upgraded & serviced but still poor

[Silent]

As title says, its freezing and choking on games such as pro street/neverwinter nights,pro evolution 2009, all games dont run right even low end games such as settlers.

Specs:

AMD 64 Athlon Dual Core 5200+ 2.7 gb
2gb DDR2 Ram
Geforce 8500 GT
Windows Vista
500w PSU

Seriously shouldnt be doing what its doing can I get some advice please.

Note no net at home so my replies might be delayed.

p.s thanks in advance.

 

[Elijah]

You running anything else in the background?

Have a look on task manager and see how things are going while on a game.

/Ash

 

[Far]

you hard drive could be on the blink. if games are running sluggish its usually the case. if its an old hard drive thats been formatted alot then its probably time to get a new one.

 

[Ragnar]

Farphit - look at the google HDD statistics . You'll find a few surprising facts.

I'm pretty sure it's the graphic drivers.

Uninstall your current GPU drivers. Reboot and use DriverCleaner to clean any remains after which you should reboot again. Then install the correct graphic drivers for your GPU, restart and quite likely the problem will be fixed.

That is of course if the computer isn't infested with gazillions of virii and malware lol

 

[Zen2]

If you have Norton that could be your problem norton made my pc about 1/3 as fast as it should have been, Get rid of it and get avast or avg free if so.

/Zen2

 

[mapadale]

As title says, its freezing and choking on games such as pro street/neverwinter nights,pro evolution 2009, all games dont run right even low end games such as settlers.

Specs:

AMD 64 Athlon Dual Core 5200+ 2.7 gb
2gb DDR2 Ram
Geforce 8500 GT
Windows Vista
500w PSU

Seriously shouldnt be doing what its doing can I get some advice please.

Note no net at home so my replies might be delayed.

p.s thanks in advance.

What make and model is it, as thats a pre built machine.

 

[Silent]

What make and model is it, as thats a pre built machine.

Its not prebuilt, I built it myself.

Board is a am2 socket, gigabyte make think its one of the ma range models.

got the most recent driver on it, shop says card isnt good enough to run the games mentioned at full settings which i doubt, it ran better on xp than it did vista.

My HDD is a 80gb split into two partitions I need to get a second hdd.

No viruses as im not connected to the internet havent been since i moved and hdd has been formatted since then.

CPU is running at 70% in use on desktop once i open task manager it goes back to 4% being used, hdd light is flashing constantly.

The hdd is sata about 4-6 months old.

 

[Elijah]

Your graphics card should be quick enough, What space do you have left on your hard drive?

Knowing you have Vista installed and a few of them games are pretty big, maybe your hard drive is strugeling to make temp files because not much room is left?

Guess in the dark though, i'm no expert.

/Ash

- Have you actualy tried running the games on low settings? If it's only juddering on high settings then you have your answer.

 

[Kaori]

Which version of vista?

vista has a "Reliability and Performance Monitor" in the administrative tools.

cpu: check the cpu section
hdd: check the disk section

If you recently had a crash, your "SearchIndexer" might be running through your HD. It also runs from time to time. There are other scheduled jobs that runs crazy like defrag.

 

[Silent]

vista basic didnt bother getting premium.

My performance ratings is 5.0 or higher on everything, so that makes me think that all my parts are sufficient.

turning graphics down on some games helps like prostreet but doesnt stop the blurry graphics on pro evo, and it doesnt want to work on any graphics setting on neverwinter nights without freezing or long load times.

my c drive has about 8-10 gb free and my d drive has about the same I do need to get a better hdd and remove the partition on the one i have now.

im going to get updated drivers for my chipset and bios because my board disk doesnt supply many drivers for vista but on xp it supplys alot more which makes me think its missing some drivers and thats why its jerking about and not handling things right.....could that be it?

 

[Budzilla]

Its your graphics card.

I had this problem spent a bit of money on ATI HD4870. Deffo worth money!

Have a look for yourself

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_hd4870/7.htm

 

[Ragnar]

vista basic didnt bother getting premium.

My performance ratings is 5.0 or higher on everything, so that makes me think that all my parts are sufficient.

turning graphics down on some games helps like prostreet but doesnt stop the blurry graphics on pro evo, and it doesnt want to work on any graphics setting on neverwinter nights without freezing or long load times.

my c drive has about 8-10 gb free and my d drive has about the same I do need to get a better hdd and remove the partition on the one i have now.

im going to get updated drivers for my chipset and bios because my board disk doesnt supply many drivers for vista but on xp it supplys alot more which makes me think its missing some drivers and thats why its jerking about and not handling things right.....could that be it?

Blurry definitely points to faulty drivers and/or wrong resolution and refresh rate. My bet is on the drivers still.

 

[Silent]

its the card, capable of running the games but not capable of running it at any decent quality

 

[mapadale]

vista basic didnt bother getting premium.

My performance ratings is 5.0 or higher on everything, so that makes me think that all my parts are sufficient.

turning graphics down on some games helps like prostreet but doesnt stop the blurry graphics on pro evo, and it doesnt want to work on any graphics setting on neverwinter nights without freezing or long load times.

my c drive has about 8-10 gb free and my d drive has about the same I do need to get a better hdd and remove the partition on the one i have now.

im going to get updated drivers for my chipset and bios because my board disk doesnt supply many drivers for vista but on xp it supplys alot more which makes me think its missing some drivers and thats why its jerking about and not handling things right.....could that be it?

Try and get hold of a program that scans your machine for added programs running in the background.

PCWorld are a ******* for this, after running their standard cleaning disk. The machine would be installed with a peace of software that reports back if you take it into PCWorld again and tells them what changes you have made since your last health check.

Also check what system resources you also have running, the max you really should have is about 16, but these can be as high as 20 - 24.

Also check your startup and see whats running in their, MSCONFIG in run will do this. As not every place you take a machine into actaully know how t clear this correctly.

Also take all you drivers back to a previous drive and not the latest one and check you don't have SP3 as well.

If you have SP3 remove it and manually install security updates and nothing else.

Once all that is done, let me know how things are and if you want on monday i can do a RA session from work to have a proper look at it for you.

 

[Silent]

Try and get hold of a program that scans your machine for added programs running in the background.

PCWorld are a ******* for this, after running their standard cleaning disk. The machine would be installed with a peace of software that reports back if you take it into PCWorld again and tells them what changes you have made since your last health check.

Also check what system resources you also have running, the max you really should have is about 16, but these can be as high as 20 - 24.

Also check your startup and see whats running in their, MSCONFIG in run will do this. As not every place you take a machine into actaully know how t clear this correctly.

Also take all you drivers back to a previous drive and not the latest one and check you don't have SP3 as well.

If you have SP3 remove it and manually install security updates and nothing else.

Once all that is done, let me know how things are and if you want on monday i can do a RA session from work to have a proper look at it for you.

Im running vista not xp, there is no sp3 for vista.

ive removed everything i dont need starting from boot via msconfig.

ive also made sure i have all the latest drivers, vista says my hdd is healthy but my cpu is spiking from 4-60% randomly with obvious cause for it that i can see anyways, the hdd flashes a lot even when im not using it.

and now the gfx its wierd i can run cod world at war on full graphics quality on a 800 resolution but cannot handle pro street at all has to be on lowest res and lowest gfx to even run plus gameplay is unstable and irratic, again its running red alert 3 fine and that requires more than pro street, if i had internet at home i would just get rid of it and buy the new one.

 

[mapadale]

Im running vista not xp, there is no sp3 for vista.

ive removed everything i dont need starting from boot via msconfig.

ive also made sure i have all the latest drivers, vista says my hdd is healthy but my cpu is spiking from 4-60% randomly with obvious cause for it that i can see anyways, the hdd flashes a lot even when im not using it.

and now the gfx its wierd i can run cod world at war on full graphics quality on a 800 resolution but cannot handle pro street at all has to be on lowest res and lowest gfx to even run plus gameplay is unstable and irratic, again its running red alert 3 fine and that requires more than pro street, if i had internet at home i would just get rid of it and buy the new one.

Goto control panel and run the fault testing software for vista.

 

[Sean]

The HDD flashing will be superfetch. Disabling it might improve your performance.

Start -> Run -> services.msc -> Find and disable SuperFetch.

Also, while your there, disable other unnecessary services. There should be plenty of guides on the internet to help you there.

Your HDD should also be S.M.A.R.T capable, this should allow you to access detailed diagnostic information.
One application that springs to mind that does this is SpeedFan, but applications such as Everest do it also.

 

[Perebble]

Uninstall Vista, install XP.
Ftw.

Check your memory usage while playing games, and the free space on your HDD?

 

[Elijah]

Uninstall Vista, install XP.
Ftw.

Check your memory usage while playing games, and the free space on your HDD?

Don't be silly, Vista > XP

But i must add, Vista Ultimate is a MUST. Don't recomend anything less.

Paul, install Vista you big girl. Lol.

/Ash

 

[Perebble]

But XP is fast. Unlike this download of WoW 3.0.1 to 3.0.2.