Sound card lag? Not exactly sure what the issue is...

[Keltiks]

I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem:

Recently I have been having "lag spikes" where the following happens:

It feels like my computer gets stuck trying to play a certain sound or load an animation. For example in an exp party the battle music will repeat the same 10 seconds or so over and over again. While this is happening I can't see any animations on my screen or hear any sounds and all the characters I see are stuck in a certain position. However I can still read the text and use my abilities, I just can't see them. If a character moves I see him/her move across the screen but they are still frozen in whatever position they were in when I started freezeing. Then randomly I'll see myself use all my abilities that I used while frozen and hear all the corresponding sounds in fast motion while my computer catches up. Then its fine again for some time. It is almost like there are too many things going on at once and my computer just stops trying.

I used to not have this problem, it has only developed recently. I am wondering if this is a RAM issue, video card, sound card, not really sure. Any input would be appreciated.

[Saphirea]

http://www.memtest86.com/

This will test your RAM in your machine.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

This will test the temperature.

Do you smoke around your machine? If so theres a ton of dust in it, open it up and while running lightly spray the dust out with compressed air unshaken, if the can gets cold while you're spraying you run the risk of spraying the liquid solution into your machine; you don't want this.

This sounds more along the lines of either heat or ram; since your whole machine is lagging behind and the output of sound since it found a memory address while playing can't release that address.

[Sigi]

Seconded.

Pro-tip: If you smoke at your keyboard, take a gun and shoot the processor. It's faster.


Seriously, don't smoke near your computer.. it's nine dollars for a can of compressed air... and it takes up to 3 cans to clean out the crap from a system that's been in a smoker's area.

Also, some technicians tend to charge a premium if they have to deal with a smoker's system