Performance degradation (Win7 x64)

Guys and gals, I've got a bewildering issue with my system. I've thought and thought about what the problem could be and every test I've run has given me no clue as to what is going on.

My issue is as the title says, performance degradation. Main system specs are:

2.0 Ghz CPU
GeForce GTX 285
4.0 GB RAM
On an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD running Windows 7 Professional 64bit.

Anymore info needed? Any program I should use to spill my computer stats onto the boards? Tell me and I'll get right on it.

Right now from a fresh system reboot I will be running CoH at 60 frames per second and then as I play longer my performance degrades down to a startling 7 to 8 frames per second. I am running CoH at 1920x1200 resolution on a dual monitor setup with all the graphics settings turned up to the max. It is not just this game, however. Dragon Age runs at 3 frames per second. This makes no sense. I had less RAM when I was running Windows XP 32bit and I was running CoH and Dragon Age flawlessly on the same settings.

So what could be going on here? I've done a memtest to see if my RAM is bad, I've poked around to see if my switch from HDD to SDD could be an issue, I've reinstalled my graphics drivers several times. There is absolutely no warning flags going off that I can think of in regards to my system. Is this in regards to a 64 bit OS? Is this the cause of damaged or failing hardware? Something else?

Any help would be appreciated and thanks so much in advance.

check your PM's. The same issues occurs on several other games with one of the vendors whose product you've used in that system.

Yeah I've made it a point to always stay one driver behind on my 7800. ATI used to have some pretty serious driver reliability issues waaay back in the day. Are they better about that now?

*EDIT* Huh, well this makes me more ok with my plan of buying an ATI vid card on my new system. I wasn't keen on the CoX/ATI issues currently still haunting us, but it sounds like I'd also have some headaches with the Nvidia in the 64bit world...

That's terrible. So it was caused from my switch from 32bit to 64bit. Eventually this will pan out, but I wish I had known about this issue before so I could have waited on upgrading. Oh well.

So just to make sure je_saist, you do have the performance degradation across the board when running an Nvidia card on a 64bit OS? Eventually CoH runs down to single digit frames per second and stays there?

Ok, "Im going to say this one, while there are problems with some of the Drivers from NVidia, you can use an older driver or a Vista 64 Bit driver and not run into the problems.

I currently am running a 9800GTX+ OC with year old drivers and do not have the framerate rpoblems on Win7 64 bit.

Oh? That works?

I will give it a try! Thank you so much for that tip! I wonder which driver I should get?

Alrighty, well tonight I begin the process of finding out which of the past 64bit (Vista or Win7) drivers are best for my system. If it turns out that this performance degradation isn't a result of drivers, then I'll be really worried.

Still waiting on je_saist to say if they've experienced the same thing on 64bit Nvidia drivers under Win7 64bit. If I happen to be the only one experiencing this, then I guess that's another thing to give me worry.

Bad news: I tried the drivers from 185.85_win7_64bit to the current 195.62_win7_64bit and all of them have caused this odd behavior with my system. I've tried looking around the net for others that may have gone through this problem but I just can't turn up anything. This is concerning.

It could be heat issues. Check to see if your computer is running hot. There are some programs out there that'll monitor your tempoeratures. Or you can run it with the case open.

I suggested possible overheating. A buddy of mine had low FPS issues and it wasn't until he ran with the case open and aimed a small fan at it that the problems were resolved. What's ironic is something ticked when he had fps issues in Dragon's Age as well. Prior to that we tried everything short of reinstalling the OS to fix his issues.

Good luck on resolving it.

Regards,
Fitz

If this were a memory leak, wouldn't my memory usage be climbing up towards 100% when I play games? I've monitored system memory on my other screen while playing and usage just doesn't seem to go above 60%.

A pair of GTX 285s? I vote heat problem.

How long have you had the SSD? If you're running everything off of the SSD rather than using it as occasional storage, you're wearing it down fairly rapidly. Each Write operation to an SSD moves that block of cells a little bit closer to wearing out. Even things like changes to "date last modified" for a file is a Write operation.

I'm currently running Win 7 64 bit and not experiencing any of these problems.

Asus P5Q MB
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400
8 GB RAM
Nvidia GTX285 w/ Nvidia 195.62 drivers

I also have a Zalman 9700 CPU cooler and it's all mounted in an Antec 900 case with all the fans. I don't have any heat problems.

Tremendous amount of thanks to all that have pitched in to help me fix this problem. Seriously, I freakin' love this community.

No really. I mean it so much.

THANK YOU.

I did a previous test to see if it was, in fact, a problem with heat. I found no issues with it but then again the test wasn't very thorough. On SSD wear and tear, TRIM helps prevent writing and rewriting in one spot over and over.

I do not have a pair of GTX 285s though, just one. The manufacturer is XFX. I will be doing a test monitoring temperature now.

Just to be sure, my operating temperature for my CPU should be around 40 to 50 Celsius, correct?