PC Performance Issues

[Michael Dagastino]

My PC has good hardware: 3.22 Ghz Processor, 3 gb of ram, Nvidea 8600 graphics card, Realtek HD Audio Driver (replaced normally by my line 6 Toneport GX) amongst many other nice things, but i cant even play Bioshock with graphics on high without a piss-poor frame rate. I have the same issue in Oblivion, and Unreal Tournament 3. When i say piss poor, i dont mean something like 1 fps reduction or anything i mean it becomes segments of screen shots. like 2-7 frames per second.

Any suggestions on how i can fix this (with out over clocking anything)? And would you recommend any hardware improvements?

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Any suggestions on how i can fix this (with out over clocking anything)? And would you recommend any hardware improvements?

Upgrade your GPU (Radeon 5770 is probably best balance between price and performance at the moment), add another gig of RAM and... hmmm... CPU speed sounds good but how many cores does it have? If it's a single core, that would also be a bottleneck


Oh yeah... you're trying to playing those games on High settings on a 8600? That would a BIG part of the problem. Mid-range 8000 series weren't exactly what you'd call robust. Lower your settings, especially any reflection ones.

 

[Michael Dagastino]

Upgrade your GPU (Radeon 5770 is probably best balance between price and performance at the moment), add another gig of RAM and... hmmm... CPU speed sounds good but how many cores does it have? If it's a single core, that would also be a bottleneck


Oh yeah... you're trying to playing those games on High settings on a 8600? That would a BIG part of the problem. Mid-range 8000 series weren't exactly what you'd call robust. Lower your settings, especially any reflection ones.

Thanks soon as i get some spendable cash I will get that. If i remember right it's a Duo Core.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Thanks soon as i get some spendable cash I will get that. If i remember right it's a Duo Core.

Well hell, if you get enough cash, lash out on a Radeon 5870 instead. Pricier card but ver' ver' nice.

If your CPU is dual core that shouldn't be an issue

 

[Sevre]

Thanks soon as i get some spendable cash I will get that. If i remember right it's a Duo Core.

Well hell, if you get enough cash, lash out on a Radeon 5870 instead. Pricier card but ver' ver' nice.

I think if he's going for Bioshock he'll be more than happy with a budget ATI card. Considering the games he's playing are quite old I'd say a 4870 would handle them nicely.

Anyway out of curiosity where did you get an 8600? *shudders*

 

[Woodsey]

If your CPU is single core then that'll need to be changed, and I'd scrap the 8600 now as well.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

An 8600 isn't amazing or anything, but depending on what resolution you're running at, it's perfectly adequate for a lot of things that came out around the time those games did at mid to high settings. I had an 8600 GT and ran UT3 maxed out at 1024x768 just to see how it would handle it, and I managed nearly 60 fps. At a higher resolution, I had to drop it down a couple notches, but it still ran well. BioShock's kind of a ***** about performance with everything turned up, but Oblivion should at least be playable on medium settings or even a bit above, depending on resolution. I gave the card to my friend after I got a new one, and even Borderlands was very playable for him on it at 1280x1024 and medium settings. You really should not be getting single-digit framerates unless you're being very stubborn about cranking AA and shadows and stuff like that up to unreasonably high levels.

 

[Michael Dagastino]

I think if he's going for Bioshock he'll be more than happy with a budget ATI card. Considering the games he's playing are quite old I'd say a 4870 would handle them nicely.

Anyway out of curiosity where did you get an 8600? *shudders*

I used to have a very nice ATI card (don't remember the model). I could play anything with graphics at its highest. One day the Gods of UT3 must have hated me and my card fried. I needed a replacement one, and i got the 8600 as a gift, since Christmas was a week away. From my parents.

 

[Michael Dagastino]

An 8600 isn't amazing or anything, but depending on what resolution you're running at, it's perfectly adequate for a lot of things that came out around the time those games did at mid to high settings. I had an 8600 GT and ran UT3 maxed out at 1024x768 just to see how it would handle it, and I managed nearly 60 fps.

That's normally the resolution I play at with any game. In UT 3 I had to trun down the graphics to a point where everything was a mess of large pixels i could actually see with ease to get a decent frame rate. Still a fun game though. Can't wait to play it properly.

 

[CaptainKoala]

Upgrade your GPU (Radeon 5770 is probably best balance between price and performance at the moment), add another gig of RAM and... hmmm... CPU speed sounds good but how many cores does it have? If it's a single core, that would also be a bottleneck


Oh yeah... you're trying to playing those games on High settings on a 8600? That would a BIG part of the problem. Mid-range 8000 series weren't exactly what you'd call robust. Lower your settings, especially any reflection ones.

Thanks soon as i get some spendable cash I will get that. If i remember right it's a Duo Core.

Don't get a Core Duo, buy an Intel i5 or i7.

 

[Wolfram23]

Yeah, an 8600GT isn't good enough for max settings. I know, I had one. But it's ok. Just lower settings, and turn off anti aliasing.

So you have a Core 2 Duo, it's mediocre nowadays. But not bad. With that I wouldn't go for a high end video card, but like mentioned an HD5770 is a good choice or from Nvidia a GTS250 or 260. I forget what their costs are. If you're looking to upgrade, at this point you should really get a whole new PC. A new CPU means a new motherboard, and you'll want to get at least 4gb dual channel RAM, and probably DDR3 vs your DDR2 so all new... a new power supply to juice it... you could probably reuse the HDD and DVD drives tho.

Anyway, for now a 5770 is a great card. If you want to upgrade the whole PC, I highly recommend you head over to http://tomshardware.com/forum/

 

[lacktheknack]

It sounds more like bloating, actually. Consider backing up your games and reinstalling Windows.

Also, your GPU is way behind. I'd recommend at least a Geforce 250 GTX, but ATI's newer cards are also great value.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

It sounds more like bloating, actually. Consider backing up your games and reinstalling Windows.

Cleaning up the registry can also help as a first step before bothering with a full reinstall.