Alternating FPS? Help Please

[Flood55]

Hey guys. I know its been a while since I posted here, but I was wondering if you could help with a problem I have been having. I recently dug out Halo CE and started replaying some single player maps I made a while back. However, it at about 5 min into the level the game lagged up to pretty much around 1-5 fps and stayed there. So thinking this was little weird I started up CMT's SPV2 Beta and what do you know. 5 min in the fps goes down to 1-5 fps and then after 5 more min resumes normal 30 fps. It almost seems as though it starts out fine, then the graphics shut down and boot back up. And after a few more test it seemed that other games were also affected (namely Halo 2 and Half-life), so this isn't application oriented. So I reinstalled both my drivers and the graphics card itself. However that had no affect. I googled it and found a similar story http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=84176&start=0&p=477032. Didn't give me much to go on since I don't even think my card has in-built fan.

So, I would really appreciate it if someone had any more info on this. It is starting to get on my nerves. Thank you.

[343guiltymc]

It would be helpful if you told us your full system specs you know.

[Flood55]

Sorry, just forgot.
Windows Vista Ultimate Build 6.0
Intel Pentium D (Dual Core) CPU 2.8Ghz
APC Back-UPS ES 750 (Power Supply)
2GB RAM
80 of 225 GB Space left
HP w2007 Wide LCD Monitor
NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT

[Roostervier]

try turning decals off, as far as ce is concerned

[Flood55]

Already done. Actually I turned off everything once and put it down to the lowest resolution and halo crashed at the point the fps switched.

[Syuusuke]

which drivers versions are you usng?

[Flood55]

For NVIDIA, 7.15.11.6222

Edit: Just updated to 7.15.11.8250. No effect.

[p0lar_bear]

I hear a lot about new drivers borking up CE.

You might want to downgrade the drivers.

[Flood55]

Well Ive had this version since I got the computer a couple of years ago and this problem just took place a week ago. Plus Ce isn't the only game affected. Every game is.

[Syuusuke]

For NVIDIA, 7.15.11.6222

Edit: Just updated to 7.15.11.8250. No effect.

Uh do you just download and install drivers without cleaning out the previous drivers?

and 7.15.blahblah isn't really the latest, I don't think. Are you looking at device managers

[Flood55]

Just upgraded again to the 8.15 (supposedly the latest version). Yes I am looking at device manager. But I don't think the version is the problem. Because this never happened before. Idk but I think this has something to do with the SLI Option. Or its just every 5min something is flickering on and off.

[Flood55]

Bump. sorry. Does anyone know what would be a suitable temperature for the GPU?