Upon comparison to a similar computer, mine seems slow !!Help!!

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daev long

I just recently moved home, and comparing my computer to my fathers, it comes up very short:

His is an Intel P4 2.4
1 gig ram (dual pipeline enabled)
radeon 9800 (128 meg)
SB audigy

Mine is Intel P4 2.4
1 gig ram (NOT dual pipeline, but top of the line none the less)
radeon 9600 (256meg)
SB Live!

I hope thats enough info for a decent comparison

Playing the same game (say Halflife 2 or doom 3), hes getting decent frame rates at 1024X768 with medium to high graphics settings where as Im needing to be closer to 640X480 (doom 3) or 800X600 (halflife) with the settings at medium or LOW (and in fact, doom 3 on low with shadows on is averaging about 22 FPS). Im also noticing and absurdly high frame rate hit if i turn on shadows (say 10fps lower) is this normal for this setup?? Is there that big a diff between the 9800 and the 9600? Im really starting to get worried here!

Any input would be amazing!! thanks in advance!!!
 
Because I lack the knowledge about the current graphic card market I can only apply common sense and tell you that my Athlon XP 1800+ gets 10 frames or something in Doom 3 with those settings at 800*600, Radeon 8500LE and 256MB PC2100 RAM.
Probably you don't have good drivers or you didn't set the card settings correctly. And there are still more reasons that could lead to this like fragmented drives, bad placement of swap file and such.
 
well i have the latest drivers.. defragged yesterday, and my card settings are at default

however i know nothing about swap files.

please enlighten me
 
Your dad's 9800 is a newer generation, and much better and faster than your 9600, inspite of your having double his RAM. A 9800 Pro is not that expensive anymore.
His mobo might also be more modern than yours, and maybe you can do something about the dual pipeline with a BIOS upgrade or other settings.
 
Well, your father's card is faster than yours, but your system is still quite a bit more powerful than mine on paper so you really should get better results in Doom3 than I get.

The swap file is another name for virtual memory. You can set that by right-clicking MyComputer, then Settings -> Advanced->the uppermost settings button->yet again, Advanced->the bottom button about changing Virtual Memory (I hope it's right, because I have a German version of XP).
You can place the file on any partition and set it as you like. Opinions on how to set it most favorably differ. Google "swap file" to learn more about it.
I usually have it at 500MB min/max and not on C as that seemed to work best for Morrowind these days. :rolleyes:
 
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