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General discussion

What next for my PC?

Aug 4, 2004 6:41PM PDT

I have a AMD 64 Bit 2800 Processor, with A Geforce FX, 2 harddrives that are big, 768 meg of memory, fans and gadgets up the wazoo, windows xp home, Cable internet connection. I just want to play call of duty at 1280 by 1024, and to run it smooth as can be. Everytime i look at a tree or something it gets all slow. What next for a gaming pc. I know your all going to say graphics card but thast the last resort to things i would upgrade. Bob im counting on you to reply to this one i need your help.

Discussion is locked

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Re: What next for my PC?
Aug 4, 2004 10:32PM PDT

While it seems you have the right parts, actually scaled back on a fire breather's RAM to exactly 512M due to some nuances with Widnows 2000/XP. Turns out that when we try realtime games, the extra might be adding overhead as the OS shuffles dlls in memory. It seems that it frets that the spare memory can be consolidated and does so at an inopertune time. I will NOT debate this area of Windows and will share my experiences. Try exactly 512M RAM.

Next is that video card. Which FX? The home armada of machines now has FX5700, FX5600, FX5500 with the 5500 being some oddball with 256M RAM. The others are 128M. Doom 3 will arrive any day, so it is hoped the 85 buck FX5700le will be ok. What I do know is to avoid the FX5200 or ATI9200 cards. Not that they are bad cards, but they are value items that still outperform cards from 2 years ago.

The OS on the machines are very tweaked if I compare to other people's machines. For instance, no parasites are allowed. no P2P, services that we don't need are disabled (thank you Black Viper) and we don't run Zone Alarm since (a) we are behind a router, (b) we are parasite free, (c) we can use ICF and that helps performance immensely. I like zonealarm, but sometimes you can do without. Depends on your setup.

In closing, this checklist:
1. Latest BIOS.
2. BIOS defaults.
3. Motherboard drivers installed.
4. Set the IDE to PIO, OK your way out, then set to DMA, OK your way out. I will not explain this Microsoft'ism.

Bob

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Re: What next for my PC?
Aug 5, 2004 10:01AM PDT

I was crushed when i read that you wouldnt prefer the Geforce FX 5200 cause i knew someone was going to say that to me :S. i just relized i didnt update my bios just yet. ill set teh defaulst but im not sure about that ide to pio and the dma stuff but ill try and take a look. do you recomend i take the 256 out? Thanks bob. WAIT! also one thing... what should i do about my graphics card the Geforce FX 5200. Thanks

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Re: What next for my PC?
Aug 5, 2004 10:01AM PDT

by 256 in my last message i meant my memory

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Re: What next for my PC?
Aug 5, 2004 10:06AM PDT

LOl and one last thing, you did mention virus detectors and firewalls. Should i turn mine off while i game?

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Microsoftisms.
Aug 5, 2004 10:28AM PDT

The 512M memory spot for Windows XP is what it is. You can test yours after you get it all tweaked to see if you see the same blip as Windows does some memory rearrangement. I'd rather not enter into any debate about it, but will share it's paid off for some. Others will want the 1GB for bragging rights.

As to the FX5200, don't move for today. Stand still and wait for the Doom 3 video card rush and you may see some killer deals. I'm unsure if my 84 buck FX5700le will be find with D3, but we'll give it a go.

After all the drivers are updated, I find the dma off/on issue to be easy and can pay off.

As to antivirus, I never drop that or the firewall. Again, with being behind a router, and with what I stated, ICF is fine for us.

Bob

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Re: Microsoftisms.
Aug 5, 2004 2:19PM PDT

"The 512M memory spot for Windows XP is what it is. You can test yours after you get it all tweaked to see if you see the same blip as Windows does some memory rearrangement. I'd rather not enter into any debate about it, but will share it's paid off for some. Others will want the 1GB for bragging rights."

How do i test it? I think im going to stick with your plan about waiting till doom 3

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Test.
Aug 5, 2004 11:26PM PDT

It's fairly simple. You run your game and make your observations, then change the machine and try it again.

Mostly you have to run that graphtool you see at http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20030925_060248.html

You can see that an average FPS isn't enough if your game dips to 1 FPS during a scene and runs near 100 FPS elsewhere.

Bob

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Re: What next for my PC?
Aug 5, 2004 10:51AM PDT

if you turn off you virus detectors and firewalls it will speed up your gaming if it is online but other wise it will not do anything but leave you unprotected from viruses