Power Outage >> Crap Performance

[StryfeJ]

First of all, I'd like to apologize that my first post here is asking for help.

About 2-3 weeks ago the power went off in the neighborhood. When it came back on, my computer was frozen. It was on, but it was just showing a blank screen. I tried hitting the restart button, power button, and ctrl+alt+del, but it didn't respond. I didn't want to do so, but I didn't see any other option aside from pulling the plug, so I hit the off switch on the surge protector.

When I turned it back on, it gave me the blue (I think its BIOS) screen and gave me some message. Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what it said, but I think it was something about the video card, and it wanted to make sure it was set right or something. I just hit 'enter' and went on, and for the most part everything seemed to be fine.

However, since then, my computer has been having issues playing FFXI. Most of the time it's okay, although I do notice some slowdown that I didn't see before, especially when I'm on THF, constantly switching gear/hitting abilities/etc. When the action picks up, the system really crawls, and that's been screwing things up pretty bad. While doing ZR I went to train the gears after the 5f Frog. Things had been running fine for the most part (aside from the minor slowdown I mentioned which sucks, but isn't crippling). However, as soon as I entered the room and had all the aggro, I got monumental lag to the point where my screen was only refreshing every three seconds. One second I'm in the middle of the room, a few seconds later I'm to the side of the door, then I try running back in the center but they all kill me. This has also proved disastrous when trying to chainstun things as it turns super-laggy, so I'm not able to stun very often (which of course screws up the whole idea of keeping the mob stun-locked).

I've tried hitting /names, turning off effects, restarting computer beforehand, etc., but none of that has solved the problem. Again, these were all things that I was able to do before the power outage, so it seems that caused something to screw up. I'd hate to either 1) not be able to take on any important roles in my groups where my screw-up could cause our group to fail (like CS-stunning, sac pulling salvage, kiting dragons in BCD, etc) or 2) spend $1000 or whatever just so I can play FFXI a little better (which I'd probably do at this point, sadly). I also tried a system restore, even going back as far as January of this year, but it said that it couldn't do that because no changes were made (which I don't really understand).

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I'm not too good with computers, but here's some information if it helps (and if any more is needed, just let me know).

Windows XP
AMD Athlon
1.09Ghz, 1.00G of RAM
2x RADEON 9600 Series (primary and secondary)

Thanks in advance for any help, it's much appreciated.

[Olo401]

I'm pretty sure it's a hardware problem, but I can't figure out where. Seems like it's either the power supply or the motherboard (something involving the expansion slots). It sounds like you're not getting enough power to the video cards, which would put all the load back on your CPU, which would cause major slowdowns in FFXI performance.

If you have another power supply lying around, try swapping it out and see if that improves things. Or take out your secondary video card, as that will relieve some of the power load in your system. Or switch the expansion slots where the video card sit (I'm guesing you have PCI cards? Never seen a system w/ more than one AGP slot).

[Tekumel]

When I turned it back on, it gave me the blue (I think its BIOS) screen and gave me some message. Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what it said, but I think it was something about the video card, and it wanted to make sure it was set right or something. I just hit 'enter' and went on, and for the most part everything seemed to be fine.

This leads me to believe either one of your power supply rails blew, or one of your video cards took a hit. First, get yourself a voltmeter/multimeter. Measure the outputs of your power supply, and make sure they're within spec. Check a couple different points for each voltage (the wires are color coded). I would definitely check both power connections to the video card (I'm assuming they have a separate power connection beyond what's on the PCI header) and make sure they're correct and reasonably close to each other.

Second, if all of your power supply voltages are correct (should be +3.3VDC, +5VDC, and +12VDC), I would remove your video cards one at a time and boot up with a single card configuration. Obviously this won't magically make your performance go back to what it was, but give each card a decent test (play for a half hour or hour) and see if either one runs significantly worse than the other. If so, you've got a bad video card.

[StryfeJ]

Hey, thanks a lot for the responses. Before Tekumel responded, the first thing that both Olo and another friend mentioned was the power supply. I didn't have any spare ones sitting around, so I just went ahead and ordered one since it was pretty cheap (like $30 after s/h). If that doesn't fix it, I'll try seeing if there's a problem with either the motherboard or one of the video cards as suggested.

Thanks again for the help...much appreciated!