My new 8600 gt [2days old] is lagging me already?

[plyrjohn404]

I play halo pc, a 5 year old game, on a 1 year old computer with a new 8600 gt.. How could it give me fps lag All settings in halo pc are on high, with high res. ,

Here are my system specs:

CPU: 2 processors running - Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.20GHz
System RAM: 1023 MB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, 32-bit (Build 6000)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT (GeForce 8600 GT)
Video Card Driver Version (DirectX): 7.15.11.7813
DirectX Version: 10.0
Disk Space: 250 gb
Monitor: HP Wide LCD Monitor 19''
Computer model: HP Pavilion a6019h

EDIT: Its not overheating because the temperature is at 60c.

[ViPeR.Ja]

looking at those specs with Vista and only having 1gb ram i think thats your main problem rite there, get more ram should help you out a lot

[vicaphit]

looking at those specs with Vista and only having 1gb ram i think thats your main problem rite there, get more ram should help you out a lot

Ditto.

Is that a Dual core processor? If not, that may be a bottleneck also.

[geokilla]

Looks like it's a Hyper-threading CPU and not Pentium D series.

You can get more RAM, at least 2GB, or change back to XP if possible.

[hercules71185]

I used to have a set up like that. I put on FEAR and was getting like 40 FPS on high in some spots then it would stutter. even down to low quality on some spots. I found out it was just my RAM. Do this
Load your game and in the middle of it when it is lagging press ctrl alt del. And goto performance and see how much ram you are using and what is your cpu useage at? If it is over 1gb you are probably limited to ram.

[Sporg]

Have you tried different drivers? I gave a buddy my old 7950GT and we loaded the latest driver set from NVIDIA. When playing WoW he was dropping from 50fps down to like 4fps. I finally grabbed the most recent driver set from XFX and that cleared everything right up.

The suggestions about system RAM are probably more accurate though. And as cheap as RAM is these days there really isn't a good excuse not to at least double what you have. But I would at least give the drivers a shot.

[edit: now why would anyone update 7950 GT drivers from Intel? That's just silly]

[DaIceMan]

178.13 is the latest NVIDIA driver, but also remember your other drivers. Chipset, audio, and LAN should be up to date as well for best performance. As sporg said, update drivers, if that doesn't work, dump $50 and get more RAM.