How can I make my computer run the way it's supposed to?

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First off the computer specs:

2.66 ghz P4
256 MB Radeon X800 GTO AGP
2GB RAM (4x512MB DDR-333 PC2700)
Onboard sound card, realtek
500 Watt powersupply
80 Gig HD (21 Gigs free)
150 Gig HD (100 Gigs free)
60 Hz Gateway Moniter(had for probably 10 years, best moniter I ever got)
Only 2 fans, but I can tell my computer runs pretty cool

Now when I play BF2 on 1028 res with all low settings except for distance set to max and textures set to high, I only get around 40 FPS. Shouldn't I be able to run the game flawlessly at all high settings and achieve atleast 60 FPS? For Farcry I get about 30-50 FPS on high settings with huge drop offs occuring when there's a lot going on at once. Source has always ran well on my computer, even when I only had 1 gig of RAM. Since upgrading my ram from 1536 to 2000 MB I haven't noticed any increase in performance whatsoever, in fact my computer seems to run slower now.

So what can I do to make games run the way they should without spending anymore money? Keep in mind I always have every program closed except for the game itself, explorer.exe and ctfmon and sometimes winamp. Help is much appreciated!
 
First of all, a clean instal of the windows and a previous format might get you rid of all the spyware you have(wanna bet you got tons?) and moreover,the correct drivers woudl fix all your problems. And keep in mind that you have pretty big latency ram, ddr 333. Try getting a faster one,like 533 or 667...upgradin tons of ram,but at lower speed won`t get you too far. And the video card ain`t that awesome, just check it`s technical specs...it was good in 2004,if you check the reviews,but nowadays, SLI is the only way to fly.
Also , (who knows?) you might consider changind your processor :) or hard drive(faster and bigger cache) to improve gaming experience.
 
You cannot run BF2 on all high settings flawlessly with an AGP X800GTO. Without spending money, the best you can do is overclock CPU, GFX, and memory, and then do some system cleanups, i.e., defragmentations, disk cleanups, etc.
 
My bad, the card IS GOOD, i was hinking about something else. Everything else still stands though :)
 
You have to wonder if all the reviews on newegg are legit. This was the best reviewed card that was under $200. People were claiming to be running BF2 on high settings perfectly with this card and similiar specs to what I have(some had less than 2 gigs of ram).

I'm curious, besides freeing up more HD space, how does disk clean up improve performance when I have 20 gigs free on my primary HD? Also, I don't think this computer was ever defragged, I never wanted to mess with that and screw things up. Should I see a significant improvement if I defrag?
 
Using disk cleanup and defragmentation programs won't give you a very significant boost in performance, but without spending money, they are 2 of the very limited options you have.
 
OK well I tried overclocking my videocard last night to no avail. I read a bunch of guides on the best settings for the x800 series and to be safe set the settings about 20 points lower than what the "experts" were clocking their cards at. Whenever I set the clock my screen goes black and I have to restart my computer. What's causing this and how can I overclock my card to earn more FPS? The settings I was trying was 506/506, default is something like 392/400 which seems too low.
 
if your computer keeps restarting, then use lower clock settings. Try 420/450 first. Then keep increasing them by 5 MHz until your computer is unstable. That is the breaking point, so just lower it back by 5 MHz, and you should be below your peak.
 
Your video card should easily run BF2 1024 X 768 Highest Settings with at least 40 FPS.
Try using Omega Drivers or Update them or roll back.
If it was possible,test your video card in another machine with similar specs.
If you ended up with the same results,there'd be nothing more to do but to get a newer AGP card or lean towards PCI-Express X16 and yes you'd be spending money unless you can get away with robbery ;-) only kidding!.
 
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