V
Vanguard
John Bailo said:
I don't play that game. Could be you need more memory. If you have
lots of programs loaded when you start the game, there is less system
memory for the game. Disable the anti-virus program, unload any e-mail
program or monitor utility, and kill or unload any other non-essential
programs. You might even decide to disable the firewall and then also
disable the LAN connectoid (if you are using cable or DSL) if the game
doesn't need Internet access while playing it (i.e., you aren't playing
online games with other players located elsewhere). Virtual memory is
very, very, VERY slow "memory" because it is actually a file on the
super slow hard drive. Use the tray icons to unload, disable, or exit
some of the programs, use Task Manager to kill those that don't provide
the option to kill them, and maybe even use msconfig.exe to disable the
startup items so they don't load in the first place. If you have any
events defined in Task Scheduler, check if they have the option to wait
until the host is idle before running and waiting for awhile until the
host becomes busy so they don't run while you are playing the game. You
might also check which NT services can be stopped while playing the
game. Alternatively, you could define a different hardware profile (see
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37021.aspx) to eliminate some stuff from
loading when selecting that profile on rebooting Windows to play the
game under a less busy environment. While using a different hardware
profile lets you configure which NT service is running when using that
profile, that only applies to services so all other programs that load
using the Run registry keys or in the Startup menu will still load.
You may simply want to add more memory to your existing host. 512MB
isn't a big amount anymore. Every time Microsoft comes out with another
OS, it sucks up LOTS more memory. Vista will need 2GB! Geez. Sure
makes me think of looking more at the Unix solutions (Linux, etc.). Get
more memory, or replace your old modules with bigger ones, so more
processes run in real system memory rather than in super slow virtual
memory. I'm playing Far Cry at the moment and I've noticed in Task
Manager that my peak memory usage was 1.4GB but I only have 512MB of
real memory so the rest was from slow virtual memory. Rather than just
double up to 1GB, I'll be going to 2GB because there are some games that
really need that much (I think Fear is one of them).
I'm not familiar with your particular video card (and too lazy to bother
going to their site to look up its specs). Maybe it only has 128MB of
video RAM so a video card with more memory might work better, like
getting the frame rate up. Some video cards can be overclocked. I have
the ATI 9600 Pro and can use a couple different utilities to overclock
the video card's GPU and memory. However, the speed change (in frame
rate) is so small that I gave up on overclocking and overheating the
video card for what was an imperceptible or imagined gain. If upping
the system memory doesn't help, you might just try going with a better
video card rather than spend the more money building a whole new system.
You neglect to mention WHAT you regard as not performing well. Could be
the frame rate is too low in the game. Try using a lower video
resolution and setting other controls in the game's configuration that
use less CPU or other resources, like lowering anti-aliasing or
configuring your video driver to let the application select it or tell
the game not to use it. Or lower the complexity of objects. Or play
with the games options.
A 100MB hard drive is rather puny. Windows XP Pro itself will consume
over 2GB after awhile (after you use it for several months and continue
installing software that Microsoft promotes developers to pollute the OS
paths). Maybe you meant that it is a 100GB hard drive. That still
doesn't say how much free space was left on the disk after installing
the game and it may require large temp or save files. Also, if space it
tight then maybe you don't have a large enough pagefile (aka virtual
memory) that the game needs.
Thinking you need new and faster and more expensive hardware may not be
a solution if the real problem is that you have too much sh.., er, stuff
loaded and consuming memory and CPU cycles. No matter how fantastic the
hardware you get, if you consume most of its resources running
background processes then your game will still perform poorly.
