# General computer problem that make my games lag (any)



## Ilya (Jan 7, 2003)

Hello, my name is Ilya Shodjaee-Zrudlo and i am 15 yrs old.
My computer has many problems that i am unable to fix, even though i am not a complete stranger to computers, i am actually better than most. My computer is a Celeron 1GHz and has about 320 MB of RAM, a GeForce 2 graphic card, DirectX9, the latest drivers for my graphic card, Windows Me and much, much more! Technically a great computer, and yet, it is horrible! I can hardly play the lowest quality game and the higher quality games that my computer should still be able to play freeze up and lag so bad you cant even play. I am playing all my games at minimum settings and they still lag to the point that i cant play.
Anyway, cud i have a list of steps or something to follow to check out wats wrong ? Need help pleuzze!


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## Jtoast (Oct 3, 2002)

1) the first step is to clean your startup menu. Go to start/run type MSCONFIG and uncheck everything you can live without. Be Brutal. The only things windows needs is scanreg, load power profile x2, and possibly systray if you have it.

2) virus scan your computer. Go Here for a free online scan

3) clean out the spyware...go Here and download spybot install it, run it, update it via its online update feature, then let it scan your system. let it clean anything in red.

4) defrag your harddrive.

if its still not working after that, post back and we can get a little more in depth.


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## flyeater (Dec 27, 2000)

Be sure your running your games in a video mode they can handle. OpenGL as opposed to Direct3D for instance. My bet is your video card is not set right.


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## Ilya (Jan 7, 2003)

Set videocard? How do you set a video card
and what is OpenGl as opposed to Direct3D?
(note: this is the person whpo asked the first question)
thanks for that first bit of info!


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## Ilya (Jan 7, 2003)

And another thing, when the first guy was talkin about unchecking all these things, did he mean the startup stuff? If so, i keep it at a bare minimum all the time! And my computer still screws up!


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## flyeater (Dec 27, 2000)

List what games your playing and I'll try to link you to some tweak sites. If you can as tell me the complete make & model of your video card.


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## Ilya (Jan 7, 2003)

My graphic card is a 
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 
Hardware version : 178
Status: working properly
Usage: exists in all hardware profiles
Driver provider: NVIDIA
driver date: 03/09/2002
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher
Resources: use automatic settings is checked
And no conflicts are detected
What more should i add? and if theres more, where can i find it?

Games:
I play PC Gamer Demo games off their cd's (some of them dont work at all), Max Payne (doesnt lag that much at minimal settings, but has many compatibility issues), The Sims, GTA3, America's Army (that one doesnt lag that much though), Jedi Knight 2: Jedi outcast, Battlefield 1942, Worms world party (doesnt lag, though kept at minimal settings), Baldurs Gate 2, Dungeon Keeper 2, Starcraft, Red Alert 2, 1602, Conquest: Frontier Wars, Deus Ex, and a little more.

I also have another issue with my computer, the longer i leave it on, the more it lags, i mean, right in windows: I move my mouse and it will move a centimeter, get stuck for 5 seconds and then continue, so i have to restart my computer every time its has stayed on for too long.

I also have KaZaA, if that changes anything of my computer. My friends all have it and their computers dont lag so i dont think having KaZaA is the problem.

Another thing, how should i benchmark my computer to see if everything is working like it should be for a normal computer like mine.


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## GLiO (Dec 12, 2002)

Besides a few of those games, don't expect a GeForce 2 to run any of those. Especially GTA3, Jk2, Americas Army. Those 3 games you will need at LEAST a GeForce 3 to run. If you want to discuss upgrading your video card, let me know.


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## AtreideS (Aug 20, 2001)

GLiO, did you mean to say GTA3, Jk2, Americas Army need a Geforce3 to run at the highest resolution. Because I know for a fact that JK2 will run on a GF2, just not at the highest resolution. I'm pretty sure all those games will run on a GF2, but the Videocard will be a bottleneck, and the graphics will need to be toned down for smooth framerates.
JK2 uses a modified Quake3 engine. I have a Geforce2 Ti and can run Quake3 at a framerate of 125 at 800*600. From what I've seen JK2's modified Quake3 engine is not alot more intensive than the original Q3 engine.
Bur from the other games listed it is obvious something is definately wrong if Starcraft will not run without lagging.
From what was written about the lag growing over time, it sounds like something is eating up your CPU resources the longer the computer is on. Have a look at the Resource Monitor and check.


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## fastfingeredfool (Jun 22, 2001)

If you have Kazaa, there is more than likely spyware in your system. I had the same problem with the lagging, cursor moving slow, and generally slower performance the longer the computer was on. After running Spybot and getting rid of what it found, my system is running 100% better. It's definitely worth trying! Jtoast left a link for you to download it.


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## Ilya (Jan 7, 2003)

THanks guys, i ran spybot and eliminated any spywares, but my kazaa still slows down mt computer a little and as a note, i always run games at minimal settings and the frame rates are pretty horrible for my excpectations.
Can someone please tell me how a computer with my stats (they are up higher above) should preform. Could someone get a frame rate or something that i could test out to see if it is running normally and its just me? Run the games at minimal settings for frame rates, please.
thanks.


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## flyeater (Dec 27, 2000)

Grab a copy of 3DMark . After you run it you can post the results to their site. They will show you a comparison of like rigged systems.
I was leaning towards Kazaa as the problem as well & would go so far as to just uninstall it then run spybot again. Every once in a while I try a P2P program and have yet to find it worth keeping. I have a tough time trusting any files from an unknown machine. Speaking of which do you have & run up to date antivirus software?


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## Ilya (Jan 7, 2003)

I have Norton Antivirus Systemworks and i check for viruses regulrly, though i rarely get any. Ill grab 3D Mark, thanks.


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## Ilya (Jan 7, 2003)

I got 3D Mark and benchmarked my system with low detail and i got this, since im no computer wiz, can u guys interpret. I cudnt find anybody that had the same system and graphic card, so i cudnt compare, maybe u guys eill, know, thx:

System Configuration

Operating System Microsoft Windows ME 
DirectX Version 9.0 
Mobo Manufacturer 
Mobo Model 694X-596B-977 
AGP Rates (Current/Available) 2x / 1x 2x 
CPU Intel Celeron 1002 MHz 
FSB 100 MHz 
Memory 320 MB 
Graphics Chipset NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 
Driver Name NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 
Driver Version 4.13.01.4109 
Video Memory 32 MB 
Program Version 3DMark2001 SE 
Resolution 1024x768 32bit 
Texture Format Compressed 
FSAA Disabled 
Z-Buffer Depth 24bit 
Frame Buffer Double 
Rendering Pipeline D3D Hardware T&L 

Test Results
3DMark Score 768 3D marks 
Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 13.3 FPS 
Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 2.4 FPS 
Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 14.0 FPS 
Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 5.3 FPS 
Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 18.8 FPS 
Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 7.7 FPS 
Game 4 Nature No hardware support 
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 191.1 MTexels/s 
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 358.4 MTexels/s 
High Polygon Count (1 light) 7.3 MTriangels/s 
High Polygon Count (8 lights) 6.8 MTriangels/s 
Environment Bump Mapping No hardware support 
DOT3 Bump Mapping 23.6 FPS 
Vertex Shader 3.7 FPS 
Pixel Shader No hardware support 
Advanced Pixel Shader No hardware support 
Point Sprite 43.5 MSprites/s


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## flyeater (Dec 27, 2000)

Intresting I couldn't find anything even with a google search. Not in english anyway.
I wonder why your card wouldn't handle the nature demo? Granted it's the toughest one on your system.
Obviously I can't really compare your system & mine but if it helps you here it is.

System Configuration
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP

DirectX Version 8.1

Mobo Manufacturer MSI

Mobo Model MS-6380E

AGP Rates (Current/Available) 4x / 1x 2x 4x

CPU AMD Athlon(tm) XP/MP/4 1250 MHz

FSB 100 MHz

Memory 1024 MB

Graphics Chipset NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400

Driver Name NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400

Driver Version 6.13.10.2742

Video Memory 128 MB

Program Version 3DMark2001 SE

Resolution 1024x768 32bit

Texture Format Compressed

FSAA Disabled

Z-Buffer Depth 24bit

Frame Buffer Double

Rendering Pipeline D3D Pure Hardware T&L

Test Results
3DMark Score 7537 3D marks

Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 104.0 FPS

Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 35.3 FPS

Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 149.1 FPS

Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 83.5 FPS

Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 97.6 FPS

Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 44.1 FPS

Game 4 Nature 38.6 FPS

I'm going to have to chalk up your problems just to some system specs. That shouldn't effect the older games though. From Max Payne on though it gets pretty hardware intensive.


> "AGP Rates (Current/Available) 2x / 1x 2x "


 Big bottleneck there. I believe thats due to your mobo not your video card.
Celeron 1002 MHz : I don't believe that any of the celerons have L1 or L2 cache. How much of a difference this would make I don't know.
I would assume if you begin to use up the 32 megs of ram on your video card it begins to use your cpu resources. Thats part of the idea of todays bigger badder vid cards, to give dedicated resources to doing just that.
I don't know what size monitor your using but maybe you'll get better performance or at least better frame rates at a lower resolution.
When you look at just my cpu compared to yours there's only a 25% difference in clock speed. Due to the difference in cpu architecture, mobo, video card & my overkill on ddr ram it looks a hell of a lot different. Trust me I feel bad when I read benchmarks for the latest & greatest Falcon Northwest screamer. Heaven knows I wish I had the cash to burn on a P4 system with all the bells & whistles.

Here's the only thing I could find comparing vidio cards.
Sorry it's such a large image.


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## Xephar (Aug 27, 2002)

I thought Celerons were an economical alternative to the pentium chips. But they are missing a lot of the features of a standard P3 or P4. 

Because I have the exact SAME configuration as Ilya, except mine is a P3 866. I even have onboard sound card which sucks, but in all of those games I can get at least 15-20 frams on medium to high detail at 800:600 at 32 bit color.


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## foxfire (Jan 14, 2003)

Hi Ilya. I dont know if you are still suffering slow speed but having read your post above I do know that Norton antivirus will interfere with throughput speed.

I am not an expert but monitor my ISP forums & the ISP techs: are adament that this happens.They have all deleted Norton & run AVG 60 instead.

regards
Foxfire


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## Ilya (Jan 7, 2003)

Thx, i might try that. I was just wondering if maybe my cpu usage (the one u see in the preformance section of system in control panel) is too low, it is in the high 70s whith only my network thingy running and norton anitvirus (system works). Is this normal?
Tanks for your help


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## Frik (Dec 15, 2002)

AVG anti virus software hompage

I run AVG and so far have not had a problem, you may find Norton to be a hog for resources, you might want to give this a try.

So far AVG is also free..............

I am running a 700mhz P3, 256 megs of ram and so far it plays all the games I want to play.............


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## dr_karkian (Dec 8, 2003)

Maybe you guys can help me: i have a compaq with 1.5 ghz pentium 4, 512mb of sdram and a geforce 4 mx video card: when i got the computer i could play any game just fine; now i can't play a single game without horrible horrible lag. I've tried everything i can think of to fix the problem i even reformated my hard drive, many times nothing has worked; help!


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## flyeater (Dec 27, 2000)

Welcome to TSG dr. karkian.
It's best if you start a new thread for a new question. You'll get a lot better response.
As well what operating system are you running?
Does this happen in single player games or just multiplayer?
If multiplayer what type of internet connection do you have?


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## dr_karkian (Dec 8, 2003)

i'm on win xp and i've got a cable modem so its not that


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## Jtoast (Oct 3, 2002)

There are actually 2 kinds of lag.

The most common is actually just low framerates. With a Geforce 4 MX that is my guess as to whats going on. Depending on WHICH MX card you have (MX 420, 440 or 460) it could be just too underpowered for the games you want to play.

What happens if you turn down all the features on the game(lower resolution, 16bit color instead of 32 bit, less particle effects, etc) does it help the lag? If so then its most likely being caused by your video card not being able to keep up.


The other kind of lag is when it runs fine usually but you will have a several second delay from when you press a key to the time the client actually responds. 

This is what you see on many multiplayer games. It is caused by an overloaded internet connection(among other things).


The first one can be resolved by a simple hardware upgrade. Not much you can do about the other type as it can be caused by your isp, problem serverside, or just heavy internet traffic.


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## Trembor (Dec 9, 2003)

Ilya, i just thought id chip in my 2 cents =) 

i used to have quit horrid lag just as you....using same Vid card and i even had 1.5ghtz and more ram.....

turned out i had a trojan on my Svchost.exe.....ya might wanna check that out (you shouldn't be running at 70% resources used without any programs running to be eating that much)


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## dr_karkian (Dec 8, 2003)

i made a mistake, i have a geforce 2 mx 400 not geforce 4, and its definatly not multplayer problem(happens on single player too) but games lag now that never used too like max payne, deus ex, etc. i frequently scan for viruses so thats not it; thanks any ways jtoast and trembor


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## dr_karkian (Dec 8, 2003)

p.s. i forgot to mention, its not limited to graphical intense games theres just as much lag on games like starcraft and homeworld; even at lowest settings


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## McTimson (Aug 16, 2002)

Make sure you do everything in this thread...

Definitely do a virus/adware scan, and make sure you close any unneeded background applications. Lag like that sounds like another program is taking up resources...like Trembor's svchost.exe with a trojan in it.


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## Guest (Dec 9, 2003)

it said driver date: 03/09/2002 thats an old driver..


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## McTimson (Aug 16, 2002)

Deathdealer (and Trembor), this was an old thread from January 2003, that dr_karkian decdied to post his question on for some reason....the original poster, Ilya's problem was solved, so there's no need to continue trying to help with that one....thanks for the suggestions though.


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## dr_karkian (Dec 8, 2003)

wow, i didn't now this was originally started alst year, i just found it on a search engine and it sounded very similar to my pronlem; i just gonna go ahead and post a topic


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## cp_4eva (Dec 10, 2003)

I suggest u download 
kazaa lite

my comp lagged alot with kazaa
now it doenst lag as much


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## Nulos (Dec 22, 2003)

i am lagging too with a good computer

processor 1.8ghz
radeon 7000 DDR 64mb video card
256 mb ram

game like warcraft 3, battlefield, needd for speed , i have to put the quality to the lowest to play without lag 

wat should i check, i just try to find update for my driver but its says that i got the newwest already so wat should i check


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## McTimson (Aug 16, 2002)

The problem with yours would be the Radeon 7000....if you were to get a better video card, you could play them at high quality with no problems. I would also suggest getting another stick of 256MB RAM.


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## Bibhash (Dec 23, 2003)

Ilya, dude do your computer a favor and :-

1) get rid of Windows ME..it is without doubt the crappiest OS ever. Get Windows 98SE, it would be the best OS for u keeping in mind your PC's specs. 

2) Defrag ur hdd, REMOVE SPYWARE!! <- very important

3) Update drivers

That's pretty much it cuz most of your gaming probs can only be solved by getting a New processor (celeron's a joke) and a new video card. Dude, those games take a lot of power to run esp. GTA3 , Battlefield 1942.


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## brite750 (Mar 16, 2002)

> _Originally posted by McTimson:_
> *Ilya's problem was solved, so there's no need to continue trying to help with that one....thanks for the suggestions though.  *


When did this happen, if Ilya's problem was solved what did she do to fix it.


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## neozero (Oct 7, 2003)

Could you help me then?

Here are my scores

General Information 
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP

DirectX Version 9.0b

Mobo Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer INC.

Mobo Model A7N8X2.0

AGP Rates (Current/Available) 8x / 4x, 8x

CPU AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 2163 MHz

FSB 166 MHz

Memory 512 MB

Display Information 
Graphics Chipset ATI RADEON 9800 PRO

Driver Name RADEON 9800 SERIES

Driver Version 6.14.10.6396

Driver WHQL Certified Yes

Video Memory 128 MB

Core Clock 378 MHz

Memory Clock 338 MHz

Sound Information 
Sound Adapter Driver Name SB Audigy Audio [9000]

Sound Adapter Driver Version 5.12.2.252

Benchmark Settings 
Program Version 3DMark03 Revision 4 Build 0

Resolution [email protected] bit

Texture Filtering Optimal

Pixel Processing / Antialiasing None

Post Processing false

Vertex Shaders Optimal

Main Test Results
3DMark Score 3705 3DMarks

CPU Score 550.0 CPUMarks

Detailed Test Results

Game Tests 
GT1 - Wings of Fury 136.6 fps

GT2 - Battle of Proxycon 21.3 fps

GT3 - Troll's Lair 20.4 fps

GT4 - Mother Nature 24.8 fps

CPU Tests 
CPU Test 1 61.8 fps

CPU Test 2 9.7 fps

Feature Tests 
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 1062.0 MTexels/s

Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 1434.8 MTexels/s

Vertex Shader 17.5 fps

Pixel Shader 2.0 28.7 fps

Ragtroll 15.3 fps

Sound Tests 
No sounds 35.8 fps

24 sounds 31.3 fps

60 sounds Not Supported

I'm sort of baffled, I have an 3000 XP+ Processor and a Radeon 9800, yet my scores are worse than those people with worse computers. I literally just restarted the OS, and my drivers are all up to date. Why am I getting this?

The only reasons that I could think of are as follows:

1. Motherboard settings are subpar ( I once defaulted the BIOS, and it underclocked my processor)
2. My card is an SE (not pro or normal, though the internal clock speed is 378mhz)
3.Low RAM. I noticed a bloke had significantly higher speeds, yet he had significantly more RAM.

Thx in advance for any advice.


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## McTimson (Aug 16, 2002)

Your score is fine for your card, the SE is a cheap version of the 9800, it has less features, either less pipelines, or a slower clock speed, or both, I don't know. But that's a good score for 3DMark03. Keep in mind that 3DMark01 and 03 are 2 completely different programs, and you can't compare the scores between the two. The stuff in the beginning of this thread was for 01, so the scores seem higher. If you were to run 3DMark01, you would get at least 10000.

And don't bother looking at the top scores on futuremark's site, even if they have a similar setup..the top ones are always insanely overclocked, both the CPU and the video card.


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## neozero (Oct 7, 2003)

I know, my pc normally performs fine, but for the FPS will lower due to smoke and shiz on games as old as Jedit outcast.

I think I'm just going to get a RAM upgrade, but that's mostly because I'm getting 3d MAX 6 soon and 3d editing programs in general hog a ton of memory.


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