Old Computer Choppy in Games...Suggested Fixes?

sbjlsmtj · Post by **sbjlsmtj** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:44 am

I want to get my oldest computer updated somewhat without replacing it, so I can play Dark Age of Camelot on it. I can play it right now but if there are too many people around me in the game or too many things going on, it gets really choppy and it has like 5 seconds worth of lag or more.
So I was wondering what I might be able to do to get it to run the game better. I suspect that I may just need a video card update but I thought I would see what everyone thinks. Keep in mind that this is my oldest and 4th (in use) computer. I will be using it for only the game really to run a bot account. So here's the info on it...

Built by IBUYPOWER
XP
1.5 GHz Athlon(m) XP 1800+
1 Gig of Ram
Nvidiia Geforce MX 440 (a problem but what other cards will MB control?)
MSI KT4V MS-6712 Ver 1.0 MB
WD 120Gig HD (6 months old)
Not sure on PS but prob a min type
Old mid tower supercool case

I hope that is the info you need. If video card is the most pressing issue, what kind and how big will this MB support? I don't want to have to change the whole inside. I would just like the game to not be so choppy and laggy. I seen that newegg has some video cards for 60-75 dollars, so any suggestions on that would be great.

I also believe that most of the computer is up to date and doesn't have virus or spyware on it. Maybe I need to tweak what is there all ready? Just let me know. Thanks for any info!

Post by **DMB2000uk** » Mon May 15, 2006 8:27 am

Looks like it probably is the graphics card. Do you know how much video memory it has?

To double check you could download a framerate program monitor called FRAPS to show that the frames are dropping down to the low teens maybe even single digits when you play!

You should have a 8x AGP port on that motherboard, so there are a wide range of cards that you can buy to upgrade it to. Within that price bracket, presuming that you wont be playing anything better than that game, then you can buy something like an ATI Radeon 9800, maybe even as slow as an 9600.

I wouldnt recommend getting any of the Nvidia 5X00 series as they wernt very good when compared to the equivilent ATI 9X00 line.

Dan

Dan

Immortal · Post by **Immortal** » Mon May 15, 2006 8:43 am

There is an AGP 8x port on that mobo, so ur best bet would be a Radeon 9700/9800 off ebay... that should do the trick

sbjlsmtj · Post by **sbjlsmtj** » Thu May 18, 2006 10:35 pm

I bought a Saphire Radeon 9600pro Atlantis with 256 mb of Ram and installed it....and something isn't right. Dark Age of Camelot boots up so freakin slow it's not funny and when I want to zone/teleport to a different area, it takes like 3 minutes. Once you get zoned, it seems like it's not as choppy as it was with my mx440 64mb ram card but barely. I thought maybe I needed to update the driver for it, so I downloaded 6.4 for it and it didn't help at all, so I put the cd in and reverted back to the original driver. Is there another problem now? It never did this before with the old crappy card, it would zone no problem but was so choppy when a lot of people were around (like 20 sec worth of lag just to complete a turn around while standing in one spot) but this is worse. Am I missing a driver or did I download the wrong one? I just used what came with cd and searched for driver update. Do I need to update my driver for my mother board? Or do I need to chanage any bios settings? Any ideas or help in what to check for/try would be great. It seems in my head that it should be way better than the old card instead of way worse. Help please. Thanks

Post by **DMB2000uk** » Fri May 19, 2006 6:53 am

QQ. When was the last time you defragmented your hard drive?

Maybe these are times when the game is accessing the hard drive and because its all fragmented its taking so long.

Dan