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Games lagging - what do i do?!

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Hello all. This is my first post here as i am needing advice on my system.

I built it a few years ago on a low budget, but wanted an OK gaming computer. My computer at the time was rubbish but could run half life 2/cs:s good enough. (half life 2 just an example of what i was playing at the time)

So i sold all my old gear and got a new setup which is... (remember my old setup was worse than this)

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
2gb ddr2 667mhz (2x 1gb)
ati radeon x1950 pro pci-e 256mb
160gb hdd sata
foxconn mobo 946GZ7MA-8KRS2H
XP Pro

since i got this setup i have not been able to play most games due to low fps, even condition zero + day of defeat (not source).

After some research i found that my x1950 pro does 33A on 12v rail but my psu only did 15A so i bought a new PSU. This had made it abit better but not good enough. My old system could run these games (on low settings) and it was nowere near as good!

Installed latest drivers etc so now i dont know what else to do except get a dual core CPU. But i should be able to run half life 2 + cs source fine.

also, games seem to run better when using vista which i installed to another partition.

Any help would be great! im on a really low budget so cant afford a new system, im sticking with this computer for now! if i missed any info then let me know.

thanks in advance

dave

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Did you get a new monitor? Monitor resolution directly affects graphics speed.

I just took an old Acer P4 2.8GHz 1GB RAM with an old RAdeon 9250 graphics cards and put it in a new case with a new PSU and an Nvidia 9800 GTX graphics card. Games that it could barely run on an old 1024x768 monitor it now runs well on a 1380x1050 monitor.

My guess is your old graphics card is nowhere near good enough to run any of those games on a newer widescreen monitor. You should be looking for at least at an ATI HD 5750 or Nvidia 250 level graphics card.

Reply to dndhatcher

thanks for getting back to me! My monitor is still the same 17" lcd iv had for a few years. running at 1280x1024

just got a new power supply from + recommended by scan.co.uk its a corsair 450w with 33a on 12v. my old psu did 15a. i noticed a slight increase in gameplay. if i get a new gpu + cpu. will i need to upgrade psu again?

Reply to davidb8

I would recommend just a GPU to start with. Newer GPUs take less power and that corsair is a good power supply.

If you look at this chart, your graphics card is still well below todays minimal graphics cards like the 4670.
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 387-7.html

What was your previous graphics card?
Were you really running at 1024x768 before?

The frame rate is much more heavily graphics card based than CPU based. For the frames to have gone down you would have to have had a better graphics card or played at a lower resolution before.

Have you downloaded the latest drivers for that graphics card? ATI had some really bad driver problems in the past, maybe that is an issue.

Message edited by dndhatcher on 10-30-2009 at 07:30:11 PM

Reply to dndhatcher

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Forum Homebuilt Systems : General Homebuilt - Games lagging - what do i do?!