Poor Game Performance

[ZeFyre]

Hey guys and gals!

I am having problems with my system performing poorly when playing some games, and I can't seem to figure out what's causing the problems. Here's my spec list:

AMD Athlon XP 2400 @ 2.0GHz

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 w/ SiI 3112R SATA RAID

512MB PC2700 Kingston Value RAM

40GB 7200RPM ATA/133 Maxtor HDD

MSI Personal Cinema GeForce FX 5200 128MB AGP 8x

Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS Gamer

Windows XP Home OEM (SP 1a)

I have tried the following in my quest to fix the problem:

1. Install/Reinstall all the latest hardware drivers.

2. Uninstall nVidia's crappy nForce IDE drivers

3. Fiddle around many times with BIOS settings.

Does anybody know of anything else I could try to get my game performance up to par which I haven't tried yet? Your help, especially from those of you with similar hardware, is very much appreciated!

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer!

-- ZeF

[gandalfgrey]

fx5200. It sucks completely and utterly.

[ZeFyre]

Gandalf,

I don't think it's the FX 5200 - I have one on another machine, and that other machine runs like a dream.

However, just to humor your theory, can you recommend an FX-model video card with TV & VIVO that might work better?

Thanks!

--ZeF

[Doggie]

i dont think they suck.. all the specs show it can run most, if not all the lastest games quite easily.. so maybe you have too many processes running in the background

[ZeFyre]

Doggie,

I am a big fan of BlackViper.com's XP Services and Super Tweaking guides, so, I am pretty sure that it doesn't have anything to do with too many background processes.

Also, there are some games that run fine, such as:

Call Of Duty

Unreal Tournament 2004

Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield

Quake I, Quake II

... and those that have the performance issues, such as...

Halo: Combat Evolved

Quake III Arena

Any other ideas?

Thanks, my friend!

--ZeF

[Doggie]

check to see if you have a problem with things like SBA(Sideband addressing) and FW(Fastwrites support).. i use Rivatuner, and looking at the diagnostic page and if any one of those arent supported and are enabled, then disable them via rivatuner.. if not, i have no idea

[ZeFyre]

Doggie,

Thanks for a good shot, but both of these are supported and enabled.

If you think of anything else, please do let me know!

Thanks again!

--ZeF

[Doggie]

what resolution use u for all your games? same ? or some different?

as i can run halo at 1152 x 864 on a intel celeron 1.1 and 256mb of ram without lag.. i'd try adjusting some settings in those games.. see what works best..

[ZeFyre]

Doggie,

I generally use either a res. of 800x600 or 1024x768 in the games i play. I rarely use 640x480, because I have a dual-monitor (CRT + TV) setup, and my 21-inch ViewSonic doesn't seem to like 640x480 mode when it's connected to a dual-display card. I *never* use any res. higher than 1024x768 because I am visually impaired, and higher resolutions are murder on my eyes.

I probably should have mentioned what KIND of performance issues I'm having from the get-go. In most games, my graphics performance will be fine for 95% of the time, but, at random points during gameplay, my "poor performance" games will stop rendering frames (and sounds will start to skip) for a large fraction of a second, and then everything starts running fine again.

And, I guess I should also mention that Halo: CE is my most problematic game - it has extremely poor frame rates all-over, but it doesn't seem to have the "frame drop" issue that some of the other games (inc. Q3A/TA) have.

Let me know if this tells you anything.

Thanks!

--ZeF

[gandalfgrey]

The reason you have low framerates in halo, is because as soon as anything starts to use dx9/dx8(as halo does), fx just dies. IIRC, halo defaulted to ps/vs1.1 on fx series. DX9 is probably even worse then. You can try -useps20, -useps11 and -useff switches for halo to see the difference. Performance delta between mx 400 series and fx 5200 is surprisingly small btw. If you really have to go with fx series, try 5700,5900 or 5950.

PS: For 2D, FX5200 is fine, but in 3D it gets destroyed by competition.

An example. It's quite old, but you get the picture. 9500 pro is a mere shadow of 9800 levels, which is becoming the new mainstream due to x800 release.

[XtremeMaC]

u could try decreasing the antialiasing

anistropics filtering and etc.. settings to get better performance / lower quality from the games

i still don't really understand this graphics issue, nowadays I think they all suck, cause they don't take the time to fix everything. ati & nvidia are just trying to get 1 step ahead of the other..

friend of mine has ati powercolor 256mb 9600 even at 8x aa he cannot run somegames good, the mouse is slow frame rate's slow, even at 800-600,

without the aa and other stuff games run smoothly..

they just shouldn't put 16x, its useless. and I don't know it but i don't think xt/pro makes much difference in that manner..

has anyone tried 8x or 16x on any games?

[gandalfgrey]

ati doesn't do 8x antialiasing. Afaik nvidia has 8x hybrid mode(4x multi and 2x super, could be vice versa), maximum for ati is 6x multisampling with gamma correction. The difference is massive.

Anisotropic filtering is not so noticable, but once you get used to it, you notice when it's not there. 9600 will never run well at high aa/af levels because it has 4 pixel pipelines and 128bit memory bus. Simple as that.

edit: it's probably 16xaf

[XtremeMaC]

I hope u're talking about something else

cause I've seen 16x myself, well i might be mistaking on the AA word but I'm pretty sure it was either aa or anistropics filtering.