Computer Setup Questions

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CRSharff

Gawd
Joined
Jun 18, 2006
Messages
525
Hello everyone,
Im usually just a scanner and never had felt the need to register untill now but anyways on to my questions.

Well I just upgraded from an Athlon XP 2800+, Nforce2, 9700 Pro etc to a:

Athlon 64 3200+
1024 mb RAM
Epox Nforce 4 Ultra Motherboard
EVGA Nvidia 7600gt

Now theres a few things that are sketchy in my setup which I know needs to be fixed but I have no money. First off I have one Kingston HyperX PC3200 512 mb stick but then I have two Elixir (No Name) 256mb PC3200 sticks in the 2nd and 3rd slots in my motherboard running in non dual channel but supposedly running at PC3200 speeds but cpu-z and sandra say only running at 166mhz (PC2700). The second thing is that I have three hard drives one small old 40 gb ATA100 (i think) hard drive (system drive) then a 80gb ATA133 and finally a 250gb SATA2 drive 16mb cache.

Well now finally to my problem, I did lots of researching before upgrading and I read lots of reviews on the 7600gt such as how it was maxxing out Battlefield 2 and getting over 100 fps and how it could pretty much max out FEAR and get around 53 fps average. Well I installed my stuff and made sure I did driver cleaner to my drives before installing the new stuff. So I get it all set up and then install Far Cry expecting to not drop below 60 fps, so I crank up the graphics as high as they could go exept for AA-None 8x AF 1024x768 HDR on the start the game up and it seems to be doing fine fps in the 80s but then I get outside and the drop to 20s - 30s. Is this normal for the fps too be low like that outside in farcry? Also in FEAR i ran the Test Demo and got good fps but then I go into the game and it will be really stuttery and almost lock up for a couple seconds then come back. I'm not a lag expert but could that be hard drive related.

This is not a rant on the card because to be honest the card is awsome but somehow I get High FPS in benchmarks but get stuttery, stuck gameplay.

So what are your guys opinions, I tried messing with the Page File and it actually seemed to help but I havent done much testing. Another thing you guys should note is that there is barely any space left on my 40 gb and my 80 gb.

Thanks again guys
All I really want is to play my games smoothly because for the price of all the stuff I could've got a Xbox 360 which actually looked like a damn good deal.
 
Well, I would use the SATA as primary, the others as storage for music/videos and such. The first part of FEAR stutters a little, but it should by no means bring that system to a near halt. Really, try using the SATA as primary, might make a world of difference. I actually completely removed my ATA100/133 drives as they seemed to slow my system down a little. I don't know if they actually did or if it's all mental. And the RAM shouldn't be a huge deal, I was running 1gb of PC2700 in single channel for awhile and never noticed any problems, it was all generic stuff too..
 
Yeah, Ive been wanting to use my SATA as my primary but I have had no time to backup all my stuff and to a reinstall. I think it is my hard drives that are holding my system back, because when playing games I can tell that there is major hard drive access and when ever I hear it the game just stops and hangs up for ~2 seconds.
 
FighterAce124 said:
Well, I would use the SATA as primary, the others as storage for music/videos and such. The first part of FEAR stutters a little, but it should by no means bring that system to a near halt. Really, try using the SATA as primary, might make a world of difference. I actually completely removed my ATA100/133 drives as they seemed to slow my system down a little. I don't know if they actually did or if it's all mental. And the RAM shouldn't be a huge deal, I was running 1gb of PC2700 in single channel for awhile and never noticed any problems, it was all generic stuff too..
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It wasn't your imagination...Asus has trouble with their IDE channels but won't admit it. I had a helluva time trying to install windows on a perfectly good Seagate ATA133 drive but when I finally threw in the towel and bought a sata drive all was well. (A8N-SLI Deluxe btw..)

edit- It could be a Nforce problem instead of just Asus though....remember to NEVER install the Nvidia ide drivers or the firewall.
 
joemama said:
edit- It could be a Nforce problem instead of just Asus though....remember to NEVER install the Nvidia ide drivers or the firewall.
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Haha, yeah I found that out the hard way, twice. First time I figured I made a mistake, second time I realized it wasnt a mistake.. :p
 
Woops I think I installed the IDE drivers. Could that be the problem? Would it be normal for my system to be getting 20-30 fps in Far Cry when you outside on the island?
 
Nvidia's ide drivers cause all kinds of problems so who knows. Hell..even Nvidia themselves give you a warning before you install them so I don't know why they're still offered. :p
 
I was recently doing this tweak over at TweakGuides:

Remove Unused Devices

This is a bit more of a risky procedure, but it shouldn't be too difficult or dangerous if you follow the instructions here. If you have had several Forceware versions installed on your system in the past, or even an ATI graphics card installed previously on the same Windows install, not to mention any other previous items of hardware which you no longer use, then this tip lets you remove them from the registry.

To view unused devices in Device Manager, do the following:

1. Open a Command Prompt by going to Start>Run and typing "cmd" (without quotes). Once the MS DOS prompt is open, type the following lines, pressing return after each:

Set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Devmgmt.msc

Note, you can type "exit" (without quotes) in the MS DOS prompt window to close it at any time after this.

2. In the Device Manager window that opens, go to the View menu and select 'Show Hidden Devices' - this is very important if you want to see the unused devices. Now expand each of your devices and look through all the sub-components listed. You will see that some of the devices are shown in a lighter grey color.

3. For the purposes of this guide, what we need to look for are entries under the Monitor and Display Adapter devices. Under Monitor there should be one darker monitor entry for each monitor on your system. If there are any greyed out entries, you can remove them by right-clicking on the entry and selecting 'Uninstall'. Do this for all greyed out entries under the Monitor device.

4. Under the Display Adapter device, if you find two entries - a main one, and another one which has 'Secondary' next to it - these just indicate that your graphics card is capable of two separate outputs to two different display devices. You should keep both of these. Do not attempt to uninstall the dark entries under here. You can however uninstall all other greyed out entries under the Display Adapter device list, especially those which relate to previous graphics cards you have had on this system.

5. If you're feeling game, you can go through some of your other device entries and delete greyed out devices which you know for certain are no longer connected to your machine, or are traces of a device which has been moved around a few times. For example, under Human Interface Devices you may find multiple greyed out entries for a mouse which you may have moved from one port to another. As long as there is a solid entry for the device when it is still connected to your system, you can uninstall the greyed out ones.

6. A final word of warning - I do not recommend uninstalling devices which you are not sure about. Most importantly, do not uninstall any greyed out Microsoft (or other Codec) entries under the Sound, Video and Game Controller device, and be extremely careful about entries under the Non Plug and Play Drivers, and Network Adapters device list. If in doubt, do not uninstall a device.

If you do happen to uninstall a device which is still connected to your system, it's not the end of the world. Windows XP will usually re-detect it upon reboot and look for drivers to reinstall it. However I urge you to take caution with the above procedures and only do Steps 1 - 4 above if you have any doubts.
Click to expand...

Anyways I did this and I noticed that my old Athlon XP 2800+ was still listed as a processor and a bunch of Nforce things that were greyed out and hidden. Do you think this is a bad thing?

Another thing, how would I go about uninstalling those IDE drivers?
 
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