Zotac 9600gt - Lagging While Gaming

Hi Guys. Bot The Zotac 9600gt Very Recently. The Card Is Nice. No Thermal Issues. But I Have One Question.

My Sys. Specs:

Amd X2 5000+
M2n-vm Hdmi
4gb Ddr2 800 Transcend Memory
250gb Sata
Huntkey 450w Power Supply
19" Samsung Widescreen Monitor

While Gaming, The Card Lags Once In Every 5 Minutes And Reverts Back To The Normal State In 3-4 Seconds. Especially When Antialiasing Is Enabled ( Even In 2x). So I Disabled It And Enabled Anisotropic Filtering (8x). This I Did In Tomb Raider Underworld. Now It Rarely Lags. Is There Any Problem With The Card Or The Driver.

Even In Devil May Cry 4, The Same Problem. Since There Is No Advanced Setting, Was Playing The Game As It Is. Now The Same Lag (once In 5 Minutes, Or Lesser) In Prince Of Persia 2008 Too. There Is No Advanced Setting In This Game Too. But I Think I Can Force Aa Off In Nvidia Control Panel. But Havent Done That.

But Older Games Like Fear, Doom 3 Etc. Are Ok.

So Is There Any Problem With This Card, Or The 9600gt Range Of Gpus Are Like This, Or Is There Any Driver Issue. Plz Tell Me Guys. If There Is A Problem With The Card , I Have To Rma It As Soon As Possible.

Update to the latest drivers from Nvidia website.

I don't think it should lag....Maybe the latest driver will solve the problems also don't force any AA.

Try playing without AA. these lags are basically frame rate drops at what resolution are you playing ?

I dont think its the problem of the graphics card.. May be a driver issue most probably.. BTW what's the ampere rating the "Huntkey 450w Power Supply" in the +12V line?? Havent heard of such a brand..

yes dude, have installed the latest drivers and m not forcing any AA. but the same problem. the huntkey power supply is a hongkong make. it is sold here in chennai and it is very popular here. it seems good than the zebronics platinum i think . even i came to know about it very recently. it has 2 rails of 12v with 18amps each . so total of 36amps. this card requires 26amps , right ?? . only after going through the specification from the website , i intended to purchase it .

the full name of the psu is huntkey v-power 450w. and it comes with a 5 yr warranty, which impressed me . the url is huntkeydiy.com. for ur information u may also download the spec. sheet of this psu. plz navigate to powersupply > v-power > 450w and download the pdf file . it has the detailed spec . u can have a look at it to get additional info.

plz frnds, i need to know if there is any issue with this card or with this psu. plz reply ASAP.

bye

Well, it's most probably a driver issue. Update it to the 180.48 drivers and see.
Also, keep the settings in Nvidia Control Panel as it is. Don't change the performance settings.

If u are playing at 1680 and max settings, the lags must be frame drops. Try running the game at less resolutions and see if the lags reoccur.

Also, run a 3DMark benchmark to see ur 3DMark score. See if the lags occcur during the run.

If after all these, the issue stilol dere, RMA time buddy.

Edited: Also clean the drivers completely before installing the new driver. Preferably use Driver sweeper to do that. Reboot and then install the new driver. Lots of problems happen due to traces of old drivers.

+1 for that

Check for latest drivers from nvidia site and upgrade ur SMPS as early as possible.

ok dude, will try reinstalling the os or use driver sweeper and try. cuz i initially installed the driver provided in the cd and only then i installed the latest driver. so will give a try

and i forgot to tell about 1 more issue. dont know it is an issue or not. in tomb raider underworld, the shadows are not proper. when lara standing, the shadows are not clear and its a kinda .... i dont know how to explain it. i think u must have understood it. and also in devil may cry 4, there are some issues which my brother has noticed it. are these driver errors or programming errors ??. dont know. i was suggested this card by most of the dealers and i thot this card wud b the best. but.... i dont know whats going on.

so anyway will try the above and get back to u asap.

If no success after re installation then your SMPS could be issue.Try another.
This is also not true, take a look at total power drawn on 12v rails,from here calculate current available on 12v rails by dividing with total power in watts.Here are some conclusions about huntkey PSU .
Huntkey Green Star 450 W Power Supply Review | Hardware Secrets

Upgrade the PSU if possible, also the lagging my friend had too it seemed to be a kind of virus, which increased the HDD activiy suddenly, which caused lag in games. So run a good AV and do a clean install of the drivers, do not use beta drivers etc.

dude, tried using driver sweeper, reinstalled windows, installed the latest driver, installed amd dual core optimizer, winxp dual core hotfix, amd processor driver given in the cd ... but the problem still persists.

so asked the service person of this power supply. he told that that if the psu cannot handle the gpu power requirement, surely the system wud hang up or restart. in the absence of these, the lag problem is caused only by the gpu he says. he is also ready to give me a 500w power supply by paying more but he says that it is a waste of money. so....

now in prince of persia 2008, i've reduced the resolution to 1024 x 786. it was better than 1440x900 . and then i tried reducing it to 800x600 and this was better than 1024x768.
so now frnds, plz tell what is the problem. the more the resolution is, the frequency of the lag increases.

so now what shud i do ??. shall i RMA the card. bcuz i fear that, i will be getting an old card as replacement. but if that card also performs like the same, i will be very much worried.

plz give me a suggestion guys, cuz m trying to RMA the card. also if anyone knows the service center for zotac in chennai or anywhere, plz give me the details of the phone no. etc. will be very thankful to u frnds .....

reply ASAP.

bye....

^^ proccy is bottlenecking with your card & hence the lags..

i don't think your total system power consumptions exceeds 270W, hence PSU isn't culprit in your case..

^^ Proccy is not the issue POP 2008, is working perfectly fine at 1024*768 on my sys which is a 4000+ and a 7900GTO etc...

There u got ur answer...

Since it's running fine at just the lower resolution, I think the card is just fine. Also, since the older games are running without any lag, the card is ok. Have u overclocked ur processor. U have a good processor, just overclock it and u'll get a lot more out of ur card.

The lags are not because of any 3D problem but due to the resolution and the settings used which the card is not able to handle. Did u run 3D Mark?
If u tell us the score, we can tell if the score is ok for the card just to make sure that it's not the problem.

Also attach a screenie for the result. For the shadows problem, take a screenie and attach it here so that we can take a look. And don't panic...
The PSU seems fine to me for a 9600GT though not dependable for longer periods.

can u plz tell me which software is that ?. is that 3d mark basic or 3d mark vantage pro. is 3d mark basic enuf or i have to download 3d mark vantage pro ??. plz tell me .

and will post the pics asap ....

If u have 3D Mark Vantage, u can just get the Professional edition key and register with that key to unlock the professional edition.

However, if u have 3D Mark 06, Better run 3DMark 06 and tell the score.