whats slowing down my pc?

[lukamon]

ok so i installed the new star wars mmo at the weekend, but my computer will barely run it ( massive juddering on min. settings)

so what out of this lot is slowing it down? its a fairly old pc anyways, but here goes

fresh reinstall of xp last week, game is the only thing installed on the pc apart from norton 360

nvid 9500 gt 1gb graph card

amd 4200+ 2.2ghz cpu

2gb (3 sticks) of ram

350psu

NVIDIA® nForce 570 SLI chipset

do i need to bolt on some new bits? ta bcf
____________________
killa wrote: Im an ass man myself

[TheDonUK]

Moar Ram Sir!
____________________
[Current Bikes - GSXR-750 K5 & C90-97 ] [Previous Bikes: Runner 125, YBR 125, GS500, Bandit 600, Hornet 600, ZX6R-99, C90-99, R1-99, XT600E-04, GSXR-750 K4, CRF250L '16]

[Pete.]

Have you installed the nvidia drivers for the graphics card? If you're relying on the xp drivers you'll be losing a lot of accelleration.
____________________
a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[Hockeystorm65]

[Rogerborg]

[iooi]

[whitedevil]

Pretty much everything needs replacing.
I wouldn't bother bandaiding it with more ram etc as you'll likely get 5% improvement at best plus old DDR2 ram is way more expensive than DDR3 now.
Bite the bullet and build a decent pc that will last the next 5 years and can be upgraded with decent parts.
____________________
GPZ500 sold ~ CBR600FS-2 sold ~ ZX6R sold ~ Street Triple R

[Alpha-9]

Norton is a giant resource whore
____________________
Fzr-600 1999

[J.M.]

[lukamon]

interesting, cheers guys

the origional pc was 2x 500 sticks of ram. i know about what people say about norton but turning it off seems to make no difference.

pretty sure the origional power supply was replaced with the crappy 350w item at some point, what happens if the psu cant supply the right power?

also, the board manufactures website says this about upgrading:
Note) If you install AMD AM3/AM2+ CPU on AM2 motherbord, the system bus speed will downgrade from HT3.0(5200MHz) to HT1.0(2000 MT/s) spec; however, the frequency of AM3/AM2+ CPU will not be impacted. Please refer "CPU Support List" for more information.

what the hell does that mean? i guess with a bios upgrade i can fit a new am3 processor but what am i slowing down? (in english )
____________________
killa wrote: Im an ass man myself

[Alpha-9]

[orac]

i big hammer will make it go faster. most of your hardware is getting to the end of it life unless you have the confidence and abilty to OC and run custom installs of OS's

the 9500 is just rehash of an older gpu (like alot of nvidia stuff from around that same time (iirc its shrink of the 8500)). the CPU is older then time itself.

if you do go the upgrade route be careful if you buy an AM3 cpu. no all of them have ddr3 controllers, some have both ddr3 and dd3.

the ht link (htyper transport) is amd version of intel FSB (front side bus). it deal with communicating with the rest of the computer (except ram). the faster that runs the faster the whole system goes (that make is sound way more simple than it is). as is if you had and AM3 CPU @ 3ghz and a 5200MHz HT it would be faster than the same cpu at the same core speed but with an HT of 2000
____________________
Current rides - 2016 Triumph Street Triple Rx, 1994 Suzuki Bandit 400 VM, TGB 204 Classic 125cc
"with nothing left to lose, there is everything to gain. It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog"

[jamm13dodger]

What do you use the machine for? If it;s just email and browsing the web get rid of Windows and install Ubuntu. It'll run a lot quicker then.

[J.M.]

[P.addy]

I've got a "slightly" better system than you and run the game flawlessly.

I have Windows 7, 3gb ram, same gfx card and a 5200+ processor.

All I have installed is ESET NOD32 antivirus as it stays out of the way!

It seems to run far far better than on the XP machine!

[lukamon]

okay i bought another 2 sticks (4gb) of ddr2, seems to have inmproved however

control panel > system says i have 3gb of ram.

system info however, sys i have the full 5.5gb

wtf?[/i]

edit: to clarify, the mobo only has 4 dimm slots so i ditched one of the 512 sticks so i have 4 stick totalling 5.5gb
____________________
killa wrote: Im an ass man myself

[Hockeystorm65]

XP will only recognise 3Gb so don't worry about that.

Ditch all of the older sticks. The fact you have 2 512 sticks in there will be slowing things down.....4Gb of new will run faster than 5.5Gb of mixed....bearing in mind that anything over 3Gb will not be used.
____________________
Good judgement comes from experience.....experience comes from bad judgement!

[orac]

correct, iirc 32 bit OS can only address 3.5gig system wide, bare in mind that this includes GPU memory and IRQs. most systems generally wont see more than 3 gig once all that has been addressed.

that said you may be able to improve still further by running a custom install using nlite. my custom installed XP laptop is running at less the 800mb most of the time with 1.25gb available but i could have trimmed it down still further than i have.

bt honestly a big hammer and a small pile of cash wold be much more benificial
____________________
Current rides - 2016 Triumph Street Triple Rx, 1994 Suzuki Bandit 400 VM, TGB 204 Classic 125cc
"with nothing left to lose, there is everything to gain. It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog"

[Alpha-9]

[lukamon]

haha, its not me that didnt listen its my dad

it was just less hassle to type "my" than "my dads"

anyhow, he didnt want to spend out on a new system as he doesnt use it for gaming

ill probably end up buying my own system in the not too distant future
____________________
killa wrote: Im an ass man myself