* I have not noticed this issue anywhere else on my computer
Note: This only started happening recently. When I first built my computer, Crysis ran very smoothly. My computer is only about 3 months old.

My specifications:
* CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83 GHz
* Motherboard: 132-YW-E179-FTW
* Graphics Cards: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT x2

Things that I have done in an attempt to fix it:
* reinstall the latest video card drivers
* running Crysis on DX9 instead of DX10
* overclocking my video cards
* searching the internet for people/ forum posts with similar issues (didn't find any with my exact problem)
* changing the in-game graphics settings to their lowest setting
* and a bunch of other things I cant remember at the moment...

Does anyone know whats going on? I'm getting very frustrated at this point... Any suggestions would be great!

[Younglin]

Does it happen immediately after launching the game? Or does it start after a while of game play? Check your cpu and gpu temps during game and post them.

[baris_]

You could also try and play without SLI to see if that is causing the problem.

[rumbl3]

I just built my son a new rig and he was having major problems like that.

His rig is a intel celeron dual core wolfdale e3200 stock
ecs gefroce 220 gt low profile.
2x1 gb ddr800 wintec ram
MSI micro atx g31 mobo
windows xp sp 3
40 gig ide (os) 80 gig sata (games)
Encore wireless card

Anyway his problem ended up being his wireless driver. Windows xp had a update for it and i allowed it to update the drivers, well turns out it installed some realtek driver (not sure if Encore is actually realtek or what?) anyway after the driver update it ended up making his games start pausing like crazy but it was so random never was ever one the same game at the sametime or anything. Actually took me a while to figure out what was doing it.

Till one day i was sitting their playing games on it and all the sudden the pausing begin and i started shutting down programs and stuff one by one and once i disabled the wireless BAM!

The pausing instantly went away, so i installed the old driver off the disk all was fine. The wireless card is still crap and still sucks but works enough for him to play steam games.

So maybe when it starts pausing start shutting down programs and services one by one till it goes away?

Sorry for the long story lol.

[Ironclad]

@ Younglin: Idk how to test CPU temp, but its a got a liquid cooling system (Bigwater 760is) so i doubt thats the problem. My GPU temps remain around 57 degrees celcius, and the problem always starts up IMMEDIATELY after i open the game.

@ baris_: I will try that right now.

@ rumbl3: unfortunately I do not have a wireless connection, my comp is directly connected via LAN cable :(.

Also, my first post was in regards to the state of my game several days ago. I JUST ran it again and the lag is a million times worse... the game isnt even playable now. I restarted my computer too and that did nothing.

[don'tknow]

I've had this problem a few times. Can't remember all the causes but the major one was BlackIce firewall.

If you have a firewall/virus scanner running at all times it might be repeatedly blocking something and refreshing its logs every second. Check task manager and processes to see which one is doing it, should be identified by a small cpu usage spike every second.

If it's not that, more things to try: get RivaTuner and it comes with D3DOverrider, use the overrider to force triple buffering. And/or disable Vsync if you have it on.

[Ironclad]

Just checked task manager and looks like you may be right, im noticing relatively large cpu usage spikes every few seconds, although idk what application is doing it yet. Im going to ask my father about it when he gets home in about 50 minutes because he is the one that set up my firewall, i dont know much about that kind of software.

Thanks for such quick replies by the way! Its much appreciated :)

[kkpudge7]

Also check to see if vsync is enabled in crysis. Its been a while since I've played it so I don't remember if it has that setting, but stutter like that is often caused by V-sync.

[Grnfinger]

@ Younglin: Idk how to test CPU temp, but its a got a liquid cooling system (Bigwater 760is) so i doubt thats the problem. .

With all due respect your cooling soloution is well crap, you bought the biggest pos on the planet. NEVER buy Thermaltake, google coretemp and download it, you can monitor your CPU temps with that.
I would look at your gpu drivers sometimes older drivers work better, or trying a sytem restore to a point b4 the issue started

you could always try a clean install of the OS, pita yes but it might resolve your issues

[Younglin]

Just a thought. try restarting your router. I had a similar problem with my ps3. It would lag for 1 second then be fine for 1 second then lag and it would repeat like that. restarting my router fixed the problem. Also grnfinger had a good idea. try doing a system restore if nothing else works.

[Ironclad]

@ Grnfinger: My CPU temp runs idle at about mid-40s (celcius) and when I ran an Intel Burn Test 5 consecutive times it averaged about 60 degrees. Im going to try the system restore when my dad gets home (sorry for the delays, i just dont wanna cause any more problems with my comp than i can help)

@ baris_: I just remembered that Crysis worked perfectly in SLI mode before, so even if disabling SLI did fix it, there's still some problem going on

@ don'tknow: My dad checked my firewall and he says there's nothing wrong with it. Also, the NVIDIA control panel says that triple buffering only works when V-sync is ENabled, so whats the point in turning it on? I tried running Crysis with V-sync turned off by itself and there werent any changes.

@ Younglin: was this only affecting your multiplayer mode? cus its affecting my single player mode too

My dad seems to think that its a problem with the game itself, although what exactly he doesnt know. I tried uninstalling then reinstalling the game, and while this didnt fix the problem, the lag is now back to its momentary pausing instead of the HUGE delay that was happening yesterday. At least the game is somewhat playable now :/

[Trap05]

Is your hard drive badly fragmented? When you installed your nvidia chipset drivers did you install the forceware network access manager? If so remove it ....its known to cause issues.

[SteveLord]

I had something like this happening many years ago in Counter Strike's glory days. Turned out my Norton Antivirus was still in the task manager. Once I killed that, problem stopped.

[Younglin]

Yes it was just in multiplayer. Before you do a system restore download ccleaner and run a registry scan. Also Trap05 had a good idea, defragment your hard drive and see if that helps.