How to : Enhance Gameplay & Reduce Lag/Choppy Play

Robby682 · 2003-06-24, 10:01 PM

Ok I notice lots of people are experiancing choppy play and lag -- 2 crucial issues that really hinder an enjoyable experiance in a FPS.

I myself am having a lil lack of gameplay due to my machine's performance. But I'm not the brightest when it comes to PC performance -- but I do know alot of people out there are guru at this kind of stuff.

Without further ado -- I'm starting this thread for gamers to come and help (maybe even learn) more about tweaking their machines to make their PS performance the best possible. Simply state your problem and then what you're running with. Hopefully this will catch on and more peeps will help out and learn at the same time.

Problem : I seem to be having a bit of choppy play in big battles but also it seems to pause for half a sec whenever I am running. Basically my gameplay isn't smooth enough to be the true killer I am.

Tech Specs : Windows XP Pro
Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz
System Bus 400 MHz 512 KB L2-cache
1.00 GB RAM (74 MB free)
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420
ADSL connection

Is this setup enough? What can I do to make it faster/smoother?
Is any specifics missing? Plz respond if you can help.

powdahound · 2003-06-24, 10:05 PM

Your problem is your slow processor and poor graphics card.

Robby682 · 2003-06-24, 10:11 PM

Ok, so what your saying is the only way to help my situation is buy new stuff? What should I look for? Is their anyway to remedy my situation? Anyway to tweak the card/processor?

powdahound · 2003-06-24, 10:14 PM

You would benefit most from a better graphics card... Maybe a gf4 ti4600 or a radeon 9700 or something. Depends how much you want to spend.

Also: how do you only have 74mb out of a gig of ram free? That's insane.

NoSurrender · 2003-06-24, 10:37 PM

lol seriously... i dunno wut to say wut is it like a HP or a compaq or a gateway/dell they r the same thing really

Robby682 · 2003-06-24, 10:44 PM

Sorry about the typo -- I have 74 GB free

Thanks for the advice.

NoSurrender · 2003-06-24, 10:47 PM

im srry but u have 74gigs available on your harddrive i think u mean because u have 1 gig of memory u can have 74 gigs available that would mean u had 74gigs of memory (which isnt possible ATM) and none of it was being used by the system

Robby682 · 2003-06-24, 10:56 PM

My comp is actually home built -- not by me though. So I'm not sure how to make it run better. I read the thread on pushing the graphics card -- will this help me out any?

Crap - I'm an idiot (obviously) the total size 74 GB -- 35 GB free.

powdahound · 2003-06-24, 10:59 PM

It could, yes.

And you're getting memory/hard drive confused. You have a gig of ram, so you can't have 74 gigs of ram free...

You have 74gb free on your hard drive (not ram). Ram is Random Access Memory.

Xao · 2003-06-25, 10:05 PM

Your only problem is your video card. Upgrade as a poster already stated to a 9700 9800 a TI 4 Geforce or FX5600 and up.

powdahound · 2003-06-25, 10:20 PM

That CPU probably won't feed a top of the line card what it can take, but it will still be nice. If you upgraded CPU and RAM they'd really help each other out.

Sentrosi · 2003-06-26, 01:29 AM

heh, If you do go the upgrade route, I suggest the Epox 8rda with the 2100+ AMD chip.

Is it just me, or do I always recommend this setup?

teratravp · 2003-06-26, 10:22 AM

firstly, turn all the graphics settings down in the game, set res to 800x600. secondly make sure you have anti-aliasing, antiscopic filtering turned off completely in control panel>display in windows and also that you have it set to best performance. oh and the mip map levels set that to best performance as well. and overclock your card.

I had PS reasonably playable like this during beta (although it used to play even better and they messed something up a few weeks before release) but as you can see you have to make a hell of a lot of concessions and screw around a bit to get it (or most newer games) working well with low end cards (I had a gf 4 440mx, just ordered a radeon 9500pro yesterday)

Agathon · 2003-06-26, 11:08 AM

Hello,

I'd need more details to work on your problem. What do you mean by a delay when running? If it is just having to catch up, this is almost for sure your video card not having enough processing power and onboard RAM to function correctly in PS. Your processor is plenty fine for the game. I know people playing it on a Pent III, so you are fine in that department. The MX420 video card is the main source of your problem I suspect.

Regardless of the card, what else is installed and running while you play PS? Make sure you disable all programs possible. Disable your anti-virus scanning and any other utilities. The less things running the better.

Check your IRQ settings. You are running XP, so I'd suspect you probably have ACPI (Advanced Configuration Power Interface) installed, and it is very bad for gamers. win2k and winxp automatically install with it turned on, and you need to shut it off as a gamer. Look for a bunch of your hardware sharing either IRQ 9 or 11, or having IRQs that go above the number 16. Let me know if you have it on, and I'll give you instructions on how to shut it off (man, I need to write them once and then just copy and paste based on the amount of times I've had to post them).

Finally, if you have computer tech questions and are on ezboards, go check out Compuform. There is a very skilled group of tech people there, myself included, who work in the admin/hardware field. If you have a computer or network problem, between everyone there you'll get an answer! While there, do a search for ACPI.

;-)