Games running jerky. Kids driving me mad......

[Sheza58]

.........argggh. Am I missing something or what? I have a P4 3.40Ghz machine with 512MB of RAM. I am using a geforce2 fx5500 graphics card but when I try and run games they go very jerky even when I run them on low resolution. For instance I run Ultimate Spiderman at 800 x 600 with low graphics settings and it unplayable. Please help. Just to shut my 5 year old up!

[ski]

Make sure that DirectX 9 and the latest drivers for your video card are installed, and shut down all other running programs when gaming.

If no luck, then disable antialiasing and arthroscopic filtering if they are enabled.

If those do not help, then check how much unused memory is available when playing games. If it goes down to zero or near zero, then install another 512 MB of RAM.

If the unused memory does not zero out when gaming, then it may be time to upgrade the video card. That one is a 'value' card that does not have a lot of punch for gaming.

[saphalline]

The requirements for that game are really light, especially compared to games like BF2! That vid card is more than enough.

I suggest a run-down of the drivers. Tell us what you've done in terms of chipset, audio, and video drivers. And also DirectX, as ski mentioned. I'm guessing it's just a problem with the video driver (this is the cause of 95% of all gaming problems).

[Sheza58]

Thanks very much. It has ran Pro Evo Soccer 4 and Half Life 2 in the past with no problems though. Will try the antialiasing and arthroscopic filtering thing. Everything with the system is "as is" when I got the computer. I have directX 9.0c installed. Ta again.

[saphalline]

Half Life 2 on an FX 5500!? :eek: You are a truly patient and forgiving person. ;)

Also check to see if there's a patch available for that game. Otherwise, a driver update might be in order. Here's what to do:

Download the latest NVidia driver from here (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_81.98.html), ForceWare 81.98, about 21MB in size. Save that to your desktop. Now reboot your computer into Safe Mode (hold down F8 after the POST) without networking support. Once that brings up the desktop, go into the Control Panel, then into Add/Remove Programs. Delete your current NVidia Display Driver. Reboot the computer normally, and cancel the Found New Hardware Wizard. Now install the new 81.98 driver from the desktop. Once that's done, reboot.

That's how you "properly" update a graphics driver or upgrade your vid card.

[Sheza58]

Ok. Will do that later. HL2 ran like a dream with 1078x 748. I have just been on Call of Duty 2 and that ran great as well.