System specs good. Gameplay bad

mordeith

Hi there.
I was wondering if anyone could answer this question for me.
How come even though I'm running a machine with the following specs I still have stutter problems playing a lot of games whose recommended requirements are well below my system?
Specs:
Processor: AMD 2GHz
RAM: 512 DDR
Video: Connect3d/ATI Radeon 8500 128 MB
Sound: Creative Live! 5.1
OS: Windows XP Home Edition

I have installed the lates Catalyst drivers and yet I still get game crashes/lockups and if not that then skips and jumps during gameplay.
All suggestions gladly recieved.

garthv

What is your refresh rate set at?

Ciaran500

TBH the 8500 is not a fast graphics card, what games are you trying to play?

Venom

Hate to sound mean but that pc is well dated at this point. The gfx game is way outdated by a good few years and in all honesty if you can even play any current games on it you should consider yourself doing well.

naitkris

Venom wrote:

Hate to sound mean but that pc is well dated at this point. The gfx game is way outdated by a good few years and in all honesty if you can even play any current games on it you should consider yourself doing well.

the 8500 128MB should in theory handle most new games but at low res and detail (i wouldn't bother with DOOM3 as the 8500 is the min spec ATI card for the game, thus 640x480 at low res is what you'll have to try and run it at).

i had up until 2 months back the 8500LE 128MB (LE = lower clocked 8500) and it ran UT2004 grand at 800x600 at high detail, but that was only on small maps, so medium detail was used mostly. also UT2004 isn't as taxing on the graphics card as games like DOOM3 and Half-Life 2 (although HL2 should run better on the 8500 than DOOM3 will as it is DirectX based as far as i remember, which ATI are slightly better with).

mordeith wrote:

How come even though I'm running a machine with the following specs I still have stutter problems playing a lot of games whose recommended requirements are well below my system?
Specs:
Processor: AMD 2GHz
RAM: 512 DDR
Video: Connect3d/ATI Radeon 8500 128 MB
Sound: Creative Live! 5.1
OS: Windows XP Home Edition

for DOOM3/Half-Life 2/Far Cry and games based off engines like these, an upgrade of the graphics card will make the biggest difference to your gaming experience based on your current specs than an upgrade in CPU, RAM etc

it sucks to think that the couple hundred one might have spent 2 or so years ago on a graphics card for gaming purposes is now a bargain bin, low-end card used mostly for non-gaming purposes (i.e. just DVD playback, general computing etc). that's the way things are in computers and technology as a whole.

in terms of upgrading (if you plan on doing so) i'd recommend the 128MB Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro which is selling for 191 euro on jes.de as an ideal upgrade for a system of your current spec in order to be able to handle DOOM3, Half-Life 2 & Far Cry etc nicely (although not superbly - think 380 Euro or greater for the very best graphics cards - it's a vicious circle as cards at those prices now will be at the 200 mark in a year or so with new cards coming out to replace them at the high-end).

BloodBath

As naitkris said a 9800 pro would probably be your best bet to get your performance up. That card is really dated now and pretty useless for new titles.

You should consider a processor upgrade as well. If your mobo can handle higher speed processors and has overclocking features i'd recomend a 2400 mobile barton for 84 euro from jes computer. These 1.8 stock babies will overclock to at least 2.5ghz no problem which by amd's rating system is about a 3800+. If your mobo can't deal with that then you can get a good asus board from the same site for 60 euro.

That's a pretty cheap upgrade for a pretty good system. I'd say your ram is probably pc2100 so you would want to get rid of that as well and get 512mb of pc3200.

I'd say you might get about 100e for your parts so that's only about an extra 300e for a meaty upgrade.


BloodBath

mordeith

Thanks to everyone for their advice. It does indeed suck that my machine is now practically a dinosaur. I was thinking of upgrading my Gfx card and the Sapphire sounds good at that price.
For information asked in your replies I have set my
refresh rate at 60Hz on both Monitor and Card and the resolution to 800*600 16Bit.
The games I'm having trouble with are Colin McRae Rally 2.0, TDK World Racing (which constantly crashes) and The Mystery of Janatris. None of these should be too heavy on my systems specs and yet still problems. Still if a new Gfx card is the way to go then so be it!

Matt Simis

mordeith wrote:

Thanks to everyone for their advice. It does indeed suck that my machine is now practically a dinosaur. I was thinking of upgrading my Gfx card and the Sapphire sounds good at that price.
For information asked in your replies I have set my
refresh rate at 60Hz on both Monitor and Card and the resolution to 800*600 16Bit.
The games I'm having trouble with are Colin McRae Rally 2.0, TDK World Racing (which constantly crashes) and The Mystery of Janatris. None of these should be too heavy on my systems specs and yet still problems. Still if a new Gfx card is the way to go then so be it!

60Hz.... dont you feel your eyes melting after a 10-15 min of looking at that!?
None of those games should be too much bother, but adding some more ram and changing GFX should really improve things. Did you try some of the "free" changes you can make to a system.. defrag HDD, kill taskbar programs and driver updates?


Matt

mordeith

Matt,
I have installed the latest drivers and never run other programs while playing games. I probably need a defrag alright so I'll try that and see if there's any performance improvement.
Thanx
PS How do people feel that the latest sound card drivers affect performance. I've never updated the drivers for my 5.1 Live! card and wonder if it would have much of a negative impact?

Matt Simis

mordeith wrote:

Matt,
I have installed the latest drivers and never run other programs while playing games. I probably need a defrag alright so I'll try that and see if there's any performance improvement.
Thanx
PS How do people feel that the latest sound card drivers affect performance. I've never updated the drivers for my 5.1 Live! card and wonder if it would have much of a negative impact?

I generally keep them upto date, but the Live! cards had full HW acceleration anyway, unless new games needed new drivers to take advantage of that it should be fine. The Audigy range is even faster.


Matt