Trying to speed up my PC

Bunny

Hi,
I have a bog standard Dell Dimension 4300 (1.6, 256ram, 20 gig drive, XP) and I got some 2nd hand stuff to make it a bit faster...

So I bought a 52xcddrive, 80 gig harddrive, Radeon 9500 pro, and an extra 256ram..

So now its..
Intel P4 1.6, 512 SDram (133), Radeon 9500 pro, 20 + 80 gig Seagate Barracuda IV drives, nothing else really, standard Dell configuration running with XP home edition.

I tried Catalyst 3.6, then 4.5, now am running ATI DNA drivers...

With Aquamark3 (dx9) : 19,875
PCmark04 : 1949
3DMark2001 : 6854

Now I know it's an old PC, but I still think its slow, it struggles to run BF1942 forgotten hope with lots of vehicles, just wondering are these below average scores for a PC of this type? any ideas how to speed it up some more?

I don't really know much, but I want to get more FPS in bf1942 without buying anything else (I have a soundblaster live 5.1 on its way and I can put in a gf4 ti4200)

thanks

unkel

Originally posted by Bunny
3DMark2001 : 6854

That is very slow for your pc, Bunny. I would format my hard drive and start with a fresh install of xp - see if that helps

Originally posted by Bunny
I can put in a gf4 ti4200

Your 9500 pro is a better card than that. It might even overclock to a 9700 pro (big difference again)

Bunny

I did a fresh install not to long ago, yeah the 3d mark is very bad, as I said any suggestions are welcome...

KdjaCL

Run Sandra Performance wizard and disbale any of the windows servies you have running that you dont need.

Open Display Settings and on the 3d tab slide everything to the left on OpenGL and Direct3D , run 3dmark and see what you get.

Open Msconfig and tweak your boot to only load what you need.


That will help a lot.

When you get a better score try in real time by playing BF ,also Mods for BF dont have the same refinement as the actual game (which isnt refined much itself) so they will be laggy also.
ie the DC user made maps run like a dog on my PC but i get 80 to 90 FPS on the originals maps.


kdjac

Col_Loki

Some of the 9500's can be softmodded to 9700's/pro's with a simple driver change. Have a look ........ http://www.omegacorner.com/

All you do is install these drivers, choose the 9500 -> 9700 mod..... if it doesent work then just install the regular drivers. Theres a very nice performance boost between the 9500 and 9700.

And id definetly stick with the 9500pro over the Ti4200....... I think the main thing holding you back is prob the processor TBH and unfortunetly you cant really overclock a dell .

Bunny

okay thanks, I've already run Sandra and about 6 or 7 reg cleaners/optimisers/defraggers etc. I've set the radeon for performance. I've read that you can softmod a 9500 regular card, but I think a 9500 PRO has to be flashed using a floppy boot disk etc which I'd rather not do, if there are any sites which allow me to softmod the PRO with just a driver change that'd be perfect.

I know my processor is slow, but I still feel my pc is under-performing, is there any place where I can see the performance of similar PC's?

For instance my friend has a 1.8, fx 5600 and 512 ram and his system seems TWICE as fast as mine.

I might put in the ti4200 because I think its easier to overclock that the 9500 pro and also the PRO runs half-life mods slower than my old gf2 (this is a problem with most radeon cards, and there doesn't seem to be any singular solution to it yet)

Also the BIOS on my dell is 3 years old, do you think flashing it up could make much of a difference?

joePC

Keep your 9500 pro, its a way better card than the Ti

I'd lose the 20gig Hdd, its slowing the 80gig down,

Format and reinstall XP on the 80gig (7200rpm) Vrs (5400Rpm)

Everything seems OK, but the main thing holding you back is SD 133 Ram, its really slow......

Also the 1.6 giger its the first P4, so its slow.....

Your scores would be about right, its really the ram & proc thats holding you back...

Thanks JoePC

Bunny

ok thanks joe

one more thing...you think its wise to use powerstrip to speed up my graphics card?

Col_Loki

Did you fully clean off the old Nvidia drivers? They can cause problems sometimes as they dont fully un-install.

You can get a Nvidia File remover that totally cleans out the old drivers, id suggest that or mabye a re-install.

Bunny

yup did that, one week ago I didn't know much about any of this, so far I've done everything I think I can

unkel

How much ram is in use right before you start a benchmark? Did you reformat / reinstall after you got your new hardware and if so, did you use the 80GB as your windows partition? Did you try overclocking the 9500 pro?