Help! Video Card stupidity.

Ok, ill start with system specs.

Gigabyte m59SLI-S5 mobo, flashed to latest bios.
AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200+
2*1 gig Dual Channel A-data DDR2 800 (2*1 is 2 1 gig chips)
Dual EVGA 7600gts Tested in both single and SLI mode(Nvidia Driver ver. 93.71)
Western Digital Cavier 120 Gig Harddrive
Silverstone Zues 650W PSU (max wattage 730)

Obviously this system should kill for graphics and play in Guildwars, and in some places it does, peaking out as high as 240 frames per second, but usually averaging a bit over 110.

There is some lag, IE ping skips up to about 240 and sometimes higher but averages midway between 100-200 ms.

And finally, here is the issue.


In both sli and single card mode in certain zones, I cant move without framerate bottoming out, literally at 0. cant spin the view, same issue, but oddly enough I can stand in one place and take on a dozen mobs and its just fine, framerate drops a bit, but only to 60-70 fps. This happens no matter what resolution, refresh rate, or other settings are set, from lowest to highest. Oddly enough its only in certain zones, and sometimes, those zones are fine, sometimes I get the frame skipping. For instance, messing around in pre-searing today with a new char and I walk through lakeside county, everythings completely fine, go into wizards folly and framerate dies whenever I try to move. Walk into Foible's Fiare, framerate dies, log out, log back in, foibles faire now runs just about perfect, slight drop due to lots of players, but easily playable, go back out into wizards folly, dead framerate. Last night, Droks had the framerate problem, but talus chute was just fine. Went to do some totem axe farming and reed bog had the problem and falls was completly unplayable. but the first zone(forget name) out of Ventari's refuge ran perfectly. I do also get even in the good zones character jumping, IE if I click a mob to go attack suddenly im most of the way across the bridge in talus chute in less then a second. Now as near as I can tell, it might have something to do with weather, as it seems to improve in say wizards folly when not looking at the snowfalling. Unfortunatly I never really paid enough attention to the weather in each zone to see if its constant or changes and if that could be effecting it, but in reed bog and the falls it wasnt raining or anything, but maybe there are dust and pollen floating around? Anyways, Ive got nightfall coming on thursday, which is why I reinstalled Guild Wars this week and im hoping to fix this problem before then.


The system was built in novemeber and the last time I played Guild wars was on the old comp, which had the whole agp setup issue where I had to actually drop back to 4x agp to run even though vid card and board were 8x.


Other games that run fine at good settings, BF2, BF2142, CS:S, Darkstar One, World of Warcraft

X3:Reunion has a somewhat similar problem whenever the guns are fired all of a sudden the framerate bottoms out. Beginning to think its some kind of issue related to particle systems and this video card or drivers. Not sure how to get around that though. I cant drop back significantly on video drivers because I do use the SLI switch that was introduced in the 93 series drivers as I have dual monitors and use them for my 3d work.



Thanks for your help.

Wildburn

Try the cards in another PC or try a card from a different PC in yours?

Do you use the coolbits hack? If so do you have the Max Frames to Render ahead set to a different value than default? (Default is 3) I remember that being a easy fix for some performance issues in X3, that was a while ago though.

Wracking my brain here, can't think of much. Make sure you card/s are not overheating as two of them can get pretty hot. You have the newest drivers correct?

Sorry I wasn't much help...I tried at least. =\

Well, on the off chance that guild wars was stupid, I thought Id try something revolutionary, I uninstalled Guild Wars, then reinstalled it, and just opened it to the login screen and let it run the 1.5 gig background download straight through without me trying to play at the same time, and lo and behold it worked. So apparently either from playing and or quitting out of guild wars or guild wars crashing during(which happened a couple times first day I installed it) it somehow corrupted the download exactly at the part for weather(further testing showed all sectors where the fps issue occured were experiencing some form of weather or particle system), So, my recommendation for people with similar issues would be to un and reinstall guild wars and then just open it to the login screen while your sleeping or otherwise away for about 3 hours and it should help.

Cheers for the replies though.