Why are my games lag spiking?

[opij]

Ok so I have a crap pc (i am upgrading in December) and I could run most of the games I have with at least a decent fps at time but now my games are totally lag spiking, all of them lag! I will list the games affected and my specs later on the page. For example i could run oblivion at pretty good setttings with 10-15 fps (i know that seems small but to me pretty playable and smooth enough to me) but now it lag spikes to 2-3 fps after like 5 mins.

My specs

os-Windows home premium 64-bit

Ram-3 gb

Processor-Intel Celeron cpu 900 @ 2.20ghz

video card-Intel chipset

Games affected:

Oblivion

Medal of honor

COD4

Minecraft

Borderlands

Arma 2

Fallout 3

Transformers Fall of Cybertron

Skyrim

Batttlefield 2

 

Is there a fix or should I just start playing Daggerfall until the upgrade

[Aegrus]

That's odd. Have you changed any pc settings in between before the lag spikes and after?

 

Also, are you gaming in a different location than usual? (That question may seem a bit crazy, let me explain). If you were gaming in a well-ventilated area before, your cooling might have been fine- but if you've been playing in a badly ventilated area lately, your pc might be underclocking itself to avoid overheating. To continue on this tangent, if there are any fans in your desktop/laptop (whatever you have), are they spinning? Because a fan failure might also cause overheating.

 

Finally, have you tried any virus scans? It's possible that you just have a pc virus.

 

Sorry if this isn't helpful, I've never heard of this kind of thing happening before.

[Vagrant0]

Defragment any drives on your computer which are not Solid State Drives.

 

Set a static (min=max) pagefile that is atleast 4gb in size and have it on a separate drive if possible.

 

Clear your temp files and cache.

 

Ensure that there is atleast 1/5 of each harddrive (or 100gb) that is free.

 

Run a virus/spyware scan, and look for any suspicious processes/services, or any processes which are using significantly high amounts of system resources. Some Antivirus software can be extremely resource intensive at unusual times because it is trying to make sense of applications or connections. Try to slim down unnecessary processes when not using those applications (looking at you adobe updater).

 

If using any ATI video drivers, roll back to the march 1012 release as that was the most stable. For other video drivers, look and see what the most stable version is and rollback if needed.

 

Turn off V-sync, and try to simplify graphic settings related to shadows, reflections, lighting effects, or potentially texture quality.

[opij]

I have done virus scans registry error scans and fixes and disk defrag and I was using it in the same place as usual

[Rennn]

Did a stick of ram happen to die?

Alternatively, have you tried a high-performance power plan to keep your cpu at 100% frequency? That'll decrease battery life if it's a laptop, but it can reduce lag spikes.

Edited October 10, 2012 by Rennn

[RitualBlack]

You should download a program to monitor your computer temperatures. If they are fine it is another thing you can cross off your list of potential problems and if they happen to be high you should definitely clean it out. Heat will cause any game to stutter.