A question and in-game slowdown

[blkbox11]

So I bought a brand new PC for the purpose of gaming, and my specs are as listed below:

Processor Intel i5 4570
Motherboard Asus B85M-G
GPU GeForce GTX670
RAM Corsair 1600Mhz Value 8GB
HDD WD Caviar Blue

How high should my graphics slider be with these? Taking MPs and stuff into account of course.

Probably related is the fact that I tried setting it to 4. The game ran smoothly at first, but during my 2nd MP event, it started to slow down like crazy. I noticed this because the audio became laggy first, followed by the game itself. Luckily I managed to quit before anything crashed.

EDIT: I have no other games to test this on at the moment, so I could use some suggestions for hardware test programs to see if it's the GPU.

Is my GPU overheating, or is it another problem (like RAM)?

Thanks in advance.

[Daveach]

If the sound is lagging, i's probably related to heat. That happened to my other PC: the sound lagged, and later the game itself, for...about 25 seconds, and then back to normal.
Check your GPU temp, and a very imporntant detail: check if your PC fans are working correctly (my friend got a new PC and the fans weren't working right).
Processor, Video Card and RAM are pretty good, if i can run the game at 27FPS with my toaster laptop, on slider 2, you can do it with max settings or at least 4; again, you should check the heat of the GPU.

PD. Im not a PC expert, but i think that's the problem, for personal experience.

[final_attack]

Try looking at your CPU usage via Task manager when lag happens (of course, open task manager before starting the game) :)

If the CPU usage is 100%, open nVidia Control Panel, set PhysX processor to your GPU. Do not select auto, since some games (even this one) might choose CPU as PhysX processor. So, it always @ 100% usage.

Always quit the game before setting this things o.o

Well, if this is the case (CPU 100%), then might be the same problem I had before o.o

I dunno if it's related, but my PC is using GTX 660 and I can play fine using max setting available in game. It shouldn't be a problem for you . . . . well, maybe the hard disk, but I don't think it's affecting the game much. Mine's Caviar Black .. .. . .

[blkbox11]

If the sound is lagging, i's probably related to heat. That happened to my other PC: the sound lagged, and later the game itself, for...about 25 seconds, and then back to normal.
Check your GPU temp, and a very imporntant detail: check if your PC fans are working correctly (my friend got a new PC and the fans weren't working right).
Processor, Video Card and RAM are pretty good, if i can run the game at 27FPS with my toaster laptop, on slider 2, you can do it with max settings or at least 4; again, you should check the heat of the GPU.

PD. Im not a PC expert, but i think that's the problem, for personal experience.

Sounds like the same case for me, only it started happening after a particularly ridiculous and prolonged PSE Burst in the volcano area - not during this event itself, but in a MPA afterwards.

That first slowdown was the nastiest, because no matter what I did (even went back to the campship) it wouldn't recover until I exited the game. When I re-entered the game and tried an MPA again, nothing happened for a good 15-20 minutes, and then the symptoms started to show again...this time I was able to get far enough away from the crowd that the game returned to normal speed...somewhat. I still had to exit in the end though.

Yeah, that's what I was guessing too; heat. The weather where I live is horrible. The fans are working perfectly, and the airflow setup was the default (2 intake fans for the side and front panels, and 2 exhaust fans for the top and back). After this problem occurred, I changed the side panel fan to an exhaust fan by flipping it around, and switched on my room's air-conditioner.

Since then, the slowdown hasn't happened again, even after I tested how the game played with my room's AC off and played for about 3 hours straight (about 4-5 MPAs, but no huge PSE bursts).


Try looking at your CPU usage via Task manager when lag happens (of course, open task manager before starting the game) :)

If the CPU usage is 100%, open nVidia Control Panel, set PhysX processor to your GPU. Do not select auto, since some games (even this one) might choose CPU as PhysX processor. So, it always @ 100% usage.

Always quit the game before setting this things o.o

Well, if this is the case (CPU 100%), then might be the same problem I had before o.o

I dunno if it's related, but my PC is using GTX 660 and I can play fine using max setting available in game. It shouldn't be a problem for you . . . . well, maybe the hard disk, but I don't think it's affecting the game much. Mine's Caviar Black .. .. . .
If I'd gotten a GTX660Ti, I would've changed my hard disk to a Caviar Black too, which in hindsight might have been a better choice, since the Palit GTX660Ti has two fans for cooling...

Anyway, too late to regret purchase decisions. Since the problem doesn't seem to be occurring anymore, I'll try setting the PhysX the way you suggested and see what happens. Thanks.

Although, what was the problem that you had specifically? Was it a slowdown too?

[Aeris]

Game doesn't make use of PhysX for the GPU yet since the game has no real time psychics effects implemented yet so its only for the CPU for now, setting that to GPU will still do the same thing, also make sure you have the latest bios updates for your motherboard, video drivers non-beta updates if you haven't done so as of yet, also use a monitoring tool for temps like the others said with the game running to see why the slowdown kicks in if something on your computer is throttling down.