Very poor performance - baffled!

[Tom Cleghorn]

System is:

900Mhz Duron
256Mb RAM
Abit KG7-RAID
Creative Labs GF2MX-400, 64Mb
SBLive 1024
...and other less relevant bits

I'm getting really poor performance in various games, and sometimes outright hanging. I've tried any number of combinations of drivers; I currently have all the most recent drivers installed, and just can't get decent performance.

If anyone has any advice for things to try, I'd greatly appreciate and guidance.

[AlexGee]

Tom,

Did this happen after building the system or after installing new hardware or software, or did it just start happening with your existing config.?

Also, could you explain what 'poor performance' is in more detail? Frame rates down? Pauses where nothing happens? Lock-ups? Etc.

And what is your OS?

Thanks

[BipolarBill]

Ditch that MX for a real card - either an ATi 8500 or a GeForce 3.

[$1500-P4 gamer]

Yea, that G2 mx400 is the problem. I ahd one they are junk. Get a G3 ti200 or a radeon 8500 instead if going budget. About $70.00

[Bigjakkstaffa]

old CPU and GFX are the problem here indeedy

--Jakk

[Tom Cleghorn]

Sorry, hadn't slept much when I posted that

OS is Win2k Pro.
Ditching the CPU or the graphics card just isn't an option - both financially, and because the GF2 is one of the Personal Cinema kits, and I don't have a real TV at the moment (plus, I just love the remote )

Performance is just plain poor in most games - I'm talking about older games here, mostly (Q3, RTCW etc), games that were fine on my last graphics card, a 16 meg TNT!
The worst culprit is Neverwinter Nights, which obviously I don't expect to get wonderful framerates out of - but in it's case, I've got it set to the absolute rock bottom graphics settings, and it still borders on unplayable in places.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, especially on any ways you might suggest of getting as much performance as possible out of this kit.
Cheers.

[AlexGee]

Well, if it isn't beating the TNT on the same system you are obviously not getting normal results for that card. Q3 should be playable at least. I got decent FR from my Vodoo 3 and a Celeron 450 on that. I assume the G2 mx 400 was at least better than that?

Personally, I'd re-install the OS but I'd save the old OS in case that's not the problem. Sounds like you have tried the usual suspects.

[Sark]

i had a similiar problem once. I bought populous the beggining, old game even for my voodoo3, k6-2 350, 128 ram. In fact i was lightyears ahead of the minimum and recommended requirements.
I also had the most recent drivers for everything. Anyways, when i fired up the game, for some reason it lagged and lagged! It was terrible! I couldnt even play it cause of the bad fps. It made no sense but thats just theway it was. Thankfully ive ditched that old piece of shi*.

[Ammok]

I have found that my G2mx400 will only behave properly (3d2001 marks ranging between 3000 and 3200 depending on what i do with it) if i only use the 22.50 or the 23.11 drivers. Any other set causes problems.

I am gonig to try another set of drivers, cos i'm bored, and these will be the 30.82 set to see if i get any better results.

RTCW plays fine on mine, maximumish settings.

[deadkenny]

Could be a driver issue, but I'll assume that you've eliminated that possibility. Sounds like some sort of other conflict going on. What's running in the background? If you're not playing on the internet you might want to close down your virus scanner. Check you IRQ assignments. Your current video card might be more sensitive to sharing an interrupt.