Choppy/laggy

[chevrolet721]

Hey guys, I play WOW and battlefield 2 quite a bit and am going to try the fear fps I hear so much about but I have a little problem I want to try to get fixed first. My computer has gotten very slow lately (last 2 or 3 months) and I cannot seem to make it run any better. When playing wow my fps drop to 10 regularly and you have to give it a minute to catch up. Now I can have someone else on my connection here at home and he is fine, good latency and all but mine gets real choppy and the computer seems like it is going to lock up on me, but it will eventually catch up. Here are the stats on it:
Xp pro
3.4 p4
1 gig 533mhz mem
x300 radeon card (128 mb)
not sure of motherboard, bought it from dell, didnt build this one myself. Windows is up to date on it and have norton systemworks 2006 with antivirus and such on it. Have several spyware sweepers also installed and run them regularly. Is this normal for a machine like this to struggle with plain ole wow with all the vid settings turned down? It has gotten so bad i dont dare try battlefield 2 anymore. I know the vid card isnt the best, but when wow first came out this thing ran great without a flinch. I dont really think the hardware is holding me back but rather something else, what do you guys think? I want to get this straightened out before the expansion comes out in a month.
Thanks!!!

 

[Trotter]

Sounds more like your connection than your computer.

You can try port-forwarding your router... it helps you a bit. I never let anyone else online when I'm gaming, as it drives my ping up (and the latency).

Try choosing servers that have a lower ping for you. I don't know about WoW, but in BF2 click the little arrow beside "Ping" twice and it will list the servers from the lowest ping to the highest.

 

[Jorsoft]

Could possibly be your WoW server, try test playing on one with a "Low" population.
I would also check for a spyware/adware infection, this can really mess up your free memory and internet speed (they leech both).
To check for malware download and run:
Spyboy Search and Destroy
Adaware (free version)
Spysweeper Trial
May as well look for viruses too. Try using AVG
Update and run each of these just to be sure you're set.

 

[chevrolet721]

Well as far as pinging a server and going to another one, I cannot really do that. Dont know if you are familar with wow or not but I could not run with the usual group of friends both from the game and real life that I have played with. The only reason that I think my system has a problem is that my bro who plays the game and lives only a couple blocks from me has no problems with lag or choppyness and I have a better machine than him. I have norton antivirus and it is updated weekly and it does a full system scan weekly. I have those spyware scanners as well as a couple others and they are ran weekly as well, and they find spyware and it is always the same ones for some reason. I will try tonite on a low pop server and let you know if that solves it. I'm in argent dawn which is a full server but that would make sense because my bro has no problems!?

 

[Trotter]

I have norton antivirus

There's one problem. Norton is a resource hog. Try turning it off before you play.

Also, kill any unneeded processes before you play. BF2 is a huge resource hog. I can run minor things (Yahoo widgets, ObjectDock, and a browser) with it, but I have to kill my Folding@Home even though it is set for lowest priority.

 

[Jorsoft]

Norton won't make a difference. The reason your spyware scanners are finding the smae ones is because they've infected your computer. Disconnect from the internet, restart in Safe Mode, and scan with 3 or 4 free scanners and the Spysweeper trial (I'd encourage you to just buy Spysweeper, $20 on Newegg). Run a couple of full scans until it shows your pc as being clean, then restart your machine and reconnect to the net. This should clean them up.
Norton isn't a big enough of a resource hog on a new pc to make a difference. 20mb of memory that it takes up when running isn't going to matter when you've got a gig. I think it's the spyware that's messing you up here.

 

[=Red-WP=]

most likeley u need a system defrag

 

[fixal0t]

***Beat me to it Red-WP***
Also check to see if your cpu and memory are running at full speed... you can check this with CPU-Z (freeware)
Good Luck

 

[boomstick666]

have you checked your CPU and MOBO temp? checked inside your comp for case fans and CPU/GPU fans (if any)?

 

[=Red-WP=]

usually not a problem if its a stock dell computer, even if a couple things are added, unless hes running dual core or like a 7600+ vid card theres shouldnt be any worries with temp. or if something is badd. u should run a defrag, that usually helps the system performance, also try down tuning graphics for the game..