Why's my PC so slow in games??

G

guardianlegend

CAGiversary!
Hi,

I have a 2.8 ghz Pentium, 1.5 gigs of RAM, and an AGP ATI X800 XL Pro video card. I'm using WinXP with all the latest video card drivers. The PC is a PowerEdge Dell. I've scanned for viruses and defragged my drives.

When I go into games like Company of Heroes and hit the "autodetect" button in the detail setttings, it usually gives me medium to high detail settings. So the games say I have a pretty decent computer.

BUT, when I actually play the games on these settings, the frame rates are awful and unplayable. I have to set graphics details to the lowest settings to get a decent frame rate.

I've compared my PC to my friend's PC, and according to Tom's Hardware's VGA charts, my PC should be performing in games similar to what his PC is doing. But I played Battlefield 2142 on both our PCs, it's obvious my PC is far behind his in performance.

Any idea what could be wrong?
 
Sounds like it could be almost anything...

Is your OS install something that came with the computer? It is possible you have so much preinstalled garbage that it is bogging down your computer. You might want to check your task manager and startup settings and see how much excess crap is being loaded by Dell.
 
[quote name='guardianlegend']Hi,

I have a 2.8 ghz Pentium, 1.5 gigs of RAM, and an AGP ATI X800 XL Pro video card. I'm using WinXP with all the latest video card drivers. The PC is a PowerEdge Dell. I've scanned for viruses and defragged my drives.

When I go into games like Company of Heroes and hit the "autodetect" button in the detail setttings, it usually gives me medium to high detail settings. So the games say I have a pretty decent computer.

BUT, when I actually play the games on these settings, the frame rates are awful and unplayable. I have to set graphics details to the lowest settings to get a decent frame rate.

I've compared my PC to my friend's PC, and according to Tom's Hardware's VGA charts, my PC should be performing in games similar to what his PC is doing. But I played Battlefield 2142 on both our PCs, it's obvious my PC is far behind his in performance.

Any idea what could be wrong?[/quote]
what video card does your buddy have?

how old is you installation of XP?

how many background programs are running? Dells and other manufacturers like them usually ahve a bunch of garbage running..


lol spectre beat me..
 
If I put a ~$200 video card into it, would this Acer be a fairly good gaming PC?

Basic specs:
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] • 1.6GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140
• Memory card reader
• Burns DVDs and CDs • 250GB hard drive
• 1GB of DDR2 memory
• Windows Vista Home Premium


[/FONT]
 
If you wiped the hard drive and did a clean format of XP, I'd say so from just the info you posted.
 
Yea, the problem I am seeing with Vista PC's (I'm in the market for a notebook) is that since the OS is so resource consuming they run mad slow, especially vista premium with less than 2 GB RAM. And to go back to XP you need XP drivers and from Acer and other BB/CC brands they can be hard to come by.
 
[quote name='guardianlegend']If I put a ~$200 video card into it, would this Acer be a fairly good gaming PC?

Basic specs:
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] • 1.6GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140
• Memory card reader
• Burns DVDs and CDs • 250GB hard drive
• 1GB of DDR2 memory
• Windows Vista Home Premium


[/FONT][/quote]

you would have to make sure on the PSU..

you could build a new system yourself fairly cheap, I'd stay away from buying prebuilt systems from the likes of dell ect If you could..
 
[quote name='guardianlegend']Hi,

I have a 2.8 ghz Pentium, 1.5 gigs of RAM, and an AGP ATI X800 XL Pro video card. I'm using WinXP with all the latest video card drivers. The PC is a PowerEdge Dell. I've scanned for viruses and defragged my drives.

Any idea what could be wrong?[/quote]

First off try this, let us know what you get.
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

How fast is your HDD? How do you have it Partitioned? Where is the game saved?

Honestly, what I'd do is, (some may disagree):
1) Back up all your info, that includes the driver setup/install programs. Video, Sound, Ethernet, USB.
2) Get a fresh copy of Windows XP, not a System Restore disc (bloatware). I use a "Bare Bones" Student Edition of XP Pro, I got from demonoid.com
3) When reformatting, lets say you have a 60GB hard drive, I would make the first partition 20GB, and the second 40GB. Save games to the first partition. Videos and music to the second.
4) Before defragmenting, erase your pagefile, defrag, then re-create your pagefile. It'll put your game closer to the center of the HDD (faster access time), but your page file will be further away, but it won't be fragmented.

And if all else fails, you could probably sell that computer for $300 and get youself a nice gaming console.
 
No matter how much higher your computer's specs are than the game's recommendations everything will eventually run like crap. That's why I've pretty much given up on all PC gaming.
 
level1,

I did the System requirements Lab test on Company of Heroes, and it says I pass all the recommended stats for the game. :whistle2:|

Maybe I will take your advice and reformat. There's somethin wrong with this computer! Maybe it's because it's originally intended to be a server and not a desktop..?

PS -- I think I also ran a 3DMarks-like program that compared me to other systems with similar specs, and the program said I performed about average for my system specs. So i'm really baffled as to what's holding me back. Blurgh!
 
[quote name='guardianlegend']Hi,



Any idea what could be wrong?[/quote]


I have a 2.8 ghz Pentium, 1.5 gigs of RAM, and an AGP ATI X800 XL Pro video card.

Answered
 
[quote name='guardianlegend']level1,

I did the System requirements Lab test on Company of Heroes, and it says I pass all the recommended stats for the game. :whistle2:|

Maybe I will take your advice and reformat. There's somethin wrong with this computer! Maybe it's because it's originally intended to be a server and not a desktop..?

PS -- I think I also ran a 3DMarks-like program that compared me to other systems with similar specs, and the program said I performed about average for my system specs. So i'm really baffled as to what's holding me back. Blurgh![/quote]
What was your score and what year 3dmark was it?
 
You probably have too many programs running in the system tray. If you have antivirus on then it is probably eating up a lot of your memory. It's best to close these programs when running games, and then restart them when you are finished. And your friends computer plays games better cause he has a lot better card than yours (no offense.)

For decent gaming on your main computer you should have at least 2GB of memory, preferably a dual core processor (so you can keep stuff running in the sys tray), and a PCI-Express x16 card (with at least 256MB of RAM, 256-bit architecture, and at least 400Mhz speed) for the newer stuff. Anything running on an older system is pretty much going to suck at medium to high settings. Hope some of this helps.
 
[quote name='SpreadTheWord']http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

If you take a few hours to do some of these tweaks, you could see a nice increase in performance.

The guide goes through a lot of Processes and Services that you don't need to have running and strips down the OS to be as fast and unbloated as possible.[/quote]

Yeah, i highly recommend their guides. Great Stuff. :D
 
[quote name='guardianlegend']Hi,

I have a 2.8 ghz Pentium, 1.5 gigs of RAM, and an AGP ATI X800 XL Pro video card. I'm using WinXP with all the latest video card drivers. The PC is a PowerEdge Dell. I've scanned for viruses and defragged my drives.

When I go into games like Company of Heroes and hit the "autodetect" button in the detail setttings, it usually gives me medium to high detail settings. So the games say I have a pretty decent computer.

BUT, when I actually play the games on these settings, the frame rates are awful and unplayable. I have to set graphics details to the lowest settings to get a decent frame rate.

I've compared my PC to my friend's PC, and according to Tom's Hardware's VGA charts, my PC should be performing in games similar to what his PC is doing. But I played Battlefield 2142 on both our PCs, it's obvious my PC is far behind his in performance.

Any idea what could be wrong?[/QUOTE]


Can you put up a screen shot of your desktop and the task manager opened to the tasks tab, and the system tray expanded. It would be helpful to make a more informed decision.

Also, what resolution are you trying to play at?
 
There could be a conflict of drivers - I'd uninstall and reinstall all the video card drivers just to be safe..it only takes a few restarts anyway.

I wouldn't put too much faith in the auto-detect features of games. I have a 8800GTS with overclocked E6420, but a lot of games (that aren't even brand new) only auto-detect at medium to medium-high. I just max everything and it runs really smooth
 
I used auto detect when I played the latest FEAR demo and it had me playing the game at below medium settings running at 130 FPS. Yeah, that's just what I wanted.
 
I apologize if this has been mentioned, but what is your motherboard's FSB speed? You can throw all the CPU/video/memory on it you want, but if your motherboard is bottlenecking the operation you'll still dog out.
 
did you do a clean install after purchase? Dells are nortorious for throwing on crap that run in the background and eat up your memory.

What's your FSB? if it's a 2.8, I'm thinking it's 533.
What's your Cache size? 2.8 p4 is 512k I think...
What kind of ram are you using? Since it's a Dell, I'm guessing it's DDR333. -
Are they(ram) running in dual channel? 1.5gb is a weird number if you are. if you're running 1.5, it usually means you're running them in single which chops your memory bandwidth by like 40%. This is a performance issue that was pretty commong FOR DDR on older p4s after they adopted the use of DDR. It's not an issue now w/ the new intel 945s. but p4 boards were hella stupid during the first 4 generations of P4s.... until they got to 800fsb.

Your GFX isn't spectacular. What Kind of Settings is the game giving you? I would recommend using a NGO driver or something of that variety that designed for extra fps. ATi Driver Software isn't exactly the best.... unlike nvidia.

anyways with your specs, w/ AA and all the other nice features(vsync, etc) off, I wouldn't go any higher than 1280x1024. if you want AA dropped back down to 1024x768.

Also are you running a Sound Card? or something on board? The more onboard crap you're utilizing = the less resources/power it will have for everything else. Power Supply Matters in that case. Dell Mini Towers only have like 180, maybe as much as 250... I mean you need at least a 300 to run AGP8x decently. I would even go as far as putting an antec 350 into your case.

I mean this is why I don't really like Dells unless you go with the Full towers... their small form factors tend to always suffer in the performance department.

Oh the other thing is you can do is chance your disk cable. A bad ribbon cable can be a problem as well...

I mean I don't believe tweaking windows is ever the thing to do if believe your computer should be performing as well as another computer w/ similar specs. I mean shoot I"m running vista and my numbers are pretty spectacular when it comes to COD/Halo, and NVN. So i mean Tweaking windows is really only for people that have a computer and know that the hardware is just insufficient to multitask.
 
Yeah, my RAM is not in dual channel mode cuz I bought the wrong kind of RAM when I tried to upgrade. I really screwed up there!! :( But, I read somewhere that dual channel mode is not that important for games. Do you really think it is??
 
well i mean if you're memory is bottle necking because of unmatched timings it's an issue, and for P4s, more bandwidth is key.

It may have mattered when it came to AMDs, but for P4s they kind of do. I'd pull out one of the mismatched ones, run in dual, and see if it improves.
 
[quote name='bracex2000']
I mean I don't believe tweaking windows is ever the thing to do if believe your computer should be performing as well as another computer w/ similar specs. I mean shoot I"m running vista and my numbers are pretty spectacular when it comes to COD/Halo, and NVN. So i mean Tweaking windows is really only for people that have a computer and know that the hardware is just insufficient to multitask.[/quote]

I used the tweak guide to get rid of the crap that didn't need to be running. It had nothing to do with my hardware. Why wait until the hardware can no longer cope with all the bloatware before getting rid of it?
 
You gave few details. What resolutions are you running at. What framerate are you getting? Is AA and/or AF forced on (these could really kill framerate)? Are you using vsync? If so, you should force triple buffering using Rivatuner for Direct3d and with the catalyst control panel for OpenGL.

If your 3DMarks are in a normal range, I doubt there are any problems.

The Pentium 4 series processors aren't great.
X800 XL is a decent card, but aging.
 
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