Problem with playing games :/

[lakku]

Hey :)

I just reformatted my PC not long ago because I had too many problems getting new games to work. After the format, some of the new games (ex. Dawn of War 2) started working correctly. It ran with 20-30 fps with medium settings. :)

But, games like Dragon Age: Origins runs poorly now. I got 40-50 fps with medium settings. Now I get 10 fps with low settings. Same with Mass Effect. Tropico 3 runs poorly with low settings too :/ WoW ran with 80 fps on med/high settings now only 20-30 fps. Lowering the resolution has a little fps change (like 5 fps)

It feels like something is missing after the reformat. I've got the same settings & stuff. I have the newest drivers, newest directx, dual-core optimizer and windows XP updated. Latest drivers from Acers site for my motherboard.

Here's my PC:

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
RAM: Kingston 4GB DDR2
HDD: Total of 1,4 TB HDD space. 100gb partition for Windows XP & programs as always I've done and rest for games & other stuff.
Display: ASUS EAH2600XT/HTDP/256M (I don't know if it's 256mb of vram but always in my display settings & games config it shows 512mb of vram) http://uk.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=upsOBNRCzcXssnWm
OS: Windows XP home-edition 32bit
Motherboard: F690GVM (Acer desktop)

My PC is only 2 years old man. Help me out tech pros :) What am I missing?

[handi360]

Its 256mb of video ram. v-ram refers to virtual ram/memory.
You might want to upgrade your video card.

Something else you might want to do is post a pic of your game settings.

not sure if your vidro drivers have CCC with them or not but, if they do go into CCC and set everything to default, or maybe even "performance" level.

[WarLokk1980]

As handi360 said it's definitely your graphics card that is to blame. I have an AMD processor similar to yours on a spare motherboard which I used temporarily when my Intel Core 2 Quad motherboard packed in a month ago. I was using an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with a GeForce 9800GT (1GB) and it ran games ok but it couldn't compare to my Quad Core. My advice to you is to definitely upgrade your graphics card and you may also want to look at upgrading your processor too to a Phenom X4. Then you will be able to play your games at max settings with ease. Also how fast is your RAM? I use Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit which features Windows Experience Index which rates your hardware and gives you a high score so when you install a new game it tells you whether or not it will run well. When I 1st bought 4GB RAM (also Kingston) it was only 667MHz which scored 4.3 on WEI. I changed this to 4GB Kingston HyperX RAM which is 800MHz and it got a score of 5.9 for the RAM. Now my rig scores 5.9 for every subsection resulting in a base score of 5.9 overall. Seriously I'd also look into upgrading your operating system too as you may well know that due to 32 bit limitations all of your 4GB isn't detected/used by the system and to overcome this you need to use a 64 Bit OS. Windows 7 or even Windows Vista would be a great choice as there is not much point in buying Windows XP 64 Bit. Also you would have to buy the full clean install version and not the Upgrade version as you aren't allowed to go from 32 to 64 bit in an upgrade.

[lakku]

As handi360 said it's definitely your graphics card that is to blame. I have an AMD processor similar to yours on a spare motherboard which I used temporarily when my Intel Core 2 Quad motherboard packed in a month ago. I was using an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with a GeForce 9800GT (1GB) and it ran games ok but it couldn't compare to my Quad Core. My advice to you is to definitely upgrade your graphics card and you may also want to look at upgrading your processor too to a Phenom X4. Then you will be able to play your games at max settings with ease. Also how fast is your RAM? I use Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit which features Windows Experience Index which rates your hardware and gives you a high score so when you install a new game it tells you whether or not it will run well. When I 1st bought 4GB RAM (also Kingston) it was only 667MHz which scored 4.3 on WEI. I changed this to 4GB Kingston HyperX RAM which is 800MHz and it got a score of 5.9 for the RAM. Now my rig scores 5.9 for every subsection resulting in a base score of 5.9 overall. Seriously I'd also look into upgrading your operating system too as you may well know that due to 32 bit limitations all of your 4GB isn't detected/used by the system and to overcome this you need to use a 64 Bit OS. Windows 7 or even Windows Vista would be a great choice as there is not much point in buying Windows XP 64 Bit. Also you would have to buy the full clean install version and not the Upgrade version as you aren't allowed to go from 32 to 64 bit in an upgrade.

Well thanks for the answers guys. I'm looking forward to upgrading my PC when I get some money but really I'm weirded out by that before reformatting everything worked so well :/ How is that? Hmm, is there a program I could see how fast my RAM is? All I know it's kingston and there's 2x 2GB DDR2.