Tweaking a game machine

[washe]

Ok, I got a reformat on my machine, and I want to tweak it to top performance in games and also in work stuff!!!

Pentium III 800EB
128 MB Ram PC133
Voodoo 5500
Maxtor HD 15.3 Gig
Soundblaster Live Value!
Windows Me

and a bunch of games!! also a lot's of CS.

What tweaks I can use to take more performance!!

[Razielian]

Make sure your destop setting color is 24 bit and your voodoo 5 on a level 2 only.
I have a voodoo 5 and It works nicely on level 2.
Press alt,cntrl,del.....
there should be only 2 programs running..
explorer and systray. End all the others to save on the ram..
Goodluck..
I play cs alot myself let me know if you have gamespy. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[Makaveli]

I agree completly with Nighthawk.

-MaK

[washe]

Yep Razelian, I have Gamespy Arcade!!
look me for me as [SO]Washe..

Yep I knew about Systray and Explorer.

But I have heard somewhere that you can tweak windows to achieve better performance.

[MoxManiac]

washe,

check out www.tweak3d.net (http://www.tweak3d.net) . They have tons and tons of tweaking guides for maximizing the performance of your PC, from hardware, to the OS to even specific games themselves.

[AnakiMana]

Make sure you defragment your hard drive a lot. The hard drive is probably the slowest component of all in your computer, so keeping it tidy is important.

It looks like you have a pretty nice machine for gaming... just keep up with the latest drivers and do routine maintenance and you should be fine.

If you decide you want a faster setup, the most improvement would come from a faster video card. But the fastest cards tend to sacrifice graphics quality for speed. Your Voodoo5 is a good quality card from what I hear.

Have fun!!
AnakiMana

[Nighthawk]

I'd reccomend more RAM for starters. It's dirt cheap ($40 for 256mb of good stuff from www.crucial.com) (http://www.crucial.com)) and Me + games probably isn't too good with 128mb of RAM.

I could be wrong, but RAM is a quick, inexpensive way to speed things up.

[mrmax]

My two teenage sons rule at CS.
Our machine is:
PIII 600
mem 256mb 100mhz
vid TNT2 M64 -32meg upgraded to GFpro2-64
HD 40gig 7200rpm

Not really a killer machine. Even when I put it together a year and half ago, our video card was not that great. The GFpro has put new life in this now older machine.

Why am I telling you this? Because I'm middle aged and can do pretty well against the better players with the latest hardware, and my teenage sons are usually the leaders in any game they get into. I'm not saying this to brag but the effort to learn to tweak your machine and your game software can pay off.

First as mentioned above search out the MP gaming resources for tweaking CS. You will have to do alot of reading. The game can be tweaked for max framerate, max net performance,etc. You will have to play with alot, turning on/off different features. In addition make sure your swap drive for windows is fixed size about 2x to 2.5 times your amount of memory. Set the Hard Drive to "Server" for best performance. In your display set to 16bit Highcolor (that alone will improve game performance a bunch). There is various other things, you can do as well. But the point is do your homework. My boys rack up tons of kills against people with the latest fastest gear, you can too, by learning the various tweaks.

A few other pointers. Using Gamespy locate the fastest pings (consistenly fastest pings). Get the IP address of the server, using Traceroute or "tracert" from dos, (you can also use several of the shareware visual route maping programs). Find the servers the least number of hops and physically closest to you. One are two of these will be the fastest possible game play. Sometimes because of the type of ISP you have or the server has, one could be the best game play but isn't necessarily the closest. But, it won't be more than 1 or 2 extra hops.

Good luck, do your homework.