Very low FPS in games

Status
Not open for further replies.
Alright so I got this hp slimline 3020 off of a friend for 300 and have been using it for a while now and its been decent. I picked up counterstrike source and have been playing it for a while but at times it lagggs pretty bad. Sometimes its not bad to play but sometimes its not worth it. When I play half life 2 its actually pretty decent and not as bad. Right now it has a nvidia geforce 6150 le graphics card and 1gb of ram. What could be some hop ups that would allow me to play at a higher FPS in these games? Im not a huge game at all, just something I like to do on my free time. So I was thinking of getting 2 240 Pin DDR-2 533MHz cards to upgrade it to 2gbs. What would be a decent video card that wouldnt break my wallet and help with my problem? Also what else would need to be done if I installed the RAM and video card?

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks
 
There are so many graphics processors available now. I use "Tiger Direct" for product research in this type of situation. Go to "video cards" and start looking. I selected the "PCI'e" heading, then chose "by price" ($100 to $200). Go to "detailed specs". Look for high core clock,(400 to 500 mhz), memory (1200mhz and up). High bandwidth is important. Look for 23 to 40 GB's/sec. A video card upgrade sometimes require a a power supply upgrade as well. Don't skimp on the PSU. A lot of power makes a machine happy! Good Luck.
 
Alright so I found a decent card for around 130. But about the power supply, how many watts should I get? And wouldnt it be a problem to fit this into the tiny case of the pc? The computer is very small and I might have a problem if i get a larger psu. But the pci video card should fit as I hear.
 
There are a lot of guides and sites you should look at before buying anything. Sometimes you can solve your problems without spending any money. Check these sites out...

http://www.gotfrag.com/portal/forums/thread/146862/

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=523089

Before you purchase anything you should also try out in game tweaks. I know i had the same problem as you with my laptop and before i went out and bought anything i did some stuff to my computer first.

1) First i tweaked windows. That helps with startup times and just frees up the machine a little. Here is a good link for this...

http://www.techreviewer.com/viewpage.cfm/ui/040226130402

2) I tweaked my configuration for cs source also. This is a very good cfg file for doing this. This really helped out my in game fps...

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=453432

3) the last thing i did that really helped (and turned out to be my main problem) was add cool air flow to the bottom of my laptop. I know i have a laptop and is probably more important for me but make sure your equipment is running at a cool temperature.
 
Thanks for all that good info! I did a lot of the tweaks in the cfg folder. It lost some of the quality but it runs a lot better now for sure. I also play it in a smaller window now which seemed to help too. I did the stress test and its running at around 52fps. Not the greatest but its definatly playable now. Before I was running at around 11.52 fps which really sucked. But halflife 2 ran great in a full window and is even better now!
 
yeah unfortunately without upgrading any parts you tend to lose quality but gain performance with any in game tweaks. If you cant live without the high quality then i suggest you upgrade some of your parts.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back