Forgive me, o posessors of wisdom...

[phosphorousgobu]

Can you guys/gals point me in the right direction? More like "please drop kick me down the stairs towards the right solution".

I've posted about this stuff before, and I'm VERY VERY sorry (especially to the mods who have to read this crap over and over and over again) for being a broken record.

But, while people have given me helpful advice, I'm still getting crappy frame rates. So, here goes:


Okay...(I think) I need to upgrade, because of not-so-great performance issues. Note: I don't have hi-speed internet, so ALL of this stuff refers to games with bots.


BattleField2 lags on higher resolutions (offline) Even on medium too...I have to keep the settings pretty low to avoid the lagging.

F.E.A.R. is playable on Medium settings, but not super smooth..

Half-Life 2 ran fine at first. Counter-Strike Source gets crappy frame rates now that Valve added all those "HDR" effects. I turn them off, turn the models etc. down to medium, shadows/lighting to low or off. Still jerky. Really bad on levels like cs_militia- it has lots of trees and stuff. Levels like de_inferno, cs_office, etc. jerky too. Hard to use the Scout when the bots are strafing left/right and your PC is jerking. But...maybe it's just because the computer has to do all the bot/waypoint calculations? I usually play with 19 other bots. But, I HAVE played online with this compy at friend's houses and whatnot. I had so-so performance then, when I was playing HUMANS (with no bot calculations necessary)

Empire Earth II: On any map larger than "Medium", the computer players build LOTS of stuff, computer experiences major slowdowns. I turned the graphics WWAAAAAYYY down.


Why is this odd? My computer supposedly rapes the system requirements for all these games. Here are my specs:

ASUS K8V SE Deluxe
2 Gigs RAM
160 Gigs HD space
Athlon 3400+ (Socket 754)
ATI Radeon x850 pro

It's either the processor (not a socket 939) or the video card. I've been told that I need a socket 939, my 754 is why I have the performance issues. Others have sort of said it was the video card. Some people say I have a great card, others (a mod, in this case) say stuff like:

'Poor performance because of ATI? The X850Pro ain't a bad card... but it ain't a nVidia, either."

So, I'm wondering if buying an AGP (my mobo isn't PCIe) nVidia 7900-ish card would give me great performance gains, or is it entirely a processor issue?


Again, I'm sorry for posting the same questions, just spaced months/nanoseconds apart. I'll stop bothering you with the mundane stuff if you can help me solve these stupid performance issues. Forgiveth me....

 

[efd753]

you video card is comparable to a 6800 gt imo that petty good. your processor is more then enough. dont let anybody tell u otherwise a upgrade in processor will get 5-10 fps going to an fx processor. Which is not worth the money. You certainlly have enough ram, the only game that uses 2gb of ram is bf2.

i think u shooting for too high of a resolution, with a resolution of 1280X1024 u should be able to play high settings.

At what resolution u play this games?

 

[lancec2c30]

ya I play at 1280x1024 with a geforce 6600 (not gt) on almost all high setting in HL2 and have no lag.

 

[aliasaid]

seeing as its a socket 754, and video interface is AGP, there's really not much you can do to this computer... and you already have as much ram as anyone would need... you just gotta turn all the eye candy stuff off (antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, HDR, etc) and don't have the resolution too high. (since i have LCD, mine stays at 1280X1024). i let HL2 autodetect my settings and it has somethings on high, and somethings turned off... and it runs fine on my 600gt.. which isn't as good as your x850pro. you probably won't find a much better card for AGP...

your problem could just be software... try formatting your comp... maybe you have some spyware or viruses or soemthing..

conclusion: don't upgrade anything. use it as much as possible, then get a new one.

 

[Nukem]

I suggest the same thing... reformat and leave it alone until you can upgrade to a whole new machine. Sounds like some conflicts some where... I have an older X850XTPE that has no problems running FEAR, Quake 4, and HL2 (Med settings) you machine isn't bad, just older, that's all...

 

[aliasaid]

well there is quite a difference b/w the x850pro and the x850xt.

the pro was slower than the x800xt, and the performance is probably close to the x800xl.. which is somewhere between the 6600gt and the 6800gt...

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/sapphire-13-d.shtml#p17

wow.. i'm impressed! the x800xl is often faster than the 6800gt! nice.. but ya.. the x800xl is about the same as x850pro..

the x850xt pe is no comparison because it was last last generation's fastest card.. faster than the 6800ultra.. it was king until the 7800gt was released.

 

[reggie_da_man]

Well there could be a driver conflict. Reformating and installing all new drivers would help, that and heat. What are your temps? Heat can really slow down a computer.

 

[Apokalipse]

I have a s754 Sempron 2800+ and I used to have a K8V-MX with a 6200 AGP

what I did was upgrade my motherboard to a PCI-E one (still s754) and bought a 7900 GT

that made my gaming performance much better, I can play HL2 and Doom 3 on max settings. though I haven't tried BF2 or F.E.A.R. (I don't have them)

my CPU kinda bottlenecks the performance though, but I have overclocked it by over 400MHZ

anyway, I'd probabbly suggest a video card upgrade first (maybe go PCI-E like I did)
since your CPU doesn't have as big impact on performance. but then later on, get a new motherboard and CPU, maybe an X2 in s939 (so you don't have to get new DDR2 RAM aswell)

 

[Nitestick]

your problem could just be software... try formatting your comp... maybe you have some spyware or viruses or soemthing..

i have to say this was my first thought as well.

 

[phosphorousgobu]

Thank you all for your replies thus far.


Resolution? I always keep my in-game resolutions to 1024 x 768, so I don't think I have it up too high...

And heat? I have the PSU to pump air. To back it up, I have a big fan underneath it (120 mm, I think), and 2 little fans in the bottom front of my case (80 mm, I think). After playing a FPS like CS for a while, I'll check my temperature via ASUS Probe...It usually (depending on the room temperature) will usually be about 120-125 degrees Farhenheit. I didn't THINK that's too high, but maybe it is? I don't have anymore places to mount fans in my case, tho


Spyware or viruses. I will admit that my Norton and Spysweepers are out of date. The last time they were updated was the last time I brought my computer over to a friends house (January I think?). Since I don't use my compy for the net (YET...I plan on it at college, where I will definitely keep everything updated), I didn't think that I really could get a virus/spyware, unless I got it from installing new games...I've heard conspiracy stuff about software companies/Dell/Gateway inlcuding spyware on the products they ship to you, so who knows..

What runs in the background? I have 38 processes. In my task bar, I see:

Little box that says "network cable unplugged"
Volume
Norton Anti-Virus Autoprotect
Spysweeper
Norton Protection Center
Some sort of ATI utility to manage resolutions, etc.

Too much stuff?


Formatting!? Noo....It took me several months of bringing my computer over to a friend's house to download Windows updates and whatnot....I'm not sure if I can do that. I also don't have an XP CD anymore...



This is a weird problem...I'd think I got better performance...but, maybe a mobo/processor upgrade would be the most beneficial thing. That remains to be seen.


Thanks again, all.