System acts same after windows reinstalation

[Liger86]

I’ve been at this problem for quite some time and I still can’t find what is wrong.
All this started when I have installed GTA San Andreas, while playing the game it would glitch in certain moments of lots of in-game noise pollution. My frame rate started to drop, I can’t confirm that from the game but it is clear that the game is not running the way it is meant to run. So in this case I think that it could be my onboard sound card that’s having rough time playing all the sounds with surround effects.

But here is another problem. After the installation of the game when I try to play MP3 files using Windows Media Player I noticed my music skip, and it’s not like the file is corrupted or it’s a bad copy because when I burned the MP3’s on a disk and stuck it into all the CD players in the house it played music fine.

My mouse has also showed similar symptoms of poor response at times of heavy CPU load, and it would even freeze for few of what seams to be milliseconds that really bother the hell out of me.

Anyway these problems frustrated me so much that I reinstalled Windows XP Pro…

But after the reinstallation process and driver updates I had same problems on a fresh system, music played bad, poor mouse response at times, and long really long start up times.

During the Windows reinstallation process I chose to install windows on the same partition that it was installed onto previously, and when asked how I wanted Windows to format my disk I chose Quick Format instead of full format which normally takes very long on huge hard disks.

I strongly believe that the cause in this was because I chose to format my disk quickly instead of full format, which (don’t exactly know how it works) might not have deleted certain things.

My system is custom build by myself so I can’t take it to the store for them to fix it, so here are the specs:
AMD 64 3500+
ASUS A8V-E Deluxe
1 GB 3200 MHz Corsair Value Ram operating at dual channel
250GB Maxtor (partitioned into two halves 100GB(OS) and 150GB(additional storage))

What does GTA have to do with all this, beats me, but all this started after installation of GTA.

All help is appreciated.

[ober]

I'd go back and do a full format. Short of that, it would seem that maybe your PSU may not be putting out constant voltage or something else that could be causing random interrupts.

I'd take out everything you don't need to rule out the problems, starting with your audio card.

[Quantum1024]

All this started when I have installed GTA San Andreas

Was this a legal copy?

[ober]

Was this a legal copy?

That's soooooo not even a valid question.

[adrianxw]

CPU getting too hot and throttling?

[Liger86]

Legal copy indeed, and no AMD's don't throttle i believe they just overheat!

Game makes it run at 60C, the critical temperature on my processor according to AMD is 65C so I'm still fine

I got that onboard Realtek AC97 sound card, maybe it's just not good enough with all the special effects that the game wants the sound card to render...

[ober]

Disable the onboard sound and see if the problem goes away.

Oh, and AMD's do throttle. It's part of their "Cool and Quiet" package.

Have you updated the BIOS on the mobo recently?

[Liger86]

mobo bios is updated, cool n quite is off but i turned it on.
if i disable onboard sound then GTA doesn't want to load at all.
I guess i'll just buy an audigy blaster live or something like that

[Liger86]

and actually no AMD does not throttle!!!
Cool & Quite only lowers voltege to the processor during idle times which means that during gameplay processor operates mostly at on average %80-100 during which vcore volatage stays at the top. and even if my AMD goes over its threshold of 65C it will not loose any performance due to throttling i guess it will just give up and melt like butter! LOL