I would recomened, if resting bios doesn't work...


-Flashing bios


-Overclocking to stock speeds.

Sorry for the long quote, but I totally second SNGX1275's statement.
My previous PC , which the kids have now is an Athlon B 1.4GHz, 512Mb RAM, FX5200. My 8 yr old son (or I have in the past) is currently playing Doom3 ( a little low on FPS, but playable for sure), Wolfenstein & ET, Halo , Star Wars Battlefront, Unreal, Quake1,2,3 with very good results no complaints.

what started me here as a techspot member was the need for help installing the FX5200 because the drivers didn't seem to work. Spike or Panix or someone ask if I updated my Chipset drivers too!! WOW what a difference, suddenly the video card took off and everything was just fine.

So I'm recommending getting an 8 yr old son, no.. updating your chipset drivers and fixing that funny underclocked CPU.

Good luck, oh the 6600GT AGP would be an excellent choice and under $300.

Cheers all.

Here’s what I did. I went to Nvidia’s website and got the new drivers; probably about 4 or 5 months ago. I did the same with my motherboard. I used nvidia’s website to get the latest drivers for both my motherboard and graphics card, as far as I could tell. I got the 81.95 forcewear package and drivers 5.3.0.3 for the fx5200. My amd athlon driver is 5.1.2600.0. I couldn’t really find anything else to update. I reset my bios to factory defaults, but nothing happened. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling games. I can try to reset my bios to aggressive, right now it’s on optimal. I have actually flashed bios already with the CMOS jumper. I’m not sure how to overclock the processor in this version of bios, I probably need a program? I used to have problems with over-heating, so I wonder if that maybe the problem? My computer’s heat sink is at 111 fahrenheit, 43 celsius, I don’t have a temp probe directly on the processor. But still, if it was damaged, wouldn’t I have problems with my general programs, like movie editing with premier or rendering in 3D studio I’m sure. It’s strange that this is purely game related. Is it really possible that I have too much ram to run those older games? I only recently upgraded to 2gbs, but have had these same problems before the upgrade with 1gb. That’s why I got ram in the first place. It didn’t solve the problem. I could try installing other games to see if the same problem happens with those? Something’s not working right, but if you look back, I’m having different problems with each game. I wasn’t sure if it was a number of problems. Any diagnostic tools to see if your video card is up to par? Thanks for all the help so far!

P.S. sorry for the old mini-dump files. I had HL2 on the computer, but uninstalled it when it wouldn’t work. Those files are from that period. I haven’t had any more blue-screen errors since. Just ones that terminate the program. I adjusted bios and didn’t have that same problem with HL2, and it would play well on low settings, but would sometimes cancel out and return me to the desktop.

I installed Call of Duty, which actually played fairly well. As I mentioned at the beginning of this, I have some problems with win-amp skipping music when I'm typing. Well, that seemed to be my only problem in the game. The sound was skipping while I was shooting and running around. Do you think that this could possibly be a sound-card related issue as well? I have a really old sound-card, but I didn't think that it could be responsible for video problems like I'm having.

I have disabled the sound in the games and tried that as well, but it hasn't worked, so I figured that it couldn't be the problem. I read somewhere that a couple of other people were having problems with the ASUS motherboard and sound, which could at least explain the skipping, but the frame-rate also seems to be effected when the skipping starts. Not sure, just thought I'd throw it out there as a possibility...

Need to clarify this. Normally resetting the BIOS requires moving a jumper. Flashing it requires a boot disk (usually floppy), and another disk, or same, which has the updated BIOS. And then you type a few commands to flash the new BIOS. Is this what you're talking about? If you only moved a jumper back and forth, that's resetting. If you used a boot disk and typed commands, that's flashing. And daresay, you should probably try both. See if you have the latest BIOS installed, see what ASUS has in the way of BIOS upgrades.

As for the video card upgrade. I say, if you're bugdet is ~$300, forget the 6600. You can get into a 7000 series for that. Try an eVGA Geforce 7800GS 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X for $284. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130275

As for your sound, possibility. Is it a sepparate sound card? Or onboard ASUS sound? If you have a sound card, try removing it and using the ASUS sound (with latest driver). If you have to use a sound card, try moving it AWAY from the video card, in a lower slot.

Another question for ya. When playing, does the "lag" part happen at regular intervals? I would check your Scheduled tasks and see that there isn't some stupid thing running like every 10 seconds or something. McAfee update check is known to do things like this. And try shutting down and closing every possible background task you can before playing.

Also, despite your game's quality settings, check through the nvidia settings and make sure something is not set to high. Turn AA off and so forth. Poke around, if something can be turned down, try it. This is done in Windows, not in the game, of course.

As for a non-game test, see if you can get a trial of 3DMark 03. I would use 03, based on your vid card. Cause you wouldn't be able to support the tests in the newer versions. Run that benchmark or whatever the trial is. Or any other video card benchmark tool you can download. See what happens. Post the results.
I assume you also have the latest DirectX installed?

That's all for now I guess.

As for your sound, possibility. Is it a sepparate sound card? Or onboard ASUS sound? If you have a sound card, try removing it and using the ASUS sound (with latest driver). If you have to use a sound card, try moving it AWAY from the video card, in a lower slot.

I have a separate sound card, I will try using only the ASUS sound card. This one is in the lowest slow though, away from the video card.

Another question for ya. When playing, does the "lag" part happen at regular intervals? I would check your Scheduled tasks and see that there isn't some stupid thing running like every 10 seconds or something. McAfee update check is known to do things like this. And try shutting down and closing every possible background task you can before playing.

The lag happens when certain creatures appear, or when a lot of creatures appear. Probably a sign that my graphics card or CPU is too slow.

Also, despite your game's quality settings, check through the nvidia settings and make sure something is not set to high. Turn AA off and so forth. Poke around, if something can be turned down, try it. This is done in Windows, not in the game, of course.

I had the nvidia helper thing that sat in the system tray, but my monitor would flicker whenever I clicked on it, or right-clicked my mouse for that matter, or deleted video files, so I got rid of it. I don't know what was causing it, but when I got rid of the program, everything went back to normal. Is there any other way to do this?

As for a non-game test, see if you can get a trial of 3DMark 03. I would use 03, based on your vid card. Cause you wouldn't be able to support the tests in the newer versions. Run that benchmark or whatever the trial is. Or any other video card benchmark tool you can download. See what happens. Post the results.
I assume you also have the latest DirectX installed?

I attached my benchmark score...1231. I think it's time for an upgrade, and I have high concerns that my processor is broken. is the 3200 the fastest A-socket AMD?

lol, my pc isnt very good, its got an ahtnolgn 3500 2.2 ghz, 512 ram, intergrated radeon exprss 200 graphics, 250 hdd and i can play day of defeat source, css, hl2 dm and med setting, this guy's computer shud run better than mine, but what i dont ge tis that i tried playing the hl2 demo, and it runs like ****, when hl2 dm runs smooth enough, why is this?

Despite the fact that your video card "should" handle the graphics better, I think maybe it's just warn out with age and heat. Perhaps it's just not as good as it used to be? Perhaps it is started to get RAM errors, hence random bugs with different games.

It's hard to troubleshoot this issue much longer until you at least borow a video card that's better and try it.

You can change your nVidia settings without the task bar tool. Right-click the desktop and choose Properties. Then Settings tab. Then Advanced button. You should have your nVidia settings available somewhere in here in one of the tabs or buttons. I think you might also have an nVidia control panel applet. So check the Control Panel.

A score of 1231 on 3DMark 03 is not the worst in the world. I used to play Battlefield 1942 and HL1 on a score of 800. But that score could really explain HL2 and D3 etc... Especially when that card (I think) doesn't support DX9 natively.

As for crazdude, your specs are pretty similar. All that really matters is the vid, ram and CPU. Your CPU is a few ticks faster, you have enough RAM to run those games, and your integrated graphics are probably pretty close to his FX.
Couldn't say why the demo plays different then real. Odd.

And one last thing, your 3200+ is just fine IMHO. Only because I'm attached to it, and it's what I use for my primary gaming machine. So unless you plan on encoding and compressing videos while playing HL2, I don't think you need a new CPU. And treasure that CPU, as it's not being sold much anymore, prices skyrocketed, you are lucky to have one. When I bought mine, on sale, it was a decent price. A month later it was $100 more. And now it's more still. Now all you get for Socket A's are Semprons. And the Athlons are better in my mind. But you can't get them much now, not unless for a pretty penny. At least what I've seen. So buck up chipper!

Hello again!

Did you ever got into the BIOS and set the FSB from 100MHz to 200MHz?
i.e. you're at 100X11=1.1GHz instead of 200MHz x11=2.2GHz right now.

It's hard to say what a CPU designed to operate at 2.2GHz would perform like at 1/2 that frequency. The Front Side Bus is the main data bus between the RAM and CPU, all of this was designed to operate at twice the freq, so the RAM is way slowed down too. The RAM passes the data to the video so that transfer rate is way off spec.

I have the Athlon B 1.1GHz and the FX 5200 and it runs great (previous post here), but if I turned down the FSB to 50MHz would I see it 1/2 the performance or something worse? MY guess is something worse. You know what?.. I'm going to go try, assuming the mobo BIOS will let me go that low. I'll post back my findings.

Cheers.

I tried setting the FBS to 200mhz, but if I do that and try to load windows I get a memory dump error as soon as I get in. Since the CPU transfers information to the ram, is it safe to say that my ram is no up to speed or something like that? Or would it only be a processor issue. I'll attach the mini-dump files below...