Lag spikes with new rig

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Halogen

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Hi I have a rather irritating problem. I recently got a new rig but to my surprise I get some hectic lag spikes in seemingly space intervals. My specs are as follow:

My old rig:
Nvidia 9800 gt (1 gig)
Core 2 duo @ 2.2 Ghz
2 gigs ram
Windows XP Home 32 bit

My new rig:
ATI 5870 (1 gig)
i5 750 @ 2.67 Ghz
4 gigs ram
Windows 7 Home 64 bit

I have played main different games and get the same results. Between 10 - 15 minutes I get 5 - 10 sec lag spikes. Now in game like CSS this is a rather big problem. Now during the lag spikes VOIP isn't interrupted in any games while happening. My ping however shoots up to about 400 ms.

What I have determined so far is that it isn't a lack of power supplied by the PSU. Nor is it the line as my previous PC still plays games perfectly fine without lag. I feel it might be a windows 7 problem (since it is still quite new to the scene). However I can't really pinpoint the problem. I have tried turning of background tasks, have disabled an audio feature in Win 7 that has been the route of problems for other gamers on the microsoft forums but alas no difference has been really made. Have got the lastest drivers.

Anyone know the possible cause? Also what is the best programs to use to measure CPU and GPU temperatures so that I can check everything is running at optimal temperatures? I would appreciate any help.

Halogen

Edit:
I have a 384 kbps line and cap is far from finished.
 
Are you playing on wireless or ethernet? if its wireless you need to change your wifi settings to Mode "b" only and not a/b/g ...
this corrected the problem for me!
cheers
 
Does it feel like network lag or gfx style lag? Not sure how else to describe that. Find a way to display fps during gaming and watch that. Does it slow down too?

If yes then its a gfx style lag issue, i.e. main drawing loop is slowing down:
  • Switch off scheduled tasks. They were already hidden in vista, probably more so in Win7. The scheduled tasks manager that the user normally sees doesn't show much of anything...but its there. Somewhere under administrator tools I think. Might not be accessible under win home edition.
  • Temporarily disable the search service & see if that helps.

If no then:
  • Install firewall & block everything except the game. And no, windows firewall does not count.

Unlikely to be a temperature issue.

And finally time the intervals with a stopwatch. Try to figure out whether it is perfectly spaced or not.

Good luck. Since Vista sorting out these kinds of issues is a complete nightmare. Esp the audio & net issues because its full of "clever" code that keeps auto-adjusting **** on the fly.:sick:
 
I would recommend to use Process Explorer NT, with the CPU & IO history columns enabled, to monitor the CPU & I/O usage.

Then you could also try running 'ping www.aardvark.co.za -t' during your online game. Normally you should be able to get 50ms response time, and during the lagg spikes I assume that it would be 200ms+

Instead of trying to determine of your connection is experiencing spikes, why don't you just play single player games to establish if the spikes are due to CPU, I/O or the Network. (since you can rule out networking with singleplayer).
If you want to save the output to your desktop, instead of viewing it on the screen, run: cmd /c ping www.aardvark.co.za -t > "%userprofile%\ping.txt"
 
Well I have already played single player and I use ethernet not wireless. Will do more tests now and report back :) and I use bit defender internet security 2010
 
Yep I have determined that it is not lag from my PC as single player runs 100% fine. Just network doesn't. Will keep this updated. I will time the intervals as well. However which I/O should I monitor and what exactly am I searching for in the values?

I have the following I/O options select (all actually) but which is important:
I/O Reads
I/O Writes
I/O Other
I/O Read Bytes
I/O Writes Bytes
I/O Other Bytes
 
Finally a break through......the lag spikes are in intervals of 15 minutes on the dot, i wonder if it might be bit defender but i doubt it....now to find out what happens every 15 minutes
 
Halogen said:
Finally a break through......the lag spikes are in intervals of 15 minutes on the dot, i wonder if it might be bit defender but i doubt it....now to find out what happens every 15 minutes
Click to expand...
Use stop watch again. Wait for it to happen. Start stop watch. Exit game. Fire up tcpview. And watch what happens at 15 mins.

Something is trying to auto-update. Probably the AV with that 15 min interval.

Alternatively you can try Process monitor. It will dump a hell of a lot of data, so you might have to use the filter function to avoid getting swamped. Just don't filter out the thing you are trying to catch.;) Oh, and it doesn't do network stuff. Only file & registry.

Both developed by the same dude as the app Pata recommended.
 
Ok i have the results from TCPView.....i have red, yellow and green highlighted things at the lag spike. Made screenies, just want to ask can I post the pictures or does it contain confidential info? What does it mean when something is highlighted in red/yellow and green? From what I understand it means the computers risk. Also what does the following mean:

Listening
Time_wait
Established
Close_wait

I think I know but I don't want to make a mistake.
 
Here's a valuable post with regards to the configuration of Process Explorer NT (just note - its not TCP View, but its from the same company):
bitshift said:
When installing Windows on a machine, one of the first things that you should do is download Process Explorer from www.sysinternals.com. This is a vastely improved task manager and should be installed as a part of Windows :).

Once ProcessExplorer is running from the Options menu choose "replace taskmanager", "only allow one instance", "hide when minimised", and "CPU history in tray icon".

Then right click on the header with the names of each columns and choose "columns". Untick "company name", and then on the Process Performance tab tick "CPU usage", "CPU history", "CPU time", "I/O reads", "I/O writes", and "I/O history". On the Process Memory tab tick "Private Bytes" and "virtual size". Private bytes is the actual amount of memory a process is using, and Virtual Size is the total virtual memory space that Windows has allocated for the process.

You can safely remove GTS theme selector.

Process Explorer will allow you to determine what processes are running, and easliy check their CPU and disk usage history, so you can determine what is slowing things down.

On a side note, on each new Windows install I would recommend checking for Windows Search and/or the Nero indexing services (NMIndexingService) in the Services Manager (start->run->services.msc). If either are started then right click and stop them, then right click, choose Properties and set them to disabled.
Click to expand...
(Original thread from http://archive.twilightgaming.co.za/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=30392)

TCPView didn't show much actually. The 2nd & 3rd screenshots only showed connections to localhost (your PC) being closed, which was most likely Chrome/Firefox.

TCPView only showed that Google Chrome had a connection that closed. It could be that you're on some kind of webpage that automatically refresh every 15 minutes.
OR it could be something like Punkbuster.

Select the I/O Read & Write Bytes, as they indicate how much has been written/read to/from your harddrive.

I haven't looked up the definitions, but this is my understanding of the Connection States:
Listening - the socket (or application) is waiting for incoming connections to be made to it
Time_wait - the socket is being opened
Established - the connection to the server has been established
Close_wait - the connection is being closed

NetLimiter 3 Beta 6 has just been released. They've made a few major bug fixes, although they haven't implemented the stats module yet :(
The stats module isn't a necessity, because in your case you can just view the graphs to get an indication of which app caused the spike.
 
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I've also been getting these on Telkom ADSL. It's bad on CSS. I'm not sure whether it's because they're using the rubbish servers or Telkom has been having hiccups. Don't always blame your system.
 
Seems to be only a handful of people. Also since it is every 15 minutes is a bit suspicious.
 
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