Please help me fix this super annoying glitch

Hello.

For some reason, my framerate is all over the place with the 7970m. Here's what happens:

Game will be running at 60 FPS according to FRAPS. Game then dips suddenly to 30 FPS, where it's locked for awhile. A few seconds later, it shoots back up to 60 FPS. Few more seconds and it's back down to 30 FPS.

It never really dips below 30 or goes over 60, even though I'm playing a game where I should get over 60 FPS, easily. It seems to be locked between these 2 numbers.

This is causing me great annoyance because the game likes to lag while it's doing this. Does anyone have any idea what this can be? A FRAPS issue, perhaps?

 

what are your cpu/gpu temperatures. high temps will cause downclocking for a short time and then when it cools it will go up again.
strange that its only dropping for a few seconds though.

download core temps and gpuz from my sig below and run them in background.
also when was the last time you cleaned the fans and vents out with compressed air. should be done every 3-6 months as this will also cause high temps.

 

According to MSI Afterburner, my temps haven't gone over 60 at any point. I even checked it immediately after playing and it wasn't overheating.

The games I'm playing are older games that should run at 60 FPS no problem. The one game does, for a little while, but as soon as some action or something happens it drops to 30 where it just stays steady. Then it will bounce back up to 60 where it's steady again. Very strange and very annoying.

The other game does the same thing, but it's less noticeable in the gameplay. In the first game, the bouncing FPS causes lag every time it dips to 30.

 

Are you using the latest drivers for the 7970?

 

what graphics settings have you got them set too in game. ultra, high,med,low.
no expert here but try lowering settings as it sounds like the gpu is struggling during heavy action on screen.

 

Thanks for the help fellas, but I fixed it.

Turns out it was a known problem with the game running on Windows 7 machines. I had to add a special line to the .cfg file and now it seems to stay at 60 FPS.

 

nice one. at least its sorted.

 

Make sure Vsync is off, or use triple-buffered Vsync.

 

would like to name that mystery game for us?

 

The game is an old one that no one here is probably interested in. Sacred Gold. It's a Diablo-style hack n' slash RPG. Very cool game but yeah, that glitch was annoying. I had to enter a line of text in the .ini and it seemed to have cleared it up. The glitch only happened once after that but for the most part the game has stayed stable at 60+ FPS.

The problem hasn't fixed. I still get the 30 FPS drop.

My card is performing fine. Temps are normal and the performance is exactly where it should be. I'm getting 60 FPS playing Skyrim on Ultra High. For some reason this older game is giving me problems.

Any other ideas?

 

You sure this isn't an Enduro issue? It wouldn't surprise me, because this is an older game which AMD may not have fixed.

 

I have Enduro disabled. Have had it disabled for a long time now.

 

As another user responded earlier it is just VSync (vertical refresh on AMD) doing its job. It is likely that triple buffering isn't supported in that game and that is why the frame rate is halved. That is how VSync works without tripple buffering, when the frame rate drops below your monitors refresh rate it automatically will half its output. That is partly why some people hate VSync , especially before triple buffering was introduced. Try disabling VSync for that game in NVidia CP and see if it keeps dropping to
30 FPS. You could also try to force triple buffering using 3rd party software.

 

Just started playing another game and I was getting the same thing. This time it was the game Gothic. My FPS would go to 60 then drop suddenly to 22-25, then shoot back up to 60 after awhile, and it would keep doing this cycle over and over again.

Apparently, some of these old games have FPS limits. I had to download a mod that unlocked the FPS limit from Gothic and now it stays at a stable 60 FPS. I wonder if Sacred has a limit of 30 and that's why this is happening. Not sure. But, I have disabled Vsync and triple buffering, so I'll see if that helps things next time I play.

Thanks for the tips and suggestion everybody. Very much appreciated.1

 

Old games you say? Try setting affinity to one CPU core. I know a lot of old games were designed to run on single-core processors and go crazy on multi-cores. For example Unreal and UT99 speed up and slow down constantly unless I do this.

 

Sell 7970M and go Nvidia. That's your best solution and then spit and crap on Enduro and the 7970M as much as you can on forums, just because it's so much fun.

 

Nvidia fanboy alert!

 

Hey octiceps, how do I set the game to use one core? I will try that as well. I disabled vsync and triple buffering but I haven't played yet to see if those changes worked or not. I'll check all this out in a bit. But yeah, how do I do the single core trick?

 

Change the Processor Affinity setting in Windows 7 to gain a performance edge - TechRepublic

Core 0 is the first physical core, Core 1 is the first virtual core (due to Hyper-Threading), Core 2 is the second physical core, Core 3 is the second virtual core, and so on and so forth. You can set the game to run on just Core 0. Note that you have to do this from the Task Manager every time you load the game up

 

Thanks!

The FPS is sorted out but I'm getting a new glitch. Textures disappearing when I look in their direction. Mostly distant textures like distant mountains, distant huts, etc. If I turn so they are in my peripheral vision but not directly in front of me, they draw back in. If I look at them, they disappear. Any ideas? I reinstalled the game so hopefully that fixes it.

 

I reinstalled the game and still get this very annoying glitch.

Anyone have any ideas how I can fix it? I've tried a bunch of things but nothing seems to work.

I'm uploading a video of the problem now. I'll post a link to it when it's live.