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[major]

Can't fix your Ram. Since you have a 2gb stick, it has nothing to run with. See the the two 1gb sticks can share a memory task(dual channel).

hmmm since you have the 2gb stick in Bank1. I believe the two 1gb stick should be in Banks 2 and 4. Dual channel is supposed to be every other bank. (usually color coated. red with red, blue with blue). So maybe take a picture of your memory in your case, then should be able to tell you if you need to move a stick.

[Rodney 1.666]

2GB in Bank1, 1GBs in Banks 3 and 4. (As per the colour-coding.)

Case shot added to give an idea of air flow as well, and graphics card... just 'cause; I'll take anything.

Images taken before moving the RAM.
(Left to right in picture: Empty, 1GB, 1GB, 2GB.)
(Left to right now: 1GB, 1GB, empty, 2GB.)


~Edit:

[...]
About two hours of play:

Update to say that that I got the same figures within a couple degrees from a little less than an hour of play, if that helps any.

Edit for typo on "couple" saying "coupe". I'm anal like that.

[Rodney 1.666]

I suggest a quick and dirty upgrade of the graphics card. I have a Geforce 8800 GTX 640MB and it runs everything like a dream (especially GE:S). Obviously, make sure your graphics drivers are up to date and i would also investigate your motherboard northbridge drivers if you are running nForce.

So yah: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814134082

Geforce 9800 GT w/ 1GB RAM for $90 (after mail-in rebate)

Well I went with KM's (and most other's in-game) advice, excluding the 9800 GT part.
I went batshit-overkill and went to our local hardware abode of awesomeness and bought meself a GeForce 460 GTX, 700MB, "Overclocked", for $210.00.
I also needed a new power supply to power the beast...

And guess what. Seriously, take a wild guess.
Well, I can run everything at almost max, and get the same performance as the 8500: average 50 frames.
It's conclusive that something is seriously fucked somewhere.

So, my current to-do list is:

• Run a diagnostics tool of some kind.
• <Forum advice here>

• Sometime a fresh format and an install of the best running drivers is all you need.

So yeah... any and all help is still greatly appreciated...

Good news is, if I have to resort to a new setup altogether (which I really don't want to do), I'll certainly have a card for it.

I'll update the post with full GFX specs when I get back.
Updated.

[jjmusicnotes]

Hey Rodney -

First off, the GTX 460 is a nasty card - awesome pic!  Even at that resolution, the 460 should be eating all of those games for breakfast at max settings - GE:S shouldn't even be a blip on the radar.

After reading this thread to catch up, I have a couple questions and a statement for you:

Q.)
What do you have for a motherboard?

Do you have more than 1 PCI-E x16 slot on your board?

What is your PSU?

What do you have for a case?

S.)
When looking at your system specs, this caught my eye:

"AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core 2.20 GHz"

I bring this up because it's about 6 sub-families of processor behind where the current AM3 sockets are (behind Athlon II's & Phenom II's,) so it could be bottle-necking your sweet GPU.


Unless GE:S is somehow causing you to hit your RAM ceiling, I seriously doubt your RAM as anything to do with anything.  Even if it's still DDR2-800Mhz - which I kind of suspect, because you have an AM2+ socket.

All of your temps (from your old setup) look fine, so none of your components seem to be over-heating.  How are the temps with your 460?

Chances are, if temps really were the issue, you wouldn't get poor FPS while gaming, your drivers / card would just crashes with either artifacts, grey-screen, blue-screen, or black-screen.  If they were really bad your card might not even function all together.

The reason why I asked about the 2nd PCI-E x16 slot on your board is that on most mid-range boards with more than 1 PCI-E x16 slot, you'll typically see the primary slot at x16 and the secondary slot running at x8.  If you have your GPU in the x8 slot, that could also be a reason for the poor FPS.

Even though I ask about your PSU, I seriously doubt it - chances are if you were over-drawing your PSU while your GPU was under load during games, you would've fried your rig by now - not had poor FPS.  Just curious though.

To be honest, out of all of the components, I suspect your CPU the most unfortunately.  Especially considering how new the 460 is.  If it is your CPU that is the culprit, your mobo should support an AM3 socket (since it's AM2+.)  That being said, you would more than likely have to do a BIOS flash, and even then you might encounter a greater likelihood of having BSOD's since there are known compatibility issues with AM2+ sockets and AM3 chips.

That being said, I couldn't find a release date on your CPU, so I'm a little unsure of when it came out.  Depending on the release date, we could have either found the cause of your issues, or that I'm a big fat liar.

One or the other.

[Kratos]

damn you guys have slow pcs    

I got a laptop with a Intel Pentium 3 running at 1.2GHZ single core

ATI Radeon 16MB Sdr ram 100MHZ core clock

256MB SDram memory

4200rpm 40GB HD

Running Arch Linux with LXDE i just setup yesterday and runs great on this laptop

I prob get .5 fps in goldeneye source with those specs  I have lol.

Seriously, i would check your hard drive with HDD Sentinel, to make sure its functioning right.

Also, run ccleaner with custom settings and defrag the pc using Mydefrag.

Do some optimization and see if that helps.

[Rodney 1.666]

To answer your queries one by one, jj:

Q.)
To be honest I don't know how to go about figuring out what my motherboard is, or what exactly you're asking about it. (Model number or just what it can do, etc?)

I have 1 PCI-E x16 slot.

My PSU is a GX 650W Cooler Master.

My case is just the original, also pictured above. (HP Pavilion a6352f)

S.)
My RAM is indeed DDR2.

Whenever I try to monitor hardware temps, I get cracked out results, so that's out. (And I'm sure they're find anyway, for the same reasons you gave.)


As for CPU release date, I bought this computer in March of 2007. It had all of the specs I listed in my original-original post, minus one gig of RAM.

It doesn't surprise me that the CPU is the most likely, because off age, and also because it's me and the most difficult, fragile, tedious, irreplaceable piece is what's going to not work...

Also, run ccleaner with custom settings and defrag the pc using Mydefrag.

Do some optimization and see if that helps.

I optimize the living hell out of my system on a frequent basis, so that's not it. It's also been brought up twice already...

[little 00]

Does your hl2 process crash often for you when you play games that have the hl2 engine? if so i have the same problem with different spec.
when in sinc my fps will start @ 75 and drop really slow until ges has a crash or when i exit ges hl2 crashes and i use task manager process tab to end it

out of sinc it wull run almost max and stay stable frame rate varries all the time anywhere from 50\ 40 in runway up to 300 and some times it reads a little over

heat is not a problem here
core 2 quad @2.33 ghz (Q8200)
4 gigs. ram @1066 mhz (in 1 gig sticks)
nvidia gtx 260 max core 55 (its over clock out of the box) v-ram is 896 mb GDDR3
mobo is an Asus P5Q pro turbo
650wat PSU
im runing windows 7 64 bit but set with dual boot win xp 32 bit

just built this 1 anout months ago

[Rodney 1.666]

Does your hl2 process crash often for you when you play games that have the hl2 engine?

Negative.

[jjmusicnotes]

To answer your queries one by one, jj:

Q.)
To be honest I don't know how to go about figuring out what my motherboard is, or what exactly you're asking about it. (Model number or just what it can do, etc?)

The model number is fine (if you have it handy,) I wanted to look at a full list of your mobo's specs.

S.)

Whenever I try to monitor hardware temps, I get cracked out results, so that's out. (And I'm sure they're find anyway, for the same reasons you gave.)

As for CPU release date, I bought this computer in March of 2007. It had all of the specs I listed in my original-original post, minus one gig of RAM.

It doesn't surprise me that the CPU is the most likely, because off age, and also because it's me and the most difficult, fragile, tedious, irreplaceable piece is what's going to not work...

It makes me a little uncomfortable that you have wonky temp readings - but considering the age of your computer, and the fact that it was from large company - they probably didn't put temp sensors on the mobo, which would explain why you can't really get any readings.

I have HWMonitor in my rigs and on my 5yr old dell, the only temp that comes up is the hard drive.

Just to rule out the graphics card itself as a source of the problem, you could let your friend borrow the card and see if he has same / better results with it. 

If they have a more recent setup and get higher FPS, then you'll have a much clearer answer.  What would also be excellent is putting it in another comp that's approximately the same age as yours, and see if the results are the same / similar.  I'm not really sure how feasible that is for you, but it's a possible trouble-shooting step that doesn't involve spending any $$, which is a good thing.

If it's not feasible, and you don't want to pony-up the dough for a newer CPU (it could even just be a better AM2+ socket,) then you could return your 460 and opt for something a little less recent, like a 260, or even a higher-end ATI HD 47XX or 5XXX series card.

[Rodney 1.666]

The model number is fine (if you have it handy,) I wanted to look at a full list of your mobo's specs.

That'll take some digging, 'specially since I don't know where to look.

It makes me a little uncomfortable that you have wonky temp readings - but considering the age of your computer, and the fact that it was from large company - they probably didn't put temp sensors on the mobo, which would explain why you can't really get any readings.

Now that I think about it, the BIOS doesn't even display temperatures either.

Just to rule out the graphics card itself as a source of the problem, you could let your friend borrow the card and see if he has same / better results with it. 

The only computer I have access to that's  near the same age might be my bro's. (His has a dual CPU; no idea what it is yet.)

If it's not feasible, and you don't want to pony-up the dough for a newer CPU (it could even just be a better AM2+ socket,) then you could return your 460 and opt for something a little less recent, like a 260, or even a higher-end ATI HD 47XX or 5XXX series card.

If it's the CPU (or anything that isn't the card, for that matter), then won't I still have the same problem but even worse?

[jjmusicnotes]

Don't worry about the mobo man, to get the model number you'd have to take it out of the case and look on the reverse side.

If your bro's comp has a PCI-E x16 slot, then you're welcome to try it.  If you get ~50fps or less in his rig, then that can be proof-positive of a CPU bottleneck.

If it's the CPU (or anything that isn't the card, for that matter), then won't I still have the same problem but even worse?

Not necessarily.  If you went with an older card like the ones mentioned above, (maybe even a 250 or ATI HD 3XXX series,) then the graphics technology will be closer to something that the CPU would adequately support, and may in fact give you better FPS than your current 460.

KM suggested a card that would be great for your rig - I believe it was a GTX 9800.  That would offer you more performance than you current card, it would be more compatible with your system, and you wouldn't have to do any major / costly over-hauling.

[Rodney 1.666]

I believe it was a GTX 9800.  That would offer you more performance than you current card, it would be more compatible with your system, and you wouldn't have to do any major / costly over-hauling.

What kind of frames do you predict with the 9800 or 250?


For the to-do list:
I've been Googling diagnostics tools, but I don't even know where to begin... any thoughts?

When all options excluding hardware changes have been exhausted, I've been thinking of formatting. (Win7 takes like 10 minutes anyway.) I'm sure it won't help, but it couldn't hurt.

[Kinky]

I have a 9800GTX+ superclock (old new but top of the line about 3 years ago). I get 300FPS looking at a wall and 100FPS average on TF2.

[major]

I use to have a 2.8GHZ AMD Dual core with a 8800gt and I got max settings.. of course this was the days of beta1...but still.

My 3.2GHZ Q6600 (one of the first Quad cores) with my old ATI 4870 was maxed out @1920x1080...

So you should be getting top end performance. I didnt remember if you said(and to lazy to read again). But I'd wipe windows and start from scratch. then you can have clean drivers and be a nice clean slate to test with.


I still have that Dual Core and old 4870.. maybe if I get the time ill boot it up and load GE:S on it and see how bad the bottleneck is.

[Rodney 1.666]

So you should be getting top end performance. I didnt remember if you said(and to lazy to read again). But I'd wipe windows and start from scratch. then you can have clean drivers and be a nice clean slate to test with.

I'm going to next week. (next week being decided just now)