Strange Computer Issue in Game

[Spot's Meow]

Hey everyone, I'm having an issue playing Star Wars Battlefront on my six month old Windows Vista 64-bit desktop computer. I got Battlefront as part of the Star Wars Best of PC set.

All of the other games work normally. Battlefront works great for a while, 10 minutes or so, and then suddenly gets VERY slow, like the frame rate is really low. You can move around and still play, but it takes ages to get anywhere. After about another 10 minutes, the game suddenly speeds up to normal again.

I really can't figure out what is causing this. I've tried the game on a Windows 7 laptop and it works fine. I've updated my video drivers and everything else, I've changed all the video and audio settings to as low as possible, and it makes no difference at all. It's strange how timed the occurrence is. Obviously something is triggering it but I have no idea what. I compared the running processes and the memory usage when it was happening and when it wasn't, and they were the same.

I really cannot figure out what is going on. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Jadzia]

You could try monitoring the CPU temperature while running the game. Older games can sometimes strain the CPU if they rely on it rather than your graphics card.

This may not be the problem, but it's a possibility.

MBM5 is a simple sensor monitoring tool you can leave running that will do this.
http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=311

You can set it to create a temperature log every 30 seconds over a 2 hour period, and you can later look back at the log to see what the temperatures were when your game slowed down.

 

[Hermiod]

Don't suppose it's a ATI Radeon card in the 5xxx series is it ?

 

[Spot's Meow]

Actually it's a NVIDIA GeForce 9100.

 

[Yoda]

I wouldn't think it would be a heat issue on a desktop, assuming the room its in isn't really warm and you're not blocking the system fans. *Shrug*, if you have a virus scanner going you could try to disable it temporarily. Based on your post I assume you updated your audio drivers as well. I suppose you could temporarily disable your audio chip in device manager. You could try running it in one of the XP compatibility modes...

Sometimes issues with games are just voodoo, it seems

 

[Luckyflux]

Sounds like a scan or an automatic update is trying to run while you are playing. Can you check the Task Manager to see what is taking up the CPU?

Maybe your page file gets full and you have to swap after that? Can you increase the size of the page file then defrag that?

Does this happen when you are doing something else on the internet? Like when you are browsing or doing other work?

Does it happen at different times during the day? In other words does the slowness kick in whether you are playing at night or in the morning? If it is only during the night lets say, then that might be an update/scan trying to run.

 

[Spot's Meow]

Sorry I have not replied sooner, I was out of town for a few days.

I never have any other programs running while playing the game, and I have checked the task manager while the problem is occuring and while it is not and there is nothing out of the oridinary. It happens no matter what time of day I try to play at. I don't see any scans or updates running at the time.

I haven't played in the last few days so I will give it a try later and see if it's still happening (though I'm sure it is).

 

[Spot's Meow]

Update for anyone who has been having the same issue.... I just found a forum posting on another site today where several people with the exact same machine as mine chimed in as having the same problem. Apparently it is a problem with the heat sink and more frequent dusting of the insides should alleviate the issue.