Poor performance.

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moriati

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Hi all,
Wondering if anyone has any tips or advive... i just recently had a new comp built for me from parts from my old comp and a new cpu and motherboard. the only thing is that i have not seen any real improvements in the performance of my machine, the specs are as follows.
Gigabyte GA-K8VT800 PRO motherboard, an AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 2800+, with 1024mb of 266mhz pc2100 ram, a 40gb hard drive with my OS on and a second 80 gb hd for storage. i'm also using a ati radeon 9550 graphics card. not really sure why nothing seems to have improved, and when i now play movies it becomes jerky.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
what was your old system spec ? what games are you playing ?

TBH its not a gaming machine, but it should be able to play some of the less power hungry games
 
my last pc was running on a AMD Athlon™ XP 2000+ (1.7GHz) with the same ram and graphics card and the 40gb hard drive, not sure on the motherboard spec though. here is the url for the product spec on my old comp
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...cname=c00027860&product=316628&dlc=en&lang=en
I'm playing games like lord of the rings, c&c generals, evil genius, dungeon keeper 2, none of which play particulary well in low detail and low res.
 
Thats not really a massive jump in the overall system, the 9550 and slow (I presume) hard drive will have the largest impact on gameplay.

If you could upgrade your graphics card to something better you will notice a big improvement, but a nice fast hard drive may also yield some results. Your CPU and RAM seem fine :)
 
Thanks, you are probabaly correct about my HD it is only a 5600rpm... but my second HD is 7200rpm would it make a difference if i swapped the OS onto that one? Also already looked into a new graphics card i was thinking about going for either a nvidia 7800 gtx or the new radeon x1800xl from what you are telling me i might be wasting my money though? Already planned to get some pc3200 ram very soon.
 
Swapping your hard drives around would be a good start, if you don't mind the hassle. Both of those graphics cards are very good, but expensive! The 7800GT is probably the best bet out of those 2 at the moment.
 
Thanks for that... perhaps i need to do some more homework before posting...(freakin newbies!)
Just had a look at some other cards, think i'll try three things, first of all i'll swap my os onto my other HD, then get myself a radeon x800xt card and then increase my ram from 1024mb pc2100 266mhz to 512mb pc3200 400mhz.
that will give me a system as follows
Gigabyte GA-K8VT800 PRO motherboard
AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 2800+ cpu
80gb HD Master
40gb Slave
512mb ddr pc3200 400mhz ram
Radeon X800XT PE 256MB
Windows xp pro OS

Thanks for everyone's input...all is appreciated.
 
That looks like it'll do you just fine! :)


Hope we helped you. :thumb:
 
moriati said:
and then increase my ram from 1024mb pc2100 266mhz to 512mb pc3200 400mhz.
Click to expand...

Bingo. That's the one thing that leapt out at me on reading original post, your current memory is strangling your system.

Of course if you can stretch to a gig of PC3200, that would be better.

And as others have mentioned, video card and hard drive.

Have you considered purchasing a SATA drive? That would help, assuming your motherboard accepts serial hard disks.
 
I play 3 games mainly, as follows... Dungeon keeper 2, C&C Generals (alot) and evil genius, i also watch a lot of avi and divx films where the playback is really jerky at the mo.
Thanks again for everyone's help and support.
 
SATA is a faster connection for your HD, you can keep your existing ones but if you want to use SATA you'll need to buy a compatible drive. your system at the moment should be ok with those games but i think flopps has made a good point about your RAM beeing the bottleneck
 
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I just decided to sell a lot of old junk lying around to finace some new ram, that will be my first purchase...i'll try for 1gb. then a new SATA drive. GPU can wait for a while.
 
Hi all, finally got some more upgrades for my comp. specs as followsGigabyte GA-K8VT800 PRO motherboard
AMD (Clawhammer) Athlon 64bit 3400+ cpu
40gb HDD Master
80gb HDD Slave
2gb ddr pc3200 400mhz ram
Radeon X800XT PE 256MB
Windows xp pro OS

I still get a lot of the same problems with playback on my videos... jerky and stutters. i've tried all sorts of media players and all sorts of drivers but get the same problem with each.something else that happens every couple of days is the sound gets all distorted and perfomance really lags. when i do a reboot everything is fine again.
I'm at a total loss for what to do, tempted to sell it all and buy a DELL.
 
Ian Cunningham said:
Swapping your hard drives around would be a good start, if you don't mind the hassle. Both of those graphics cards are very good, but expensive! The 7800GT is probably the best bet out of those 2 at the moment.
Click to expand...
i'd say go for the x1800.
i got the x700 and my comp runs fine
 
hi,

the x1800xl is pci-e i've got an agp mobo and i've already got the x850xt pe, the power supply is a 450w psu... how do i know if this is not enough?
 
don't ask me. i just know that if you don't have eanoth power-supply your comp will have less performance
 
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