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General discussion

Slow gameplay with games

Mar 12, 2005 9:03AM PST

I just reformatted my whole computer and added Warcraft3 TFT and World of Warcraft back on my computer. When I l[pay both games, I get slow gameplay for about 10 seconds, then it goes back to normal. In WoW i get around 40-50 fps. It drops to 20, then goes down under 5 fps and does this about once every 3 minutes. Same thing with war3 but people say im lagging. Could this be a memory issue? I only have 512mb of ram so I might buy another stick. Im not sure what it is but its never happened before. I have a ati 9600 xt graphics card, 1.8 ghz processor, and 512mb of ram. I have all of my drivers downloaded and all of the windows updates installed. What should I go/buy to fix this problem? thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

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a few things...
Mar 12, 2005 11:18AM PST

Warcraft III and WoW doesn't use as much system resources as any of the recent first person shooters. 512MB of memory should be more than enough. If they're the only games you wanted to run, don't waste any money upgrading memory.

You just reformatted the harddisk, so malware shouldn't be a big issue. Make sure to get the latest DirectX and a proper video driver for the graphics card. Windows include drivers for all the brand name graphic cards, and installes them automatically. They're not good. Download a copy of the real driver from majnufacturer's website. Also, if you have Service Pack 2, get rid of it. It makes games lag. Getting SP1 is enough.

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ok
Mar 12, 2005 3:41PM PST

Thanks
But how do you get rid of sp2? I knew it was a problem. And I will run cs:source and teamspeak. Thats about the only programs I will have on my computer. and I looked at ati.com (9600 xt) but I dont know what I should download. Theres too many things. I have the latest directx (9.0c) but I dont know if I have downloaded a new driver. Ihave a ati radeon 9600 xt graphics card. Can you provide a link to the correct driver I should download?

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o yeah...
Mar 12, 2005 3:43PM PST

Is it possible for your hard drive to be... corrupt or just get old and not work anymore? Im not that smart with computers Silly. But I think it could be that, my hard drive is about 3 years old. And I've never had problems with it until about 2 months ago. Then we reformatted twice, and now I'm here Sad

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Not a good idea
Mar 12, 2005 9:11PM PST

It really is not a good idea to drop SP2 simply because some games do not work properly. The problem is not with SP2 but with the computer.

Updating the video drivers and DirectX is a good idea. Make sure you have as few background tasks running as possible, and check for viruses and spyware. Do you have a separate firewall to SP2's firewall? If so, make sure they are not both on. If your separate firewall is doing it's job, the Windows (SP2) firewall is not needed and can cause conflicts.

SP2 is important. It delivers new security features and updates for Internet Explorer. You uninstall it at your own risk.

Mark

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a few things...
Mar 13, 2005 12:02AM PST

I just looked at the official Ati website, and wow... It turns out that there are no specific drivers for different Ati Raedons. But why do they have to bundle all that stuff?
Here's something. The unofficial driver delivers better performance. I've been using it for some time on my old and cheap 2.6Ghz Celeron with Raedon 9200SE. Seems to work better. But since it's a hacked driver, it may cause problems on a different computer and card. If it doesn't work, just go into safe mode and revert back to the old driver.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=987

SP2 definately cause lag. It increases resource used by just about every system process, sometimes double as much. More exhausting processes = slower computer. It's that simple. And all the process modules add up, making a noticable difference in speed. You can remove SP2 from Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs. Be careful though. The thing has a nasty tendency of removing some network protocols along with it. Internet and LAN may not work afterwards. Be ready to reinstall Windows.

An old 5600rpm harddive may cause lag if you don't have enough memory, and the system uses page files from the slow harddrive. Fragmented drive makes the problem worse. 1GB of memory would be good. But for the games you're running, 512 MB should be enough.

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installing
Mar 13, 2005 2:15AM PST

Im installing sp1 right now
had no problems uninstalling sp2.
I had a problem downloading a driver though
Ill try again and see if it works.

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Like I said
Mar 13, 2005 3:48AM PST

Uninstalling SP2 is not a good idea.

On a clean machine, empty of all infections and nasties, and with updated and SP2 compatible drivers and software, SP2 does not cause any problems of itself.

On machines that were having problems beforehand, (either visible or in the background), SP2 highlights those problems.

The trick is to fix the problems, not discard SP2.

Mark

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...
Mar 13, 2005 9:06AM PST

SP2 takes too much system resources to do mostly useless things. SP1 is more than enough.

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i agree
Mar 16, 2005 10:09AM PST

i totally agree with dagger 906 sp2 is not perfect and i am trying to avoid it