Weird performance problem

[generalmoejoe]

Hey everyone, this is my first post

My computer seems to have a problem with performance, but really shouldn't have any trouble.

System:
Windows XP SP2
Pentium 4 3.2 GHz w/ HT
Asus P5GD2 Deluxe mobo
Radeon X800XL 256mb PCI express
1 gig (512mb x 2) Crucial DDR2 memory Non-ECC Unbuffered
Antec ATX12V 400w power supply
Western Digital Raptor 10,000rpm 74gb SATA
Western Digital 7,200rpm 200gb SATA
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Logitec MX Wireless kb/mouse combo
Liteon DVD/CD-RW drive combo
Liteon Dual Layer DVD+-RW/CD-RW combo

Recently reformatted entire system
Clean registry
All drivers updated
No spyware/viruses
Defragged hard drives
All video card setting are set to "Performance" options
All background programs are shut down (McAfee virus scan, Microsoft antispyware, etc)

Now, all that out of the way...I recently reinstalled Counter Strike: Source. Now, with a system like mine, I should be getting decent fps even on high settings. But no. On LOW setting, my average fps is between 20-30. ON LOW SETTING! This is my first system that I have built, but nothing at all went wrong during the building and installing processes. Also in 3dmarks05, my score is about 1/4 that of others with the same setup.

I know there probably isn't any obvious reason for the lack of performance, with the information I have given, but any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

[waynejkruse10]

check temps, cpu usage at idle and memtest.

 

[Apokalipse]

yeah, ctrl+alt+del to see if anything is eating your CPU

 

[generalmoejoe]

CPU usage runs around 1-5% while idle, and the temp is around 53C/127F. About 400mb/1gb ram is being used while McAfee (background), microsoft antispyware (background), spybot s&d resident (background), hp printing software (background), aim, and firefox all running.

 

[brady]

Go into Msconfig and dissable all those "background" apps and reboot without those crappy HOGs. Then try to run CSS and see what you get.

don't run "McAfee (background), microsoft antispyware (background), spybot s&d resident (background)" on startup.

 

[generalmoejoe]

Also, memtest gave no errors.

 

[waynejkruse10]

this is probably a dodgiliy written program memory leaking or sucking cpu or something

 

[generalmoejoe]

I had a friend down the hall take a look at my computer. He run a benchmark programs, and it came back with some pretty poor cpu performance. Ill take it down to a local computer store and get the voltage, power supply, and cpu checked out. Thanks for the help though.

 

[SHAWN]

Its software related not hardware. Your machine should NOT be using 400mb of ram at idle. Thats crazy. Run some antivirus scans at www.antivirus.com . Also, run some Spyware scans as well. Something is not right.

P.S. You might want to consider aftermarket cooling and some artic silver 5. 53C idle is kind of high IMO.

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Should have got a AMD.Im kidding but it sounds like Spywaree or some such thing like Shawn said do you see alot of hard drive activity when Idle...I just had to do a system restore on a new system that had alot of spyware.And after cleaning it still had something robbing the ram rthat I couldnt find.After restoring it back to a earler date it fixed the problem.