Poor Performance in Games

[flashstar]

I'm stumped. Ever since I got my 2900 pro/XT and 3800+ X2 last year, I've been having very poor performance in games. For example, in DIPRIP (car action game based on HL2 engine), I usually get around 15-25 fps depending on what's displaying on the screen. It doesn't matter if I have the detail set to medium or high. I do see a 5 fps improvement when I turn off AA.

Also, in UT3 I'm lucky to get 30 fps at any detail setting. Most of the time, it's around 25 fps. I'm using a screen with 1680x 1050 resolution for both games. I'm running vista.

I'm guessing that this is a problem with my cpu since changing the graphics settings doesn't seem to affect performance (which I bought used), but it looks like both cores are being used at my overclocked speed of 2.4ghz.

Also, I'm running a NF4 chipset so maybe there is a bug with that?

What's your take on the matter?

Thanks.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

When was the last time you defragged or did any sort of PC maintenance?

 

[Fastmix]

I am running a nforce 4 as well, I am waiting for core i7 to upgrade, the cpu is your bottleneck, I was running a 3800 x2 as well and have upgraded to an opteron x2 that does 2.8 and it's a little better, the 3800 as only 512 cache of L2 per core and in modern games that alone makes a big difference.

 

[flashstar]

When was the last time you defragged or did any sort of PC maintenance?

I have the auto defrag set to once a week. I just removed about 10gb of junk with Ccleaner, so that might make a difference I guess.

Fastmix, I'm kind of leaning in that direction. I just want to save up enough to get an upper-end Deneb platform.

Thanks.

 

[wiak]

Reinstall Drivers
or Reinstall Windows
if the problem is still there try a older driver or newer