I have a compaq presario with AMD athlon 64 3200 processor..it has 512mb of the DDR RAM and my video card is an ATI Radeon 9600 xt and I have the latest version of catalyst and have tweaked it for more performance for some of the newer games such as far cry, half life 2, medal of honor pacific assault etc..
I notice that the framerate is generally good in most places in all these games but there is usually some parts in the game where i might look in a certain direction and it goes from being nice, fast smooth, to being choppy like a slideshow ..sometimes even freezing. I play most games on 1280x 1040 resolution or something like that, but when i dropped res. to 1024 x 768 or whatever it is..the problem still sometimes occurs..maybe not AS bad but it is still stuttering and all. I didn't think my specs were THAT bad...
is there anything I can do to help performance with it still looking decent?
One thing i've always wondered...I do not believe the 64 bit processor is enabled..is there any thing i can do to enable it? or do i have to actually buy windows64 to use it, or are there any 3rd party drivers out there...or am i just talking nonsense.. i would think that a 64bit processor would perform better than this so I am not convinced I am getting the full benefit. Any suggestions? thanks
Full Version: enable athlon64?
Hi Floyd, and welcome to SAF! 
Well, I would think that a 9600 card should handle those games; how much memory is on the card?
First of all, 1280x1040 is SXGA and is a wierd format to play in. SXGA is used a lot by CAD programs. You won't really see any substantial increase in picture quality, but it is a load on the graphic card, especially the rendering of landscapes which require major power. That is why things improved with XGA (1024x768).
You said that you "tweaked" the card, so I am not sure what you did, but HERE is a pretty good tweaker for ATI cards. I have an old 8500 LE/64, and I boost the core from 250 to 280 with no artifacts. I took the stock fan off the card and replaced it with an old CPU fan so it cools the card really good. I actually got it up to 290, but after about 15 minutes I start getting artifacts so I backed it down to 280 where it runs well.
You also might want to check that your harddrive is defragged.
Far as the processor goes, remember that, while a 64 bit proc is definitely fast, it will only achieve the performance it is built for when 64 bit software is available, and that includes Windows. There really isn't anything out there yet, so ordinary processors will operate just as fast for practical purposes. There isn't any way to "enable" 64 bit processing without a 64 bit operating system, and that will be Vista when (??) Microsoft decides to release it. There IS Windows64 which is a 64 bit OS, but it is extremely limited as to what apps will run on it, especially games. Most games will not run on it.
You can go into the BIOS and see if your settings are set for maximum performance, but read your manual and be careful making changes, you can stop your computer from booting. Unfortunately, commercially made computers are pretty much "plug n' play", and usually there aren't many settings you can tweak successfully.
Well, I would think that a 9600 card should handle those games; how much memory is on the card?
First of all, 1280x1040 is SXGA and is a wierd format to play in. SXGA is used a lot by CAD programs. You won't really see any substantial increase in picture quality, but it is a load on the graphic card, especially the rendering of landscapes which require major power. That is why things improved with XGA (1024x768).
You said that you "tweaked" the card, so I am not sure what you did, but HERE is a pretty good tweaker for ATI cards. I have an old 8500 LE/64, and I boost the core from 250 to 280 with no artifacts. I took the stock fan off the card and replaced it with an old CPU fan so it cools the card really good. I actually got it up to 290, but after about 15 minutes I start getting artifacts so I backed it down to 280 where it runs well.
You also might want to check that your harddrive is defragged.
| QUOTE |
| One thing i've always wondered...I do not believe the 64 bit processor is enabled..is there any thing i can do to enable it? |
Far as the processor goes, remember that, while a 64 bit proc is definitely fast, it will only achieve the performance it is built for when 64 bit software is available, and that includes Windows. There really isn't anything out there yet, so ordinary processors will operate just as fast for practical purposes. There isn't any way to "enable" 64 bit processing without a 64 bit operating system, and that will be Vista when (??) Microsoft decides to release it. There IS Windows64 which is a 64 bit OS, but it is extremely limited as to what apps will run on it, especially games. Most games will not run on it.
You can go into the BIOS and see if your settings are set for maximum performance, but read your manual and be careful making changes, you can stop your computer from booting. Unfortunately, commercially made computers are pretty much "plug n' play", and usually there aren't many settings you can tweak successfully.
Allright..thank you for your insight. I have managed to improve the framerate somewhat...for newer games i have set the mipmap level detail down a notch, as well as image quality. I have also set the refresh rate to 60..i heard that 60 is faster, and I also made sure antialiasing/anisotropic filtering were off.
The reason i was playing at the resolutions of 1280 x1040 + is because I have been playing operation flashpoint on my new system with level of detail maxed running smoothly at resolutions like 1920 x 1440..and therefore being used to that i thought that 1024 x 768 was considered a low res not suitable for today's gaming. but even at this resolution a few games still would stutter and have quirky frame rate drops..otherwise the games would be running very fast and smoothly until I would have to do something such as break open a wooden box with a crowbar or when I open a door to a room ..I wouldnt really say its a frame rate problem but more like a problem that occurs when i do certain actions that causes new images and animations to be introduced in a game's engine. I don't know if this is making sense but i hope it is..
to combat the problem i downloaded the tweaking utility powerstrip. I overclocked my video card core memory from 500 MHz to 630 MHz...that may be a dramatic increase but my friend told me that radeon's XT cards have the special overdrive feature, and, used with a tweaking utility should be able to downgrade the clocking level or shut down the pc if temp. gets too high. When overclocked the temp rise level wasnt too much. For some reason, i could not overclock the vid. card memory by even 1 MHz, as the screen becomes covered in artifacts. I guess this is normal.
even this hasnt helped much in games like half life 2 , etc.. but noticible improvments in games like flashpoint, americas army, brothers in arms, etc. I increased my PCI card latency a bit too. Dunno if that will do anything.
I have decided to go through and just defrag my hard drive..as even with "bare bones" configurations (no extra filters or details) some games run choppy at 1024 x 768...so i'm thinking maybe the texture files for the games are not easily accessible ..
maybe this will work
The reason i was playing at the resolutions of 1280 x1040 + is because I have been playing operation flashpoint on my new system with level of detail maxed running smoothly at resolutions like 1920 x 1440..and therefore being used to that i thought that 1024 x 768 was considered a low res not suitable for today's gaming. but even at this resolution a few games still would stutter and have quirky frame rate drops..otherwise the games would be running very fast and smoothly until I would have to do something such as break open a wooden box with a crowbar or when I open a door to a room ..I wouldnt really say its a frame rate problem but more like a problem that occurs when i do certain actions that causes new images and animations to be introduced in a game's engine. I don't know if this is making sense but i hope it is..
to combat the problem i downloaded the tweaking utility powerstrip. I overclocked my video card core memory from 500 MHz to 630 MHz...that may be a dramatic increase but my friend told me that radeon's XT cards have the special overdrive feature, and, used with a tweaking utility should be able to downgrade the clocking level or shut down the pc if temp. gets too high. When overclocked the temp rise level wasnt too much. For some reason, i could not overclock the vid. card memory by even 1 MHz, as the screen becomes covered in artifacts. I guess this is normal.
even this hasnt helped much in games like half life 2 , etc.. but noticible improvments in games like flashpoint, americas army, brothers in arms, etc. I increased my PCI card latency a bit too. Dunno if that will do anything.
I have decided to go through and just defrag my hard drive..as even with "bare bones" configurations (no extra filters or details) some games run choppy at 1024 x 768...so i'm thinking maybe the texture files for the games are not easily accessible ..
maybe this will work
Well, life is a learning experience. I figured that, as long as I was thinking of it, I would d/load and install the latest Catalyst drivers from the website I linked you to. So I did.
They slowed my whole computer, everything started that "sweep" scrolling that drives me crazy, and I ended up deleting them off and installing the Catalyst 3.0 drivers again, and now my computer is back to blazing fast again. I will investigate further, but at this point I cannot recommend installing the newest Catalyst drivers.
They slowed my whole computer, everything started that "sweep" scrolling that drives me crazy, and I ended up deleting them off and installing the Catalyst 3.0 drivers again, and now my computer is back to blazing fast again. I will investigate further, but at this point I cannot recommend installing the newest Catalyst drivers.
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