Odd Problem...

[MI6CIA007]

I have an interesting problem... First my setup:

Win XP pro
P4 Prescot 530 (3.0 GHz) OCed to 3.15
GeForce 6600 GT PCI Express
ECS 915P-A mobo
1 GB Corsair DDR2 533 (512 MB x 2)
SB Live
and of course, PJ64

And now that's out of the way...
I love the program. I can play all my favorites. After an unpredictable amount of time (so far ranges 5 min to 2 hr), the game starts going slow. FPS drops to about 30 or so. I tried multiple plugins, and the Jabo's D3D 1.6, DSound 1.6, and N-Rage input seems to be the best combo. I have tried disabling sound, and no change. I noticed this doesn't only happen on PJ64. Even Starcraft (pc) is affected. Sega Genesis emu also affected. I tried every N64 emu, and i still get the best performance out of PJ64. With the FPS limiter turned off, i can get about 170 FPS (and find it difficult to survive the first level if playing seriously) until the slowdown.

I noticed if i paust the emulation for 5 to 10 minutes, it's all good again for a while. Because of this, I thought something was overheating, but every heatsink felt normal. I ran PJ 64 with task manager up, and i got about 50% CPU usage max. At the lowest, I have about 450 MB ram free. Starcraft used to run fine until recently, the first i noticed it was a week ago. I know this isn't 100% on topic, but For the past few days, my computer has basically been a really big N64. one that just slows down after a while.

Any help is much appreciated. Hell, if you read all of this I appreciate it.

 

[MI6CIA007]

As I was sitting here, I was thinking. The Geforce is PCI Express. I am thinking that could be the problem, so is there anyone out there successfully emulating with a PCI express card? if so, what card do you have?

 

[MI6CIA007]

Well to answer my own question, I have a PCI express card that now seems to work. I plafed Bomberman 64 for about 20 minutes at now 200 FPS. Usually it took a maximum of 60 seconds to mess up with limiter off. The only problems I had are the ones known to Bomberman 64.

Changes i made since the last post:
clocked my CPU back down to 3.00 GHz
Pretty sure this didn't do it, I used to be clocked to 3.20, and one game had problems, and 3.15 worked on everything.
overclocked my video card (very unneccessary, but i thought it was cool, so I did it)
uninstalled a few programs
I think this is the major thing, I don't know which one would have done it though, probably threadmaster, which I used to throttle BOINC (SETI@Home). I uninstalled both, so it had to be one.

 

[Sanojei.Sanna]

My system is is similar to yours, in that it is a bit powerful. Believe it or not, Spyware or trojans made that same thing happen to me. DO a thorough check on your system to be sure this isn't a problem. It was for me and when I sorted the spyware, everything was A+ after that. No matter how fast your CPU or how uber your components and parts, N64 emulation is very demanding and ANYTHING that runs in the background or intercepts remote commands (like spyware and trojans) will cause noticable performance problems. Good luck.

 

[MI6CIA007]

Oh why didn't I think of that. Even though it's currently working, that's valuable knowlege incase it happens again. I think that has something to do with the number of application handles Win XP can handle. The CPU could do it but other Windows resourses can't handle it. I will do that now.