Slowdown

[Remus]

Hello!

My configuration is:
Phenom 2 x2 555 be box.
Asus m4n68t-m-v2 motherboard.
Gigabyte radeon hd 5770 video card.
4 gb of ram kingston 667 mhz.
Hdd is a westen digital sata 500 gb.

The issue is:

In games and when browsing the internet, actually even if I leave the computer idle I get this slowdown which lasts for about 30 seconds or more. After that time the machine goes back to running as normal without slowdown. This happens mostly in games. I tried starcraft 2, league of legends, diablo 3, swtor and more. All have the same issue, even diablo 2.
It happens even if I set the graphic settings to minimum with the lowest resolution or at max.

The thing is that it happens at random, not only if my screen is full of items and smoke.

All of my drivers and software are up to date. Cpu and video card temp is normal. No antivirus solutions, windows security stuff is turned off. I am using win 7 32b atm but i tried installing a win xp sp3 and the same issue occurred.

I talked with a couple of support guys from the above mentioned games and sent a lot of diagnosis tool logs, they found no cause on why this is happening.

I tend to think that its some kind of hardware issue. Do you guys have any idea?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Remus]

I am sorry, I forgot to add that when the slowdown occurs the game process eats up cpu load, it goes to 100%. If i am browsing, the browser eats the load.

 

[OhSnapWord]

You have no anti-virus and security features disabled? You're asking for trouble.

Check the cooler for dust. Usually when the CPU heats up, it will throttle itself to prevent overheating.

 

[Edsterr]

I'm not sure but it might be the ram. 667mhz seems quite slow, but I'm unsure if that would have that much of an effect.

 

[OhSnapWord]

I'm not sure but it might be the ram. 667mhz seems quite slow, but I'm unsure if that would have that much of an effect.

667MHz is DDR3-1333

 

[Remus]

You have no anti-virus and security features disabled? You're asking for trouble.

Check the cooler for dust. Usually when the CPU heats up, it will throttle itself to prevent overheating.

Cpu cooler is clean, that was first thing I checked

Also the cpu temp is normal at all times even during the slowdown.

Regarding the antivirus stuff, i removed everything for testing purposes, I cut off the internet connection.

And even so I am not really worried about infections I am sure I dont have any. I work for a security software company, I checked my machine with all our scanning tools and its fine.

Any other ideas?

 

[Edsterr]

667MHz is DDR3-1333

Well that just shows how much I know. Either way I don't have much experience with DDR3-1333 as I usually get 1600 and overclock 1833.

 

[OhSnapWord]

Cpu cooler is clean, that was first thing I checked

Also the cpu temp is normal at all times even during the slowdown.

Regarding the antivirus stuff, i removed everything for testing purposes, I cut off the internet connection.

And even so I am not really worried about infections I am sure I dont have any. I work for a security software company, I checked my machine with all our scanning tools and its fine.

Any other ideas?

Ok, you had me worried.

Try running a hard drive diagnostics or even chkdsk. Sometimes, in the early stages of failure, a hard drive could cause these slowdowns.

Well that just shows how much I know. Either way I don't have much experience with DDR3-1333 as I usually get 1600 and overclock 1833.

Not a problem. When naming RAM, the 1333, 1600 and 1866 are the data rate in MT/s or mega-transfers per second. Since there are two transfers per clock cycle, the speed in MHz is half of the speed in MT/s. 1333 = 667MHz, 1600 = 800MHz and so on.

 

[Edsterr]

I'm sure you probably have but have you tried running task manager? You'll be able to check if there's anything in particular that corresponds with the slowdowns.

 

[Remus]

Yes i have, if the issue is happening when a game is running, the game process eats the processor load. If not it is usually the browser.