AHHH!!!! what happened to my performance!?!?

I noticed the other day as I was attempting to play Call of Duty with some friends (it's the only game that is even remotely demanding that I have put on here since I last reformatted a few weeks ago) that as soon as there was something difficult to render my framerates plummeted to like 12 from where I usually sit at 70 with my usual settings. As this problem cropped up out of nowhere after I had been running and playing fine for a few days on the fresh windows install I was obviously concerned. I attempted to reinstall cod las night to no effect and was clueless on what to do (since I don't have any other demanding games on hand) until I was hit with the brilliant idea to run 3dmark, so the long and shot of it is that with my current clock settings and all I got ~3100 in '05 before whatever this problem is struck and now I'm only getting 2200. Something is obviously wrong but I cant figure it out, I checked the power settings for both CPU and GPU, and nothing has changed that I can think of. Short of having a virus that multiple scans didn't pick up (which I doubt considering me sterile web surfing) I am clueless. I am about to just give up and reformat considering that there isn't anything that would be a calamity to lose that I can't just move and back up but thats kinda cheating so any advice would be appreciated that would enable me to fix this without the reformat hassle. Sorry for the longwinded explanation and thanks in advance for any help.

 

Try re-installing a fresh copy of your display drivers and make sure the game is patched up to the newest version. Also make sure punk buster is updated!

 

Post compares of each please! =) If you are not sure how then please check the faqs at the bottom of the left menu. Also make sure AA/AF are set to what you expect as these are the greatest performance eaters, also Vsync.

 

So what changed? You reformatted? You probably have a bad power setting (set to run on battery or something), or you have some graphics drivers that are out of date.

 

Well thats it I reformatted but it worked fine on the new install for a few days and then randomly went all weird. I have been using the same drivers as i was before (they are a a couple months old but I have been using them for that long without problems and I have had dislikes of some of the newer things). I do intend on uninstalling them, using driver cleaner and then finally giving in and getting the newest ones though. Thanks for responding so quickly.