What the hell is wrong? For about 4 months now I've been getting these random FPS drops in games (like down to 10fps) then after 30 secs or so it shoots back up to 100fps. Yes it's running hot but even when I use my redneck cooling solution (fans galore) to get decent temps, I STILL get these drops. It's starting to drive me nuts, as I game competitively and am missing out on league events and such. Anyone experience something like this before?

what brand of card, make model and driver version? sli or x-fire?

Oh dang my bad, that post was out of frustration so I left out the details.

BFG Geforce 8800GT OC2 (Always latest drivers, but this has been happening for 4 months or so now)
ASUS M2N-MX SE Plus
Athlon X2 5000+ @ 2.6
2gb ram
Problem happens in XP and Vista, haven't tested it in Linux yet.

435w no name power supply running:

2 sata hdd's (7200rpm 160gb)
8800GT (needed to buy the 6 pin pcie adapter and use 2 molex to get the required power)

I really can't see it being the power supply, as it never was an issue before, even when I had my case lights hooked up and such.

Dude sounds like your card is just old & past it's prime. Maybe seeing as how your a serious gamer it's time for a new card eh? I know if I was being depended on to be there I would make sure I had something reliable to game with. then save the old as a back up just in case right.

Yeah new card needed.

However.. I'd be running a brand name psu with a few more watts.

430 to power a mobo, cpu, 2 gigs ram, say one hdd ( not sure how many you got) at least 1 optical drive and a bunch of fans and lights is pushing it on a no name 430. Not to mention a video card that requires a 6-pin. Not sure just how stable the juice is flowing out of that. It 'may' have caused the premature fail of your card.

sometimes yes I do overkill, but only to be safe. personally i'd feel alot better running 5-600, so that I got watts to spare with your setup - and brand name at that. just my two cents.

do the math, the card needs 26 amps amd total 400 watts, 26 amps x 12v rail equals the watts needed, ~ 312. so that leaves you 118 watts to run everything else.

old is in the eye of the beholder, to me and to many others an 8800gt is far from old in fact its only been on the market for about 2 years, so if your pleased with how it performs then i would look to solve the issue. i would rma the card if a fresh install does not fix the issues.

I seem to recall having a problem like this way back when. If you Google random FPS drops, most seem to be Nvidia cards on Nvidia chipsets, as I recall 6800GT's on NF3 chipsets were the first to do this, but it didn't happen to everybody. The problem seemed to be with the chipset drivers. If you do a fresh install, install the minimum of the chipset drivers, don't use Nvidia's IDE driver or install their firewall thingy if they still have it as they seemed to cause the majority of the problems back in the NF3, NF4 and NF5 days.

I remember hearing about this as well and being thankful I went with a 9800Pro with my nForce 3 board. In any case though it sounds software related and should be fixable. Dr_BenD_over has some good suggestions that you'll probably end up having to try but before the format why not try to update everything you can and maybe run some spyware software. You could have your task manager open while gaming so when you get a slow down you can quickly see if there are any processes that might be causing it. If you game competitively do you use voice software like Ventrillio (sp)? Maybe there's a problem with something like that so try gaming with nothing running in the background after a fresh reboot.

Just a list of things I can think of before taking more drastic steps.

Great troubleshooting steps Flama

One step ahead of yas lol.

This has occurred on multiple OS installs, XP 32/64 Vista 32/64 with every different combination of drivers possible.

Even with minimal processes running it still happens. My big prob here is what if I buy a new card just to find out its something else?

Argh so frustrating.

Keep an eye out for a card with the same power as the 8800gt for a good price!

if you have an Nvidia chipset then stick with that, but I seen an ATI 3870 on kijiji for 70 bucks. Just a heads up. 750Mhz core clock, 2.25Ghz memory clock stock settings.

With an aftermarket cooler you can easily hit 850+Mhz core, 2.7+Ghz Memory @50 degrees full load thru CCC.

Can you get a loaner card to try?

yeah my suggestions are to try another video card if you have access one, or rma this one and get a loaner. also i dont trust the sounds of your powersupply, you dont need anything to big, but maybe ajust a quality 500watt would suit you fine

I don't have access to a video card to try. I am indeed running nforce so I tend to stick with nvidia products so everything is configurable via ntune.

Can't RMA this card since I opened it to change the thermal compound.

Theres a bunch of Nvidia cards right now on Kijiji. Click on Computer accessories and do a search for Nvidia to have a look. Hope you find something. I know there are a few different versions of the 8800 there for good prices too.