Games running slow/crashing

LBManiac · #1 January 25th, 2007, 02:23 AM

I just went and bought a new computer for myself mainly for gaming and its being a nightmare-

specs.

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 SE 512 MB
2x 512mb RAM (ddr2)

Ok basicly any game I have played has given a bit of trouble-

Battlefield 2142 - Sound Stuttering(on the original soundcard and my Soundblaster Audigy so its not the sound cards fault) and game crashes after 5 mins play forced restart needed. On occasion blue screen error with infinite loop caused by nv4_disp.dll (I have tried original drivers and latest ones for my Nvidia card)

Half Life 2 - Game locked up while loading
Oblivion - Running ok but low FPS
3dMark06- Running between 0 and 1 FPS CPU test timer runs slow as well in 0.5sec jumps maybe a few seconds apart
WoW- running ok maybe a bit jumpy(not sure if that is caused by lag)

I am going to try some more games see if I have any luck.

The main reason I got this was for gaming and as you can see its not good so far- is this a known issue that I can fix- I've tried all sorts of things from hotfixes, drivers and editing reg with no joy.

Please HELP!

The most likely thing I have seen is the Dual Core issue with games- I've tried setting affinity with same errors happening as well.

The most shocking thing is these problems were just as soon as computer came out of the box- and even new drivers didn't fix the computer- I'm wondering if it can be returned to PCWorld and I get a single core.

khanibal · #2 January 28th, 2007, 07:50 AM

3dmark06 will always have a low CPU score. That is normal.
Oblivion with low FPS can be easily explained by the video card, it just isn't up to par for a game that graphically intense. It's rather strange as to why they put 512mb on that card, figuring it wouldn't even be able to take advantage of it in any game due to it's slow performance.

As for BF2142 and HL2, don't really know what to tell you here. Did you use a driver cleaning program to make sure you removed all the gunk from previous drivers before installing new ones? Do you have the latest direct X release? How about latest chipset drivers?

LBManiac · #3 January 29th, 2007, 07:25 AM

I returned it to shop and they give me a full refund- I was puzzled so looked on the packard bell site and the specs say this:

Specifications
Model nVidia GeForce 7300 SE
Chipset G72
Interface PCI-Express
GPU Frequency 450 MHz
Video Memory
Dedicated 64 MB
Type GDDR3
Frequency 500 MHz
Bus Width 128 bits
Total Memory 256 MB or 512 MB

Not sure if the box was mislabeled but the staff were happy enough to take it back after loading oblivion on in shop and seeing how jumpy it was. Just went and bought the components myself with a Nvidia 7900gs instead and it runs really well graphics/games and everything.

New PCs come with so much sh**e on them its no wonder they crash like that and they are cheap bits in them too.