games and xp - poor results

[HowburyPete]

Hi - I'm new to XP pro, having upgraded from 98se. I have a 1.1
Athlon, 256mb memory, and a MX Gforce 440 graphics card.

Tryinjg to play Half Life or Aliens versus Predator I get really poor,
jerky frame rates - press a movement key and the response time is at
least a second.

Is this just old games in XP? Is there a solution?

Help appreciated, as I'm an addict of both games...

 

[Cerridwen]

Hi - I'm new to XP pro, having upgraded from 98se. I have a 1.1
Athlon, 256mb memory, and a MX Gforce 440 graphics card.

Tryinjg to play Half Life or Aliens versus Predator I get really poor,
jerky frame rates - press a movement key and the response time is at
least a second.

Is this just old games in XP? Is there a solution?

Help appreciated, as I'm an addict of both games...

With that hardware - I'm not in the least bit surprised. A mid-range GF2 can
outperform a GF4 MX440 without breaking sweat, and the rest of your hardware
isn't anything to write home about either!

Want my advice? Either buy a proper card that's designed for gaming - or go
back to 98 (which MS no longer supports and h/w manufacturers probably won't
in the very near future).

 

[Robert Spender]

I use a MX420 with slightly higher hardware and have no problems playing
Call Of Duty or Medal Of Honor.

 

[Darryl]

You shouldn't be having a huge problem, especially with AvP. I'm
using a GF2 MX something or other on an AMD 1.2 with 512 MB RAM and
can play Call of Duty or RTCW: Enemy Territory without problem.

Defrag the HD, convert to NTFS (don't know if this'll help) buy an
additional 256 MB RAM, and clean up your startup folder and registry.
Remove anything you don't need under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

You should disable any virus software while playing.

Just my CDN$0.02.