Poor computer performance

[AJ!]

Hi all

I am having huge problems running SH3 and most other games on a computer that should be able to run them fine

The computer is a dell 3100 with 1GB of ram and a 3GHZ processor. The graphics card is a Geforce 8500GT which was installed recently, (the computer used to use a intergrated intel card)

The game slows down inside the submarine and grinds to a halt when on the outside view. I know something is wrong here because my old dell laptop had 1gb ram and 3ghz and a old radeon 9600 which is much slower then the 8500 and it ran the game perfect. Generaly with most other games the performance is subpar to what would be expected.

Any idea whats going on? Is the card installed wrong. The dell 3100 doesnt have the standard slots for graphics cards so it was a special 8500gt card used (not sure of the name of the old slots)

Thanks

[irish1958]

I don't have a clue as to why you are having so much trouble; however, the game runs much better with 2Gb of RAM; this is cheap, so the first thing I would do in buy and install enough ram.
Then I would quit any unnecessary programs and use something like FSAutostart or similiar programs to kill any unnecessary RAM killers.
Finially, I would check the drivers for your video card. A lot of people have been having problems with the drivers on the Nvidia (sp) cards.

[ichso]

It's most likely some driver or directx related problem.
Or, like irish said, some application(s) in the background.

For me SH3 runs well on a Athlon XP 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM and a Radeon 9800 card.

So as 2 GB of RAM should be better, especially with GWX installed, it's not absolutely necessary as I can tell from experience.

[flakmonkey]

Yep sounds like driver issues, with that spec you should be getting framerates of 100+ at all times, if you are already using the latest drivers try going back a few versions and using an older set, brand new drivers (especially nvidia ones) often have undiagnosed bugs.

I still occasionally run sh3 on my old laptop which has a 1.1GHz celeron processor, 512Mb ram and a radeon 9200se, even that crummy spec gets a minimum of 30-50fps although loading times are >10mins.

(edited several times to correct spelling mistakes!)

[mino]

all other games playing ok? then un, then re-install sh3 stock and try....

heck, I run sh3 on a p3 with 512ram and 256 nvidia card, she gives me great fps!

more than drivers is this issue here,,but you could try another set,,,just ensure their nvidia sets, NOT reference drivers etc

good luck

[bert8for3]

Best bet first imho, as irish etc have said, see what progs/processes you have running in background and eating up RAM (have a look at task manager to see how much RAM you have available). Shut them down with FSautostart (@softpedia.com). edit/add: My specs are similar (although different graf card) and the game runs fine. But I pull my internet cable so that I can shut down everything possible, inc antivirus/firewall etc plus the kazillion unnecessary services/processes.