Gaming perfomance & Overclocking

#ELMO# · #1 January 25th, 2006, 07:20 PM

ive been having probs with running some games on my comp(half life 2-battlefeild 2- mainly) they run fine most of the time but there is frequent jumps in the game play
i have tried a few thing like change reslution and refeshrate graphics levels but still has the frequent jumps

i have managed 2 overclock my graphics card and seemed to help a bit

packard bell 1507
3.2 GHZ(533mhz FSB)
1024MB DDR Ram(200mhz)
PNY Geforce 6600gt 128mb APG graphics card
200gb HD

jus wondering about overclocking my CPU and RAM
is it worth it will it make much diffrence to prefomance
wot r the risk
wot do i need
and how to do it
and anthing else i need 2 no

or is there anything else can do to speed up sys and increase games perfomance ??

cheers for any feed bck

ELMO

**MishY** · #2 January 25th, 2006, 07:43 PM

Battlefield2 would really thank you for 1.5-2Gb of RAM so would HL2 to a lesser extent.

Both would thank you for a graphics card with more onboard memory - something like a 6800GT or 6800Ultra.

#ELMO# · #3 January 26th, 2006, 02:12 AM

what sort of RAM do u recomend?
is this ram any good
http://www.savastore.com/productinfo...04&rstrat=2683

or is there much better RAM out there(this site is were i will buy from)

cheers ELMO

is the 256MB ATi Radeon X800 AGP 8X VIVO a good graphics card??

**smurfy** · #4 January 26th, 2006, 01:01 PM

Like Mishy says, there's no substitute for copious amounts of RAM but..

"they run fine most of the time but there is frequent jumps in the game play"

Are you playing online or local single player only?
Possible problems -
Online - network issues (ISP throttling bandwidth)
Local & Online - heat especially if you are o/c ing.
Other apps running in background stealing CPU cylces?

What make CPU? IntelPIV or AMDAthlon = should be no problems.
Celeron, Semperon etc = budget chip = budget performance.
What sort of HArd Drive - IDE or SATA. What speed?

#ELMO# · #5 January 26th, 2006, 02:02 PM

the jumps dont bother me when online i sort of expected that, my internet run pretty poor any way

what is(ISP throttling bandwidth)?

but its in the single play games were it does bother me also in games like half life 2 things seem 2 get horizontal line across when looking round the screen?

Intel p4 519 (1mb cache) 775 socket

all i know about my hd is

200gb at 7200rpm

i dont have any bckground apps well not that i open anyway

cheers ELMO

**MishY** · #6 January 27th, 2006, 07:21 PM

The main symptom of a system not coping with games is FPS lag (frames per second). When you have this any mouse movement will appear juddery. Certainly not smooth, and will make aiming or any form of accurate mouse movement tough.

Decay · #7 January 27th, 2006, 07:48 PM

a thing you could try is disable services you do not need. i am guessing windows xp. another thing is do you have many "gadgets" attached to usb ports?

Iomega Zip drives have been known to cause slow down in performance while playing games.. if you have iomega zip disk .. use device manger and disable it till your done playing i suggest the same with unessary things such as print spool server if your not printing... Even though your pc can likely handle the game other applications can cause interference... which can slow performance.
If you have a usb cd burner/dvd rom burner you could also turn it off

See the problem with windows for gaming system is it uses "features" to make it easier to run this hardware which really can slow down performance.

Remember turn off as much as you can...
How much virtual memory you have setup?
Another issue with games if you let windows manage it and it needs to use virtual memory it can be a extreme resource hog.
because windows than has to locate space for that memory on your hard drive instead of already having it reserved.

Is directx / graphic drivers up to date?
some times graphic drivers and directx can have conflicts usually the newest versions are best but sometimes a build one back can out perform depending.

hope any of this helps...

#ELMO# · #8 January 27th, 2006, 08:03 PM

the only thing in my usb is mouse and router

i just have directx and drivers that come with my graphics card cd

not sure about virtual memoy carnt even find were it says??

and i dont no wot a Iomega Zip drive is so i guess i aont got 1?

been tough and check wot dont need running the only main things really runnig now is

MSN/ZoneAlarms/ ithink

#ELMO# · #9 January 31st, 2006, 12:35 AM

think i found prob ( ME!!!)

firstly i always want the best graphics possible so go bit greedy wth graphics levels ect toned them down 2 MEDIUM in sted of HIGH

also i change from 70mhz to 60mhz refresh rate but kept the reslution the same

also closed msn & microsft antispy and spybot from runnig constantly so only hing now is ZoneAlarms which i didnt really wanna turn off

free up bout 300mb odd i physical memory (im guessing physical memory is whats left for me 2 use for games and stuff??)

cheers guys