JohnnyNguy3n

When I bought my computer from HP couple of years ago...It was QUICK..p4 2.53Ghz 512DDR Ram, SoundBlaster Live, 4200ti 128mb, 70GB....Anyways when I first got it and played Counter-Strike I always had constant 99fps...Then a year went by and I started getting 60ish in the same game. I started upping my computer recently. I have a new case, audigy 2 zs, ECS Motherboard, PNY 6800GS 256MB DDR, and thermaltake 430w p/s. With my current upgrades my computer still lags bad...I get 30ish fps in Counter-Strike, when I open up the game and play for like 3mins I get a constant 99fps then it drops for some reason. I also tried alot of drivers and reformated my computer plently of time. I don't get whats wrong with it...I o/ced the vcard pretti high too. The only thing I can think of that I DID NOT change was the cpu, ram/memory, and harddrive. Can you tell me what is wrong or lead my in the right direction? Thanks

Dyre Straits

There are several things that you can try to correct the problem.

First, it sounds like overheating since you get decent and acceptable FPS at the first and then it drops off after a few minutes. So, make sure you have adequate cooling and airflow.

Second, What is the 12V Amp rating on that PSU? Should be looking for something of 20A or above.

Third, have you reformatted the HD and reinstalled Windows after doing these upgrades? If not, it would be wise to do a complete reformat and new installation of Windows to clean up a very possibly messy Windows Registry. OR, you can download Crap Cleaner (Google for CCleaner) and try it before doing a complete reformat. BUT, with any new device...especially motherboard and/or video card....it's almost a necessity to do a clean installation of Windows.

Fourth, how long since you did a Disk Check and Defrag? If you've done the above recently, be sure to do a Defrag. This should be done about once a month on heavily used systems.

These should give you something to work with. If they don't do the job, let us know.

Good luck!

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PangingJr

what about the other Windows programs or tasks, does the Windows system lags so much comparing to before everywhere or just in the gaming?

might be the time for upgrading the amount of system RAM.

Dyre Straits

That's a very good point about the System RAM. I did notice a very good amount of performance increase by going from 768 MB to 1 GB Dual Channel.

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PangingJr

you'll spend less if you can just adding more RAM modules...
pay more (but things should works quite better) if you have to or want to increase the amount of RAM per module...
either way you should see the overall system improvement.
anyway, between the system CPU and RAM... if the existing amount or type of RAM are not already that good... then you should choose to upgrade the RAM first.

JohnnyNguy3n

I run Diskeeper like every other week. I reformated a couple of times and now i'm using a tweak version called "lite" which takes all the unneeded xp things out. I think my 12v is like 17 or18A. I doubt its overheating, and I think I should get an xtra stick of ram. Would updating the bios help? Thanks

PangingJr

updating the system BIOS is something that may not help incresing the system performance but more for a stable order. If the BIOS can be updated and you know how to update it, then please do so.

anyway, the total amount of system RAM can sometimes indicate that the system is configured with Dual channel interleaved mode or Dual asymmetric mode.
likes 768 Mbit or 1.5 Gbit these are most likely not in the dual channel interleaved mode.
Only the dual channel interleaved mode gives maximum performance on real applications.
for the system that configured for using dual asymmetric mode, in most cases, bandwidth would be limited to that of a single channel.
note-- you should consult with your motherboard manual for a Dual channel interleaved mode configuration.

Dyre Straits

Don't be so quick to eliminate overheating problems. If you can actually run some apps that show the heat under stress, it would then make more sense to say whether it is or isn't heat-related.

Like I said above, the fact that you get decent frames at first...then it tapers off...that's an almost surefire indication of heat build up. So, don't discount that unless you can actually prove it.

BUT, as Panging has said, updating/upgrading RAM will most definitely help as well. The slowdowns 'may' be due to the pagefile getting full and, therefore, having to swap data from the HDD. This can really only be determined if you go ahead and add better and/or more RAM.

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PangingJr

you haven't answer this... what about the other Windows programs or tasks, does the Windows system lags so much comparing to before everywhere or just in the gaming?

PangingJr

Dyre Straits, just read your posted on the post #2... you seem to like cleaning your Windows registry alot.

"a very possibly messy Windows Registry" can also happen in any Windows system after you use an automated registry cleaner.
1,000 unused entries that are found and have been cleared out by an automated registry cleaner does not gain any performance to your Windows XP system. but only one entry (of the removed entries) is just happened to be a still in use registry entry you will get a bad Windows system if the entry cannot/won't be recreated and it needs to be existed for a software system to properly worked...

and JohnnyNguy3n, other than the disk defrag that you've done it regularly which is good, i like to add other system maintenances to your lists... you should clear out all the temporary files that are created by the Windows software system... just type temp and %temp% in the Start/Run... and then select all the files within the folder(s), and just delete them. you will recieve a warning from Windows for any files that are locked by programs or Windows... in most cases, this means the files are actually in use by the installed software programs, so no need to use any program to force remove these temporary files at the time. come back and check these temp folders and remove the unused files in them from time to time. and then to clear out TIF of the IE, within the IE you can use its built-in utility tool, or if you use opera or firefox, both have their own tools for you to clear out the internet files, the browsing histories, cookies and etc.
as for the rest of the unused files (*.old, *.dmp, *.gid, *.~mp, *._mp; or whatever...) that are exist elsewhere on the Windows system... these file should not be costing your hard drive space that much at all. and when you're using NTFS, there will certainly not be causing problem to system performance. but, remove these type of unused files can sometimes causing problem to your software system i've found the problem myself in the past. so from then on i stop removing these files... for so many years of using Windows XP under NTFS i've never removed these files... last time i checked these so-called unused file(s) my system got only less than 10 MB of these files, so i just leave them in the system again. anyway, you can check them out with the program like Dyre Straits has mentioned.

Dyre Straits

Panging, Jr:

I likely do more installing/uninstalling than the average user. So, I use the Registry Cleaner in CCleaner more often than likely is necessary. But, I've learned to trust this one as I've never had a reboot problem after using it. There are some that can be downloaded that will -- more often than not -- corrupt the Registry to a point of not being able to reboot the computer into Windows. In some cases, I've read that after using some these other ones the system wouldn't even recognize the hard drive.

So, I'm cautious about recommending anything I haven't used successfully myself.

Crap Cleaner is very, very good for those who aren't comfortable manually editing the Windows Registry. AND, you can customize it as to what type of 'crap' files you want it to delete. For example: I can select which Cookies I want it to keep instead of having to reset those cookies for access to my favorite forums.

At any rate, it's really an excellent....and totally free....app for those needing one.

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PangingJr

"I can select which Cookies I want it to keep instead of having to reset those cookies for access to my favorite forums."

i agree with you on that, myself used to use a program that can do thing like that. it's a good feature of the third-party cookies management for a typical web browsers's user profiles setups. in some cases, these programs cannot work with the user profiles that has been relocated.

about registry, i also do a lot of installing/uninstalling myself. could you tell me which programs that you've experienced any problems during the installation that you think the automated registry cleaner have helped you out?

you might want to understand that you won't need to run an automated registry cleaning in XP as so often. myself have never ran any automated registry cleaning at all.
Windows uses (reads, overwrites, opens, creates and modifies) the registry only on what it wants to use. you'll see this with regmon from sysinternals.com/... within a few minutes the Windows software system uses well over a half million registry entries,
thousands and thousands valid registry entries have opened, some of them do not exist (could be due to the registry setting has not been set) but it won't cause any problem to the software system... but when they tried to use the entry that is misplaced or missing this's where problems occurs... programs won't start or start and quit, system slowdowns, hangs or an error occurs, for example.

Dyre Straits

A couple of examples of software installs/uninstalls:


I do some beta testing for games. So, between versions I have to uninstall the previous one and then do a fresh install of the newer version.

Secondly, I like to try the game demos. But, I don't like to keep the demos on my system all that long. Once I see how they do, unless I'm really enthralled with it, I'll uninstall it.

And...I guess this is three...not a couple .... I also try out the various ATI drivers when they're out. So, I do a Registry cleaning between driver versions, too.

Using Crap Cleaner, I have rarely had it NOT find some invalid Registry Entry. If it finds a lot....say a dozen or more, I do a backup before proceeding.

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