my computer is running like crap
First off, it's been a while, what'd I miss? =P
I have an A64 3000+ OC'd to 2ghz, 1.5gb of pc3200, a gefroce 6600gt agp vid card, a 160gb PATA hdd and i'm running windowsxp x64. I know this isn't bleeding edge but still, I only ever use my computer to play WoW anymore. I used to download tons of torrents, game demos, music, did some web design, photoshop, but the last two I was learning on more than anything, so it was nthing major. Like I said, I only use it to play WoW these days. I usually keep a browser window open to look up info if I need to, and I'll have 4 or 5 tabs running in firefox/IE 7.
Now maybe I'm spoiled, but when I alt-tab out of WoW to use firefox/IE, it can take like 10 seconds sometimes for the hard drive to stop grinding and the computer to become useable again. When I log off from WoW, same thing. I don't understand how 1.5gb of RAM can get so used up that the computer is swapping out to the hard drive that much. It doesn't make sense to me. I've built computers for like 10 years now, I've configured them to perform to the ir max, and now I'm stumped.
Another thing, when I first played WoW, it would load really quickly, it would shut down really quickly, I could alt tab in and out no problem, and I'd get 60-80fps all the time, no matter where I was in the game. Now I almost never get higher than 30fps, and if I'm in a big city like ironforge or stormwind, forget it, it drops to 10 fps.
I thought a reformat would help, but was feeling too lazy to dig through the old hard drive to dig up whatever files I didn't want to lose so instead I defragged it. It reported that the drive was 5% fragmented, I thought that's fine. I then installed the 64bit version of Vista RC1 that MS put out a few days ago. I only installed WoW, ventrilo, and nothing else. Same thing ends up happening.
I knew installing RC1 of Vista probably wouldn't help matters much, it's not a finished OS, it's probably more resource intensive than XP, etc... Plus just installing the OS on a hard drive which already had like 120gb of files on it is probably hindering things too.
I'm planning now on formating an old 40gb hdd I have laying around, and installing xp x64 on it to see if it helps. What else can I do though? I don't understand how my computer can be running so sluggishly.
And another thing, with WoW running, task manager shows 350-500mb of my ram still available, but 1gb of my page file is being used. WTF is that all about? Why isn't all my ram being used up instead of 1gb of page file?
I just remembered to let you know, I have set all performace options on the vid drivers to max performace, no AA, no AF, nothing. Here's somthing that just happened as a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I have WoW running right now, task manager, and 6 tabs in firefox. I right clicked on the nvidia icon on the far right of the task bar and it took like 5 or 6 seconds for the menu to pop up and the hard drive was swapping out the whole time. wtf?
I have an A64 3000+ OC'd to 2ghz, 1.5gb of pc3200, a gefroce 6600gt agp vid card, a 160gb PATA hdd and i'm running windowsxp x64. I know this isn't bleeding edge but still, I only ever use my computer to play WoW anymore. I used to download tons of torrents, game demos, music, did some web design, photoshop, but the last two I was learning on more than anything, so it was nthing major. Like I said, I only use it to play WoW these days. I usually keep a browser window open to look up info if I need to, and I'll have 4 or 5 tabs running in firefox/IE 7.
Now maybe I'm spoiled, but when I alt-tab out of WoW to use firefox/IE, it can take like 10 seconds sometimes for the hard drive to stop grinding and the computer to become useable again. When I log off from WoW, same thing. I don't understand how 1.5gb of RAM can get so used up that the computer is swapping out to the hard drive that much. It doesn't make sense to me. I've built computers for like 10 years now, I've configured them to perform to the ir max, and now I'm stumped.
Another thing, when I first played WoW, it would load really quickly, it would shut down really quickly, I could alt tab in and out no problem, and I'd get 60-80fps all the time, no matter where I was in the game. Now I almost never get higher than 30fps, and if I'm in a big city like ironforge or stormwind, forget it, it drops to 10 fps.
I thought a reformat would help, but was feeling too lazy to dig through the old hard drive to dig up whatever files I didn't want to lose so instead I defragged it. It reported that the drive was 5% fragmented, I thought that's fine. I then installed the 64bit version of Vista RC1 that MS put out a few days ago. I only installed WoW, ventrilo, and nothing else. Same thing ends up happening.
I knew installing RC1 of Vista probably wouldn't help matters much, it's not a finished OS, it's probably more resource intensive than XP, etc... Plus just installing the OS on a hard drive which already had like 120gb of files on it is probably hindering things too.
I'm planning now on formating an old 40gb hdd I have laying around, and installing xp x64 on it to see if it helps. What else can I do though? I don't understand how my computer can be running so sluggishly.
And another thing, with WoW running, task manager shows 350-500mb of my ram still available, but 1gb of my page file is being used. WTF is that all about? Why isn't all my ram being used up instead of 1gb of page file?
I just remembered to let you know, I have set all performace options on the vid drivers to max performace, no AA, no AF, nothing. Here's somthing that just happened as a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I have WoW running right now, task manager, and 6 tabs in firefox. I right clicked on the nvidia icon on the far right of the task bar and it took like 5 or 6 seconds for the menu to pop up and the hard drive was swapping out the whole time. wtf?
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Comments
Have you set your page file to 512-1024?