Few issues, please advise...

[Sirkwa]

I recently built a rig about 5 months ago. Specs are as follows...

E6750 C2D
eVGA 8800GTS 320 Superclocked
2gb G.skill 800 RAM
Asus p5k MB
Corsair 520w PSU
320GB Seagate HDD
Vista 32-bit Home Premium

Everything has gone very smooth as far as install and running since the build date. Lately however, according to CPU-z and my frame rates in games my CPU is not working at 100%. Nothing has changed as far as settings, it just happened out of the blue.

If I disable stepping in BIOS then it finally will process at 2.6ghz but if stepping is enabled no matter what I throw at it, it will not pass 2.0ghz. What would cause this?

Another issue...

Lately in Counter-Strike Source, I will be sailing along at 100+fps then all of a sudden the sound repeats itself (like tick....tick....tick....tick...etc.), whether its footsteps or a gunfire, and my frame rates drop down to 9-10fps and no higher. No matter what I do, the only way to fix the frame rates is to restart CSS and then it will be back up to 100+fps. I tried updating to the latest stable drivers but that did nothing....Let me rephrase that. After my updating to the most recent drivers It still does that as well as 3 crashes stating that my display drivers have stopped working.

What could be causing this issue as well?

Thanks for your time.

- Justin

[hitchface]

You might try rolling back to a previous version of the drivers. They aren't always entirely stable when they get released.

Someone else will have to help you out with the CPU issue...my knowledge of stepping seems to be different than yours. Also remember that your CPU isn't doing the heavy hauling in a game, it is the GPU. Is it keeping cool?

[Sirkwa]

I noticed one day that my fps were a little low, running around 80fps. When I noticed that I checked my specs in CPU-z and noticed my CPU would not process faster than 2.0ghz. So I decided to disable Step in BIOS. My FPS returned to what they normally were when I first built my rig, about 40-80fps higher.

I also have tried rolling back to previous drivers and it didn't fix the GPU issues.

One thing I haven't checked is my temps under heavy gaming. I use to, but not lately. Since its factory OC'ed it runs a little hot, around 65C under heavy load, but never goes over. I will monitor it from now on and if it occurs again I'll update the post with the temps when the crashing occurs.

++++Update++++

I ran some heavy gpu stress tests and temps didn't go over 68C, so over-heating seems to be ruled out.