Pre game advice?

[kayofcircles]

Some of our friends have been saving money for quite some time to be able to afford video cards and faster chips, and so on, so that they can play some of the newer games on their puters. I know practically nothing about gaming..and wanted to ask for them about pre game stuff. I have been telling them to turn off everything except Explorer and Systray before beginning a game, and to Defrag regularly, and that it helps their monitor if they clean off all the icons from their Desktop. Anything else that would improve game performance?

[Jiggy]

Now days the newer games (Unreal 2, Unreal tournament03, Quake and more) love memory and lots of it, on WinXP it uses 124MB RAM just doing nothing. So more memory, fewer times it dips into your swop/vrtual memory slowing the game down.
Keeping the game(s) up to date with the latest patches, fixes helps as can running the game with less detail on the graphics side (down to users).
If game play is online keep your Firewall and Antivirus running, also when playing online you will find you get a better ping at different time of the day, also if your downloading while online it will effect your ping.

Hope that helps.

[bassvax]

In addition...those minimum requirements listed won't allow you to enjoy the full breadth of the game experience.

Using the better driver for your video card can be a very happy experience. I know that just by using Detonator driver series for Nvidia card I've gained noticeable frame rates and richer color and textures.

Some games offer you the option of running them at varying resolutions and color quality schemes (16 bit vs 32 bit in my case). It turns out to be an eye-candy vs performance issue taken on a case by case basis.

There are some great games out there for just about any taste :)

Happy Gaming to your pals and a thumbs up to you for assisting them ;)

[Jason1971]

Hello Kayofcircles, I consider myself a hardcore gamer and it's all about the FPS (frames per second). It seems that you already have a very good handle on what to do to get the most performance. What Jiggy and Bassvax said is right on the money too.

The only thing I can recommend is to get 3d Mark 2001se (http://www.futuremark.com/download/?3dmark2001.shtml) then you can experiment with different settings (video cards, drivers, BIOS settings, ect...) and see how it effects performance.


Jason

[kayofcircles]

Thanks to all. I have a slightly different slant this morning on gaming..have thought all along was "just a leisure" thing. But yesterday, went in to see what beloved doing on his puter, and he had installed a jet fighter game, and was having some trouble getting the jet off the ground..lol. Learning a ton of new things just to play. So, "leisure" yes..but requires some skill, huh? And I spoke to one of the friends last night on the phone, and he is single, and said that after a hard day at work, he goes home and plays the games..and forgets all about the things that stress him out. So, "theraputic" as well.

[rio_bugarin]

im in games too. but i really have slow pc. so games are running at lower settings than regular :-(

i would like to say something bout Jason1971's 3dmark2001Se before you download it.

3dmark2001Se supports <b>directx8.0</b> and i think only that.
I downloaded it at MadOnion.com for 4hours (56K Modem but 44K bandwidth)
i have directx9.0 and starting 3dmark2001se will not run.

[Jason1971]

Sorry rio_bugarin, I've got Direct X 9.0 as well and 3d Mark 2001se works just fine for me. Sorry again....

:(



Jason

[rio_bugarin]

thats ok jason1971. no need for apologies.

i just browsed at madonion.com. there is patch for 3dmarkse. i havent downloaded it yet. what is it for?