Quake 3 "stalling" every second

Post by **aziraphale** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 2:48 pm

ok, im running XP home on a p4 3.06g cpu, with 784mb RAM and nVidia GeForce Go440 64m.

ive just had my hdd upgraded to 80gb from 60gb, and ram upgraded to 784 from 512, and had a full system reload.
Quake 3 used to run excellent, but now when my hdd spins up, and the cooling fans get going, i get all sorts of problems.
i get 125 fps easy, but as soon as another player is onscreen, the fps will drop to 16 every second, and my lagmeter shows an interrupt every second, making q3 very very jerky to play.
the sound also gets interrupted, if a sound effect is being played during the "stutter", the sound will stutter too.
ive re installed q3 twice, and also my sound and video drivers too.
ram seems to be getting quite hot, as is the hdd, but laptop is on a desk and it used to run quake fine before the upgrade.
anyone any ideas??

Post by **Tormentius** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 6:08 pm

Have you tried running some diagnostic apps on the HDD and RAM?

Post by **aziraphale** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 8:05 pm

like what sort of diagnostics?
ive had my OS reloaded, and all software etc...
new ram too, and extra ram, but now it either stalls(skips/jumps) or it will run for a few minutes, then my comp will blue screen crash.
Machine Check Exception is the error....

Post by **aziraphale** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 8:06 pm

ok...this was replied to in march, only got the forum reg details and topic reply email today, 25/07/2005.....

Post by **ElNinio** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 10:58 am

is there a CD in the drive?

Post by **o'dium** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 11:00 am

GeForce Go440 64m. Oh dear.

Post by **aziraphale** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 12:13 pm

no, theres no cd in the drive.
whats wrong with the geforce?
always used to work fine.

Post by **Tormentius** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 3:33 pm

It may be a CPU error. Post the hex code at the bottom of the blue screen message when you get a chance.

Post by **axbaby** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 5:48 pm

could be like you describe a heat issue where the cpu slows down "like it's supposed to" when it get's too hot.
make sure there is good airflow around the laptop .. take it in for service if you think dust and grime is preventing proper cooling.

also
motherboard drivers upgrade .. me thinks you may be using default xp drivers.

Post by **cky** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 8:52 pm

I recently had this too, and I'm not sure why it happened. It was happening in my p4 2.4, 512 pc2100 ram and 9600 pro. I thought it was heat too, and actually when I cleaned the disipators and fans it wasn't as bad as before. But kept happening. I recently upgraded to a 6800gt, pc2700 ram and formatted. Suddently it did not happen anymore.
When I formatted being on the 9600pro it kept happening. So, what was the problem?
Well, one of the old memory sticks is still being used, what makes me think that it was the graphics card. And i'd still go for the heat issue, my raddy was much hotter than this 6800gt at full load.
Check your heat dissipation devices and make sure nothing is overheating. Since it is a laptop, creating an airflow is impossible so I can't really help, apart of using other kind of dissipators and/or termic paste.

Edit: Thanks to whoever sent me the password to my email, when I tried the forgot password option, it wouldn't send a mail