Boosting PC Game Performance?

[WiseSalesman]

Hi folks. Haven't checked in for a while. Full-time school + full-time work = no time for games.

Anyway, I've been trying to finish Half-Life 2 for quite some time now, and I'm finding that I simply cannot do it with my computer set up the way it currently is. I'm debt-riddled from losing my job, so upgrading is not an option. I've gotten almost to the end, but when I get in the outdoors areas, with lots of enemies, the frame rate slows to such a crawl that it's impossible to move or aim accurately.

I was wondering if anyone has tried gaming in linux instead of XP, and if that provides any sort of appreciable boost in resource performance. Also, someone mention using hardware profiles to me, but I really don't know anything about that. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

I'll drop my system specs on here, just to provide as much information as possible.

- P4 1.7Ghz
- 384 MB PC800 RDRAM (obviously my biggest problem, but this type of RAM is too expensive to upgrade)
- Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB)
- Running WinXP

Any ideas?

[cowmando6]

That's almost the same exact system I run Half Life 2 on, except I have a Radeon 9550 256 MB. Try lowering the settings in the options panel to all the ones that are starred as recommended for your system. Definitely keep the water reflection on either "reflect world" or lower.

[Nez]

Yeah try to keep everything to a minimum. Textures resolution shadows lighting. All that good stuff. :/ That should really help you out. Unless of course your already doing that.

[Joker T]

Defrag your harddrive
Lower Anti Aliasing
Lower resolution
Switch to DX7 mode

[unwinddesign]

Make sure in the ATI graphics settings it is set for "performance" and doesn't have all sorts of AA/Filtering on. Also, if you want to mess around a bit, overclocking can yield a 10%+ performance increase. However, if you really can't afford to fry your rig, then I wouldn't go there.

[XxMe2NiKxX]

Turn off Anti-Aliasing and Antroscopic (Sp?) Filtering. Your performance will increase exponentially if you do.

Also, you will benefit a lot from buying RAM. You have very little RAM.

[Mr.FoodMonster]

I'd almost say your processor is a bigger issue then your RAM.

[Ackman]

That system seems good enough to run Hl2 at medium high?

Always update your graphics card drivers and always first unistall your old ones first... you may get up to a 30% boost. Also Tweak guides dude, tweak guides

http://www.tweakguides.com/

[CartCollector]

You could always overclock, if your motherboard supports it. Just make sure you've got a good cooling system. If not, get a new one that supports your CPU's socket if you can. It might be a good idea to get a motherboard that supports more recent RAM, so you could get larger, faster modules. Then get some good heatsinks and fans, stick 'em in your case and on your CPU (maybe even RAM and GPU), and overclock.

[WiseSalesman]

Hey, I appreciate everyone's help.

Buying more ram isn't really an option. RDRAM is exponentially more expensive than DDR, and I absolutely cannot afford to upgrade my motherboard (which would then require a complete overhaul of both processor and ram).

Overclocking is out as far as I can tell. I did some research on that a while back when I was trying to solve my HL2 problems myself, and it seems my motherboard is pretty much entirely locked down (it's a Gateway).

I have been playing HL2 at pretty much the lowest game settings, so I don't think it's that. I already had water reflections set low, etc.

I defrag on a regular basis, using DiskKeeper7.

I did not know about the ATI performance settings, so I just changed that. They were at moderate and I set them to high performance, so hopefully that will help. I'm also going to go ahead and look into uninstalling and reinstalling my graphiucs drivers. Everytime I've upgraded them in the past I've just installed over, so that could be causing a bit of a problem. I remember at one point I had tried to uninstall them first, and it reset my computer, dropping me in safe mode with no compatible graphics drivers. Since then, I've been hestitant, however school work isn't currently riding on my computer being functional, so I'll give that a shot. I've also been going through that TweakGuides site. Seems very useful, but there's LOTS of information to wade through.

Anyway, I really appreciate all the help. I've got some great ideas now, thanks to you folks. If anyone has any other notions that might help me out, feel free to post 'em here, and I'll keep an eye out.

[cyberfluxor]

You're system should be fine if you set it to minimum performance. This may not look as nice as you'd like, but it's all you have right now. Set it on lowest settings and work your way up until it is comfortable. If you DO get money for a system sometime down the road, don't upgrade just buy a new barebone with good stats.

As for Linux (EWWW just EWWW), I'd do FBSD instead! Don't think about running your system on a half-baked OS. And yes, you can get more memory and time-splice wise, but it's worthless if you don't understand how to work your computer in a UNIX invironment. If you're willing to send your virtual system under the knife, more power to you.

[Ed Oscuro]

I defrag on a regular basis, using DiskKeeper7.

It's been so long since I defragged...waste of time. I'd use it only after making some heavy changes to the hard drive (installing/uninstalling huge programs, clearing out the IE cache).

[WiseSalesman]

I defrag on a regular basis, using DiskKeeper7.

It's been so long since I defragged...waste of time. I'd use it only after making some heavy changes to the hard drive (installing/uninstalling huge programs, clearing out the IE cache).

DiskKeeper does it while I sleep, and then shuts the computer off, which is fine. I usually defrag about weekly in this manner, although for a while there, when I was making a lot of changes and using my computer for both school and work, I was doing it nightly. I did notice some slight performance gains.

[WiseSalesman]

You're system should be fine if you set it to minimum performance. This may not look as nice as you'd like, but it's all you have right now. Set it on lowest settings and work your way up until it is comfortable.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. I just tried the game with some of the suggestions above implemented. All graphics in game are set to the absolute lowest possible settings, the ATI card is set for performance (at the cost of graphical integrity), and it has been updated with the latest Catalyst drivers. Regardless of all this, if I step outside in the game, the frame-rate gets quartered and it becomes very difficult to aim or move. If I'm outside and the game decides to have some of those useless squad-based allies join me, I can forget about playing anymore, and I might as well just exit. We're talking 10fps max under those conditions. I have yet to try the tweaks from that tweak guide site, however.

If you DO get money for a system sometime down the road, don't upgrade just buy a new barebone with good stats.

Well, yeah. As mentioned above, an upgrade for me would require a new motherboard, processor, and memory. That's basically a barebones system in itself. All my other components are pretty good. The chances of me being able to upgrade my computer any time in the next three to four years are very poor, however. I live on my own, and I pay my own way through college.