Problem with Gaming PC

[Ekimskatecky]

I have recently put together my new gaming rig, Problem is It seems to run games not nearly as well as it should. When in fact it should be running them at 100% visuals with smoothness.

-NVIDIA Geforce 7900 GTX 512MB 16X PCI Express Video Card
-AMD Athlon(TM)64 X2 4200+ Dual-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
-(Sckt939)EVGA nForce4 SLI Chipset SATA RAID Dual PCI-E Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,&7.1Audio
-2048 MB (1GBx2) PC3200 400MHz Dual Channel DDR MEMORY (Corsair Value Select)
-Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition w/ Service Pack 2
-NZXT PF-500 500Watt Power Supply
-Creative Labs SB AUDIGY 4 SE

I try to play Half-life2 + mods and they run kind of choppy sometimes even with a really nice framerate, and sometimes they just dip really low in the FPS, when i believe i should be getting a much higher rate.

Then Older games like City of Heroes/villains runs like utter ****. I have to turn everything down to the absolute lowest for it not to stutter when i turn. I understand MMo's have big areas and can chug at times, but this is always. I was able to run WoW perfectly, and that is a more demanding game. So i have no idea what i'm doing wrong. I believe i have all proper drivers in place. I'm going to try and reformat one day this week, I was wondering if someone had any ideas if i should try something different, disable something. Or a list of all drivers I would need for it to run at full performance, I thought i have them all, but another's opinion would be much appreciated.

 

[JMMD]

Did you do a fresh WIndows install when you put this all together?

It's possible it's the dual core that's messing things up. Some games have issues with dual core CPU's and may need to be patched.

 

[Ekimskatecky]

It was a new hard drive when I put together the system, so yes a fresh install was done. Dual Core thing could be correct, I know WoW had problems with it, but that only limited fps to 64.0 and ruined an animation or two. Nothing hindering the game to unplayable by any means. I wish there was a place for dual core hotfixes or patches, just incase this is the problem.

I played Prey demo at the highest settings and it ran almost fluidly the whole time. Some minor visual problems, but once again nothing hindering the game experience.

 

[mailpup]

I don't know if this will help you but take a look at this page from AMD's website. It's about a recent dual core patch. Click here.

 

[justinone]

Mine also is similar to this... i know i shouldn't be having any lag in games but i do suffer quite alot. and it doesn't seem to matter about lowering my settings its still the same.

ATI Radeon 9600XT 256MB
2GB RAM
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHZ HT
Windows XP Home sp2
57GB HDD