extremely bad game performance

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kelly Miggs
  • Start date Start date
K

Kelly Miggs

I've noticed that a lot of games lately just freeze up on the opening
screen. The video is choppy and doesn't seem like it's going to work, then
it eventually "catches up" and starts working normally. This happens every
time a new screen loads, though, so the games are unplayable.

I thought maybe it was just newer games that my computer may not be strong
enough for, but I reinstalled Return to Castle Wolfenstein and it does the
same thing. That game had run perfectly a few months ago.

My graphics card is an NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro, and I just
updated the drivers to the latest version.

Any other ideas what might be wrong?
 
Kelly Miggs said:
I've noticed that a lot of games lately just freeze up on the opening
screen. The video is choppy and doesn't seem like it's going to work, then
it eventually "catches up" and starts working normally. This happens every
time a new screen loads, though, so the games are unplayable.

I thought maybe it was just newer games that my computer may not be strong
enough for, but I reinstalled Return to Castle Wolfenstein and it does the
same thing. That game had run perfectly a few months ago.

My graphics card is an NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro, and I just
updated the drivers to the latest version.

Any other ideas what might be wrong?
Click to expand...

Try defragmenting your hard drive if you haven't done
that recently.

If you have less than 512MB of memory, upgrade it
to 512MB.

-- Bob Day
 
I've noticed that a lot of games lately just freeze up on the opening
screen. The video is choppy and doesn't seem like it's going to work, then
it eventually "catches up" and starts working normally. This happens every
time a new screen loads, though, so the games are unplayable.

I thought maybe it was just newer games that my computer may not be strong
enough for, but I reinstalled Return to Castle Wolfenstein and it does the
same thing. That game had run perfectly a few months ago.

My graphics card is an NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro, and I just
updated the drivers to the latest version.

Any other ideas what might be wrong?
Click to expand...

You don't mention how new or demanding those games are, but consider
that the TNT2 M64 is a half-bandwidth version of a popular card in
'98... it may be slow because it's a slow card.

Try newer nVidia refernce drivers. http://www.nvidia.com ,but the most
likely fix is a newer (and faster) video card.

Dave
 
And your version of Windows is what? You know what you use. WE DON'T.

Use msconfig.exe to disable startup programs and reboot. It may be
something, or lots of somethings, that get loaded on Windows startup
that are eating up the CPU cycles.

If you are running an NT-based Windows, start the game and return to the
Windows desktop, if possible. Then use Task Manager to right click on
all files that got loaded and are running for the game. Right-click and
up the priority to High. Return to the game. If the palette gets
screwed up, like the game gets too dark, change the video resolution in
the game (that usually resets the palette) and change it back.
 
kony said:
You don't mention how new or demanding those games are, but consider
that the TNT2 M64 is a half-bandwidth version of a popular card in
'98... it may be slow because it's a slow card.
Click to expand...

I thought it was just new games at first, but then I reinstalled Wolfenstein
and noticed it doing the same thing. The weird thing is it just freezes up
on the opening screen, with the animated flags and music. The game itself
works fine.

Enemy Territory does the same thing. The sound is choppy and it seems to
freeze up on the introduction, but the game itself works fine.

It's like only certain types of graphics are slow.
Try newer nVidia refernce drivers. http://www.nvidia.com ,but the most
likely fix is a newer (and faster) video card.

Dave
Click to expand...

I don't know if this makes any difference, but I'm using Windows XP.
 
Are these intro, ingame, and endgame *movies* that are playing? If so,
are they separate files so you could double-click on them separately of
the game to see if they play okay then? If they are separate files,
determine from the extension what filetype they are and check what
application is associated for that filetype. For example, maybe they
are quicktime movies so a reinstall of quicktime might fix the problem.
Perhaps you need to reinstall the video codecs; Ligos now wants to
charge for their Indeo codecs because they bundled the WinXP codecs
which they could charge for but previously they had the Intel Indeo
codecs that they couldn't charge for. Since the Indeo codecs work on
Windows 2000, they probably still work under Windows XP (but then the
game should have an iv5.exe or other install file; it may not reinstall
them if it sees they are already installed).
 
I would switch back to the old drivers, since they worked. It sounds like
the new drivers are incompatible with your card.
 
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