XP general performance issues

ever since I threw XP on my DIY athlon 1ghz machine (XFX via kt400 mobo) and upgraded my video and sound, the machine runs like crap! Games themselves seem to run faster than they did under 98, but after about a half hour of doign whatever im doing i start losing frame rates and in general the computer starts to slow down. for example, after an hour or so of playing microsoft combat flight sim 3, it takes several seconds for the computer to register a mouse click in one of the in game menus. if i exit back to my desktop, the computer remains that slow (and gets even slower) until i reboot. once i restart its all good, but until i do its unbearable. some have hinted that its because XP wants more than a 1ghz processor, but that just doesnt seem right. any input would be helpful!

specs...
athlon 1ghz
xfx via KT400 mobo
geforce 4 ti4200 64mb DDR
SB Live! 5.1 w/ live drive
old WD caviar 30gb hardrive
old fujitsu 8.4gb hardrive
512mb DDR PC2100

I used to run XP Pro on Pentium-3 1GHz 512Meg PC133 Ram with Geforce 2 Pro video.

If there is alot of drive activity check these:

1. Swap File on fastest drive
2. Bus Mastering switched on (can be tricky)
3. Turn off System Restore

If you're really desperate switch off the swap file as well.

Swap file:

.. From start menu run "Help and Support" then enter "paging" in the search bar. Look for "Change the size of virtual memory paging file" and click. Full instructions appear and a clickable link to get to the settings. Set all drives to "No paging file".

Bus mastering

.. Bus mastering can be checked by locating Device Manager with a search for "device" using the Help and Support program again and click on "Using Device manager" where there is instructions and a clickable link. From here select the Primary or Secondary Ide channel under "IDE/Ata/Atapi controllers" and right click and select "properties" Under the "Advanced settings" tab DMA should be selected.

.. This will cause the machine to reboot to try to get Bus Mastering going if not already, okay. Once successfully rebooted it will be enabled and will use DMA if possible. If it fails you may have to reinstall the OS on the machine.

You've got the bus mastering done correctly, a disk using dma mode is the optimium as far as speed is concerned.

Optimum swap file size is machine dependant, but I would say around twice Physical Ram sounds okay. Just remember a swap file is Virtual memory so its like Ram but as slow as the HD it resides on in comparison.

More.

Xp also has the Virtual machine to store its processes in the background whilst the game runs in foreground. This requires at least an amount equal to or exceeding the Physical Ram. After the game application terminates the Processor then can discard the processes out of the swap file. With a small swap file on slow CPU the processes will be active in background due to its limited size for storing incomplete processes whilst running the game hence you have a build up resulting in lost cycles during game and a huge flush after game. Good work, sounds like the problem has been nailed.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by wired_geek on 06/06/03 06:12 PM.</EM></FONT></P>