Greetings gaming forum. I'm hoping someone here can help me with my massive FPS issues.

First of all, my specs.

Althon XP 64 3600
8800 GT vid card (brand new)
2 gigs ram, DDR400
650 watt PSU (brand new)

Now my issue. In short, my PC won't play any games up to the level of performance that I'd like. This includes Age of Conan (a consistent...10 fps), Bioshock (not smooth at all), and Half Life 2 (20 FPS in an older game doesn't seem right to me, sometimes even dipping into 10).

This started not too long ago. I had been playing the AoC beta for a while now, and at first had been running it on a 7800 gt card. It played ok on low settings, but I knew I'd have to get a better card to play it on good settings. So I did. At this point, the gameplay was pretty sporadic. At times I'd get glorious stretches where it would be at 50 FPS or more, and at times it would run like garbage. I attributed this up and down gameplay to the software itself and blamed Funcom.

As far as Bioshock and HL2 are concerned, they both ran nearly perfect about a month ago when I tried them, and now both run at unacceptable framerates. AoC will not run at anything higher than 10 fps anymore, regardless of what setting or resolution I set it at. I have literally tried every combination and nothing runs it good at all.

I have taken a few steps myself to try and fix this. I have reformatted several times, using both Vista 64 bit and Windows XP. No change. I bought a new PSU to replace my 550 watt one that was in need of replacement anyway, and while I saw a slight performace increase, it was very slight and what I was looking for. I even bought a UPS because I was afraid my electricity was acting up and frying my PSU. Didn't help.

So at this point, I'm out about 300 bucks and nothing has changed from my system before spending a dime, except maybe worse performance I guess.

I don't claim to be any sort of PC expect. I enjoy buying my own parts and building my own PCs, usually with help from techy friends. But I don't know near enough to diagnose serious problems like this and so at the moment I'm at a loss as to what to do.

Some of the theories I've had thrown at me are that my CPU is bottle necking the graphics card. That my CPU is bad or dying. That my motherboard is dying.

My options at this point are to do a complete overhaul basically and just buy a new CPU, mobo, ram combo. This would put me down another 400 if I got what I am planning to get. I'd love to do this, but I'm not exactly rolling in dough at the moment so if there's another way....

Any advice? Any help is very appreciated as I'm nearly out of options.

Where do you live? (don't actually answer that) The reason I ask though is that I live in the the north eastern US and a month ago we had outside temps in the 40s and 50s. Now they are in the 80s and 90s. Because of this the temperature in the room my PC is in increased significantly unless I have the AC on. Now normally this increase should not be an issue, but if you CPU cooling was borderline to begin with it may have been running fine during winter months but now is overheating in the summer. The same thing happened to me several years ago. I built a PC in the fall and it ran great until the summer months when if I didn't have an AC running in the same room it would overheat. Try removing the CPU cooler, cleaning both thoroughly, reapplying thermal paste correctly and making sure the cooler is attached properly. Hope that helps.

Not really an issue. The PC is kept in a basement for one, and the AC is on as well so its a real cooler down there. And I've monitored both GPU and CPU temps and neither gets to over 40 degrees ever.

What if the hard drive is going bad. Wouldn't that tax the system?

I'm not sure. I hope not, but I don't know much about hard drives. Seems the only time I've ever heard of one going bad, it goes bad as in dies or melts.

You can stress test your PC using Everest Ultimate edition.

I had a problem similar to yours, where my bios didnt flash correctly and was gimping my system. Im using an Asus motherboard, dont know about you. Im not sure if your problem is like mine, but you can try flashing to a new bios and see if it helps.

What is bottlenecking u is defintely the CPU/RAM. RAM is so cheap now that for about 80 dollars u can get 4 gigs of DDR800, which will help alot. For the CPU, I would go with Intel for sure, get a Q6600. I think they're around 220 dollars right now. Thats about 300, and should help alot. If you dont want to switch over to Intel, just the RAM upgrade will be fine, but eventually you will have to use Intel. I gave prices in US dollars considering I don't know any euro prices.

Upgrade the BIOS, if not its most likely your mobo is dying. Try your GPU on another PC just to check it out. If not Mobo is dying. Witch is bad because Sckt 939 mobos are rare, and not of good quality atm.

No those aren't your specs. they are an abridged version of a summary of your system specifications... You do want some help - right??

I presume you have tried the usual stress tests (Gold Memory tester, CPU burn, Super PI, 3D Mark 2006, etc.)?

My first instinct would be a below par PSU - but since you don't consider that to be a system specification I can't comment on that... However is your PSU from Tiers 1-3:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forum [...] p?t=108088
A PSU problem could potentially cause fluctuating stability issues.

You definately have a hardware issue as it is OS independent.

You are also a bit vague about the CPU... Is that a Brisbane, Windsor or Manchester core?
If its a Brisbane core (2x512Kb cache) it shouldn't limit older games too much. The older cores wouldn't realistically have enough on-die cache to game on (2x256Kb cache).

Hope that info is useful...

Bob

I would disagree. I recently picked up a couple of excellent DFI socket 939 boards 2nd hand on Ebay (with NF4 and RDX200 chipsets). They both overclocked very nicely. Still I think I would rather have a newer board with all solid capacitors, properly shrouded SATA ports, etc. I was building systems for other people (on the semi-cheap) in this instance however...

The real problem is the supply of socket 939 dual-core CPUs. Now this whole socket is totally out of production the 2Mb Opterons cost a fortune. I had to wait about 8 weeks (total) bidding on socket 939 Opterons to get a pair of 1.8Ghz dual core CPUs at the right price (like <$100.00 / £50.00).

Bob

I guess that's why I'm here Bob. Enlighten me. I have not run any stress tests, though more than willing to try if that helps me narrow down my problem. I have to head to work and don't have time to look up the specifics that you asked, but I'll try to get them when I get home today.

Thanks again guys, already learning stuff from this thread.

That is what i meant from good quality. if I'm not mistaken one fo them problems with socket 939 is that they didn't run Dual-Channel. The IMC is on the CPU so they had to change socket. AM2 was born. In virtusdcd case "repairing" his equipment might be expensive to compare if he bought a new semi-updated system.

I like to tinker a lot a swell. I have 2 AMDs 1.5Ghz palomino Core working that i unlocked the L5 bridge so they will work as a Athlon MP instead of a XP. I paid very little for those AMD and the mobo. They were basically going to be trashed. Its a "great" LAN party, file sharing, Printer sharing, all purpose Linux server machine.

But for gaming, is it worth to keep that 939 Mobo ? Or its better (bang/buck ratio) to make a little upgrade ? a 4800+ X2(2.5ghz) nowadays is dirty cheap, the RAM is even cheaper, and that PSU might work.

I would recommend pricing out a new build keeping your Video Card and maybe PSU and HDD if they are not faulty. Even a cheap 650w PSU should be sufficiant for your system unless you have several extra hard drives or other devices connected that you haven't listed. Replacing a 939 motherboard is kind of silly especially if you want a performance system. Even worse would be to upgrade your CPU or add more RAM (DDR400 cost almost twice as much as DDR800 which won't work for you).
The advantages of completely (or mostly) rebuilding is that instead of spending money on stuff that may work you can build a system that you'll know will do what you want. Also instead of being left with random other parts, your current system will be mostly intact for either a secondary PC or one you can sell. Either way a whole PC tends to be more valuable than a pile of mismatched parts. Just something to consider though.

Well, that is my next step if none of this testing works. I've already priced out an intel board, a wolfdale core2 duo, and 4 gigs of ram. I'm prepared to make that step despite my lack of income. As for the PSU, I've already purchased a 650 coolermaster, so no worries there.

One thing I'm def not going to do is look for parts and whatnot for the current set up. If indeed something isn't working, I will be more than happy to get new stuff that will not only surely work but that leaves me room to upgrade in the future if I happen to get stinking rich (always a distinct possibility).

Your CPU and RAM are holding back your graphics card, and if your motherboard is only DDR (not DDR2) I'd suggest upgrading that too.

Cheap(ish) dual core processor.
Cheap(ish) motherboard with DDR2 support.
2Gb DDR2-800 RAM.

What sort of money are you looking to spend?

Atm I'm under three hundred bucks with my possible choices. Though add this to the 300 on vid card/UPS/PSU, plus 200 more for my monitor, and about the only thing I'm even keeping is my HD....

Anyway, this is what I'm planning on purchasing, assuming I really do need to, which is sounding more and more like I do (though I find it still hard to explain such lackluster performance on bottlenecking. the thing does well......sometimes. Last night for instance I logged into AoC and for the first ten minutes I was getting a solid 40 fps, and then it just bottomed out to unplayability for no apparent reason).

Here's the new possible digs:

-Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
-GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
-G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

The memory I'm not 100% on as I know the board and CPU will hold higher memory, though the price increases dramatically beyond what I've got listed here and I'm trying to save somewhat.

Think House MD... You need a differential diagnosis!!

There is much to be learnt from failing systems... Like not making the same mistake twice....

CPU burn :
http://users.bigpond.net.au/CPUburn/
Stresses CPU+cache but no other systems. Needs to be run for 8+ hours to thoroughly test a system. Run one instance on each core of your CPU.

Do a google search on:
"Admin Tools Gold - 142in1 - (AIO) Bootable CD (full)"
You'll get a lot of hits... (cough, cough) Uhhmmm running the Gold Memory Tester will let you know if there are any RAM faults (its more accurate at finding problems than Memtest 86 - but run both).

We still need to know:
OC - yes/no
RAM brand & timing
CPU L2 cache size (and core)
PSU Make & Model
Motherboard Manufacturer & Model - current BIOS - you up-to-date?

You can E-bay the old gear... But only if you know its working (unless you want to be a 0% rated seller)... Catching my drift why this important now?

Bob

Still at work so unable to check the brands, but I will say this....I bought the RAM and CPU not long ago when my PC died completely and I took it to this free diagnosis place nearby. I bought a the CPU used from them, and they ordered the RAM for me and installed it. I'm not even sure I can find the manufacturer, unless its listed on the pieces themselves which I'll check out when I get home, even though I don't want to unseat the CPU as I don't have any gel on hand to reseat it.

I'll get what I can though. And I'm def. going to get those tester programs. That's what I've been looking for for months and no one could tell me what to get until I came to this delicious place.