Vanity - Optimizing PC performance for gaming software

None | 10/11/2003 | Me

[ItsOurTimeNow]

This is a Tech question for any PC-gaming FReepers.

I'm looking to maximize my PC's (Dell) performance in order to handle some newly-released games that I've purchased. The biggest issue that I'm running into is speed of play. Occasionally, when there's a lot of action on-screen, the PC goes into a slowed-down, freeze-frame reaction, and I get a "virtual memory low" warning from Windows.

My system specs are currently:

Pentium4 1.8Ghz processor 128MB RAM (I'm assuming this is my biggest problem?) GeForce4 MX 420 video card 20GB Hard Drive I'm also currently allocated 259MB for virtual memory...can/should I up this number?

Thanks in advance for your help/support!

[BADROTOFINGER]

DO NOT get an NVIDIA card. Go with the ATI Radeon instead. NVIDIA would rather put out new cards then develop drivers to make their existing products run properly. The ATI Radeon 9000 series has some killer cards at great prices. More RAM will also speed up your system in a dramatic fashion. Check out www.pricewatch.com for the best available on-line prices...JFK

[jimkress]

Get more RAM

Get a RAID controller for your system. Get two, 10k rpm HD and set them up as a RAID zero array. Disk access time will now no longer be a significant factor in system performance.

[KellyAdmirer]

How do I get rid of all those things? I have 6 and I am constantly right clicking them to shut them off.

Once they start up, it doesn't matter much if you click them off - they remain resident in your computer's memory. You need to keep them from starting up in the first place. I would not take the advice of anyone suggesting you monkey around with your registry, but there are lots of tweaks you can do if you investigate Windows a bit on the Internet. The simplest solution to that is to format your hard drive (after backing up anything you need) and reinstalling your operating system, then being very selective about what you install.

Your have way too little RAM (512MB minimum these days for XP imho), you need a bigger and faster hard drive, your video card is inadequate (MX cards are power leeches, too), and a faster processor wouldn't hurt though that is absolutely last on the list. You didn't mention it, but I suspect you also should upgrade your power supply to 400+ watts.

With that long a list, if you really want to play contemporary games on your computer and have fun doing it, I would suggest that spending the money for a cheap new system will give you more of a boost than going through and upgrading piecemeal unless you find some really good deals on components (which can be done).

[Agnes Heep]

Definitely more RAM. As cheap as memory is these days, you ought to have as much as your system will support. Depending on your operating system, 128MB is probably just enough to keep it going. When real memory is low, the system has to continually swap information back and forth from the hard drive, which, because it's a physical process, bogs everything right down. You can probably hear your disk drive churning as you try to run various programs.

[Gringo1]

FX5600 128 meg card....less than 100.00
FX5600 256 meg card......130.00 or less(this card has the higher clock speeds)

Try here.

http://www.fticomputer.com/cgis/list.cgi?ses=29fdb070ee8bd95d5ec58f148cdc030b&cat=VB

[Gringo1]

Correction: They have both the 128 and the 256 with the higher clock speeds

[primatreat]

e mail syburwulf@mac.com he is on of the best authorites on "gamming" Tell him Primatreat said so

[Cacique]

bttfl

[Malsua]

As an Avid Gamer,(in the 35+ range ;))

I'll back up what has been said here.

Ram is the biggest issue. Next is disk speed. It needs to be 7200rpm. For Games(Framerate), the MX line is garbage.

Right now, the ATI Radeon line is better than the Geforce FX line simply due to DirectX 9 support. I still like Geforce cards though. The Ati 9700 is a good value right now.

Further, Front Side Bus for gaming computers is a must have.

I've got an Athlon 2700, 333FSB in mine, and put an Athlon 3000 400FSB in the wife's just recently. Our games run great, even on resource hogs like Star Wars Galaxies and Asheron's Call 2. I'm running a slightly older Geforce4 TI4200 and will probably upgrade wife's machine to the ATI line in the near term.

As other suggested, running things in the background is bad for games.

Most XP and 98 machines install MSCONFIG so you can do..

Start->Run->type in MSconfig hit enter.

On the startup tab, you can uncheck things that are running. About the only thing you do need is the Systray. You might need helper applets for CDRom burners and for some Dell's there's a special one that needs to run as well. I'm blanking on the name.

Here's a good link that can explain most of them:

Task List Programs

Further, virtual memory should be as other suggested about 1.5X your total ram.

Definately make sure you've got the latest DirectX and latest video drivers.

DirectX Here

For comparison sake, download 3dbenchmark 2001(not 2003) and as you tweak your machine, you can see if it helped or hurt.

Hope that helps.

-Mal

[MikeD]

Dittos to your statements. I've had a Radeon 9000 since August of last year and love it. I paid $96 for it then and don't regret a penny of it. I'm all but certain you can get more card for less money these days.

Either way, for the original poster, 128 MB of RAM is criminal. Most new video cards have that much RAM, let alone the main system.

Also, for those of you interested in games, I'm an avid Half-Life player, especially Team Fortress Classic and Science & Industry.

MD

[Psycho_Bunny]

This is a Tech question for any PC-gaming FReepers.

I'm looking to maximize my PC's (Dell) performance in order to handle some newly-released games that I've purchased. The biggest issue that I'm running into is speed of play. Occasionally, when there's a lot of action on-screen, the PC goes into a slowed-down, freeze-frame reaction, and I get a "virtual memory low" warning from Windows.

You need more memory. 512 minimum for the games that are out right now, like Battlefield 1942 or Americas Army.

Having 128 megs means you're probably on a 133 memory bus so even if you buy 512 you're going to want to run the games with bitmap textures/shadowing/graphics details turned down in the game's video options.  Don't bother with experimenting with higher-than-default video settings.

Keep the sound options turned down.....use the lowest channel settings....use 22MHz instead of 44MHz....don't use hardware acceleration.  

You need a new video card.  Do not buy one of the current crop of nVidia cards.  Pick up an ATI Radeon 9700 or, if you can afford it, a 9800 pro but, given the Front Bus Speed of your computer, don't expect miracles in performance increases.

If you upgrade your video, reinstall your operating system.

If you really want to get serious, you need to pick up a computer that's a little more configurable than your Dell...Dell bios is usually pretty sparse.

It's extremely unlikely that you can dual channel your memory but, if you decide to get more ram, double check your specs and eliminate the possibility of your having a MoBo that supports Dual Channeling.  If, in the unlikely event that your board supports DC memory, be certain you pick up split sticks instead of one stick (two 256 sticks instead of one 512 stick).  Dual Channeled memory offers a huge increase in performance and you'd hate to miss the boat if your Dell supports it.

(Do not edit your registry, as was previously suggested -- I don't want to sound snotty but, if you knew enough about what you're doing to confidently edit the registry, you wouldn't have needed to make this post.  If you REALLY feel the need to delete Terminate, Stay Resident applications from your RUN folder in the registry, run a search in Google for each file that's being referred to by the registry key.

In other words, if you see an entry like C:\Program Files\D-Link\AirXpert Utility\AirXCFG.exe, get on Google and search "AirXCFG.exe".  If I were to delete this key from my RUN folder because I thought it was "taking up memory", I'd suddenly find that my wireless network adapter stopped working.)

[VMI70]

Here is something that I found, but I am reluctant to tinker with it very much.

start/programs/accessories/system tools/system information

Help & Support window opens

Click "Tools" on task bar
Click "System Configuration Utility"

In the window that opens(msconfig takes you directly to this window), there are seven file tabs that come up across the top.
There are many choices of things that can be deleted, or enabled/disabled, in the 7 windows.

Can you recommend the ones that are safe to delete? On second thought, it might be easier to name the essential ones that I need to keep.

[Malsua]

>>Can you recommend the ones that are safe to delete? <<

I wouldn't recommend changing anything but what you find in the startup tab. Some of the items in the services tab can be stopped and disabled, but for the most part, they aren't the real resource hogs. If you aren't behind a firewall, I'd suggest disabling messagenger. That can be done by going to the control panel and administrative tools and services. Disable messenger(not to be confused with MSN messenger).

As for the startup items, disable them all and work backwards :).

If something you want or like isn't working, go back into msconfig and re-enable it. Some are obvious, others are not. By unchecking it in msconfig, you aren't doing anything that can be fixed by just going right back into msconfig and clicking the box again. Most of that junk doesn't need to be running. If you've ever installed realplay or quicktime, you've got two that don't need to be on. MSCONFIG will complain the next time you bootup, but shrug, check the box hit ok and it won't nag you next bootup.

To fix some real security issues such as Dcom, go to www.grc.com and find the couple of little applets that Steve Gibson has there(dcombobulator, Upnp, killthemessegner, etc). They will safely and easily take care of some of these issues.

I'm an IT guy for going on nearly 20 years now and it still boggles my mind how much crap software programs tend to do these days. Back in the Day, running lotus 123, meant running lotus 123. Not an update agent, a web agent, a crash agent(like Adobe's Garbage Attune) etc.

It's ridiculous. Good luck. Feel free to freepmail me if you run into trouble.

-Mal

[Salgak]

I was going from memory for what I built for my wife 2 months ago. . .the FX5600/256 is what I got her, and as I recall, it was $149 then.

Me, I buy from http://www.newegg.com

[KellyAdmirer]

I second this advice. You might want to start, though, by going to the General tab, checking the Selective Startup tab, and unchecking the "Load Startup items" box. That stops pretty much everything nonessential from loading at startup. If you encounter problems on reboot, you can reverse that change without trouble. Would not touch anything on the other tabs.

In general, in my opinion, you are better off identifying what software is on your computer that you do not need and removing it from your system completely through the control panel add/remove software page.

[chance33_98]

I didn't tell anyone to delete anything from the registry, just noted where they can be found.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

What is the bus speed of your motherboard?

PCI: 33 MHz; AGP: 66 MHz

Does that sound right?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Does that sound right?

Most perfectly adequate, lower-priced motherboards are in the133 to 333 MHz range these days. Expensive boards reach into the 800 MHz range.

I have a four year old 300 MHz AMD K6-2 on a 100 MHz motherboard with 128 MB of RAM that plays games like Quake III Arena quite well.

I suspect that your motherboard will never be able to play games very well no matter how much RAM you add.

If your motherboard is an ATX you can replace it with a decent game board for well under $100. If it is not an ATX, then there is not much you can do because ATX is about all they make anymore.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

I suspect that your motherboard will never be able to play games very well no matter how much RAM you add.

It does great with "last years" games. For example, 'Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast' plays exceptionally well, with just a minor hiccup whenever the battle scenes get too severe, and it also handles a heavy strategy game like 'Galactic Battlegrounds' with ease.

I recently loaded the demo version of the up-coming (11.03) 'Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring', and it can't seem to keep up with that game. Now, it could be that the demo file stinks, or it could be that my system's starting to bail out, and I'll have more and more problems as newer games come out.

Perhaps one of these days I'll break down and get a separate PC strictly for gaming.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Maybe more RAM will do it, then.