The online racing simulator
#1 - richy
Can anyone help me get my computer running healthy and at its best?
So far ive spent hours trying to get this right. Im beginning to doubt Ive even got a problem and thats its running normal, but I just have this feeling that something is not right with it all. My computer knowledge is lacking but I do try . my problem is erratic and inconsistent FPS. Am I just a gaming hyperchondriac?

Here is screenshots of my Task Manager after running 1 lap of a replay of a multiplayer race. See Fig 1a for CPU usage. See Fig 1b for Processes. I have checked my processes and got it down to the bare minimum and it should be running nice now except for its still bad. but i also get this when in cockpit view while racing online.

My FPS is 100+ when the camera is up close to 1 car. Or around 80 when its one car alone. But if there is any cars around it bogs down and goes to 10 - 15 FPS and makes LFS almost unplayable. It sometimes goes even lower to 5 FPS. I dont just get this in LFS, but also in another multiplayer game called Planetside (100+ when looking at a wall, 5 when in a fight and action is happening). Half life 2 felt like it was also laggy and that is single player.

I have attached my dxdiags file for you to see.

Ok I bought my system as a complete build from Evesham. But I did reinstall windows myself since then. Im not quite sure wether I have my BIOS and/or Windows and/or my hardware fully set up correctly.

My hardware system specs:
  • Pentium 4 3.4Ghz (i think its an EM64t, 2 show up in device manager???) - 200 x 17 setting in the bios
  • MSI bios v1.5b for MS-7058 Motherboard (ive found a 1.8 bios but have yet to update it)
  • 2GB of DDR memory set to 333 mhz in bios
  • nvidia geforce 6800 ultra pci express 256 meg
  • creative SB audigy 2 ZS with front panel + speaker/sub set
  • viewsonic vp191s lcd monitor @ 1280x1024 60hz
  • 2x 180GB SATA disk drives
  • 1x CD DVD ROM
  • 1x DVD RW / CD R/RW combo
  • 1x USB Hub self powered
  • 1x HP USB 2.0 printer, USB 2.0 cable with memory card readers
  • 1x Floppy disk drive with memory card readers
  • 1x USB ADSL Alcatel modem
  • 1x Logitech driving force pro
  • 1x microsoft wired optical mouse
  • 1x microsoft keyboard
My software system specs:
  • Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 quite old and clogged up install
  • Norton Anti Virus Corporate Edition disabled and enabled no difference but id like to be secure
  • Adaware SE
  • Windows XP firewall
  • nvidia drivers 93.71 had same fps problem with 81.98
  • latest creative SB drivers
Ok, I need some help with some things that i think it may be thats why im here because I know you guys will know about this stuff I guess. If not I will try and copy and paste it to toms hardware or somewhere. I dunno im at a loose end.

First:
See fig 2a. This is my Drives in Windows XP. Deframented both hard drives. Have got 80GB free on my windows drive and 125GB free on my data drive. Could it be that my SATA drives are not setup correctly from the first moment I installed Windows? How would I know if its the right drivers for the SATA disks? How can I measure what they are doing and how would I know if thats the issue?

What the hell is that VIA-P VT6205-DevB USB Device and VIA-P VT-6205-DevM USB Device? Is that the drivers for my 2 SATA drives? Do I have a VIA chipset on my MSI motherboard or am I confused by this and its normal functioning?

Second:
All of my hardware seems to run through USB. And I dont know if this is limiting performance somehow. My modem, my input, my printer and my drives? does SATA use USB? man i dont know enough about computers for this.

Third:
See fig 3a for my device manager. there is an ethernet card installed or something that hasnt installed properly but i have disabled this. will that cause problems in my system? does the rest of my device manager look ok to you or does something look wrong?

Fourth:
ive heard about having to revert to old drivers or to third party drivers to get better results and to avoid issues, what should I try as far as drivers go for my graphics card?

Fith:
USB ADSL modem good or bad? Should it handle the bandwidth fine? Or should I purchase a router and get that ethernet card setup properly? Anyone know a lot about this area? I dont think my ping is the fault here its definately some sort of system lag, it happens in a replay.

Sixth:
Should I put my monitor refresh rate to 75hz to get better results with V sync or anything else?

Seventh:
How would I know if my power supply voltage is not enough, ive heard the 6800 ultra is a drain on power? I dont really know too much about what power supply I have in there or if i should upgrade to a better one.

Eigth:
See Figure 4a - 4i for my LFS options. i have it set to 1280x1024 32 bit colour depth but the issue persists in 1024 resolution too. i have tried the minimum sleep option with no change. tried hardware vertex shading on/off. z buffer to 16 and back. are any of those options wrong or conflicting or anything. ive tried v sync on and off but my fps still is too bad to race comfortably. im pretty sure my specs can handle this or is my system underpowered?

Ninth:
temperatures of my hardware. im not sure what the temperatures are at on all of my hardware. how is the best way to monitor all of my critical components. i keep my computer locked away in a wooden desk cupboard which probably makes it run hot and i havent opened the case on it for near on a year maybe more. should I give it a clean? swap cards into different slots? should i monitor my fan speeds?

Tenth:
Faulty memory or other hardware? How can i run stress tests on all my gaming critical hardware to see if its all functioning well under pressure. I have a really old copy of PC Check on floppy disk but its very old now and may not work as well on my PC. Should I use dos based diagnostics or windows diagnostics is fine for this kind of fault finding. whats good free software to diagnose my computer?

Eleventh:
Other current problems with the PC that piss me off i dont know if they are related? who knows. on boot i get detecting USB mass storage devices for about 5 10 minutes and then it boots into windows. ive had that problem since i installed my hp printer. i think it conflicts with those 2 VIA-P devices earlier. but even when i disconnect it i still get the fps problem. this printer has memory card readers on it and my floppy drive has memory card readers on it too, conflict?? ah i dont know im just a newbie. Also my microsoft optical mouse tends to have fits and spin all over the screen but i beleive this is due to the surface im using it on.

Twelvth:
Its an old windows install i guess i could do with wiping it clean and starting over. but this i am doing over time as I slowly back up my files and prepare for the big wipe and stuff. as I get to that point ill make more posts to inform you all of whats happening and to bump me thread.




Please please please all you brilliant tech gurus help me get my good system running like it should be. A million questions for you all. I have searched and looked through other threads for help as you can see im kind of at the limit of my knowledge of computers. i feel like im really close to beating this gremlin.

PS. Please tell me of other information or things I can do to try and resolve this. pics or graphs or tests or something.
Attached images
fig1a.jpg
fig1b.jpg
fig2a.jpg
fig3a.jpg
Attached files
DxDiag.txt - 51.9 KB - 224 views
#2 - richy
here is fig 4a to 4i...
Attached images
fig4a.jpg
fig4b.jpg
fig4c.jpg
fig4d.jpg
fig4e.jpg
fig4f.jpg
fig4g.jpg
fig4h.jpg
fig4i.jpg
That's one long ass post.

I'll return tomorrow as I really gotta get work done before sunrise. Don't worry, we'll fix your puter more or less.
There is definately something wrong and one guess is that your graphics card is not working properly. Uninstall your Nvidia drivers and restart the computer and then use a program like driver cleaner to clean the nvidia drivers completely. Then install the 92.91 drivers (known to be the best drivers for the 6 series) from Nvidia.

This will rule out faulty graphics card drivers.

EDIT: By the way, the information you provided is very helpful, usually we have nothing to work with .
First off, you've caught me at 2am, after my exercise routine getting ready for bed after a long day, so I may have missed something obvious in your monster post. (As such I'm going to hold off suggesting anything right now | Check out my edit at the bottom of the post for an immediate thing to check) I'll edit my post / post afresh tomorrow morning when I get into the office.

However, to answer the easy questions;

Quote from richy :My hardware system specs:
  • Pentium 4 3.4Ghz (i think its an EM64t, 2 show up in device manager???) - 200 x 17 setting in the bios

Your processor is most likely HyperThreaded, which means that it presents itself as 2 processing cores to Windows. This is normal.

Quote from richy :My software system specs:
  • Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 quite old and clogged up install
  • Norton Anti Virus Corporate Edition disabled and enabled no difference but id like to be secure

How old? 6 months? A year? I rarely advocate wiping and starting again, but in some cases it's often far quicker to just blow the OS away and start again.

On the subject of Norton, it's about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Quote from richy :First:
See fig 2a. This is my Drives in Windows XP. Deframented both hard drives. Have got 80GB free on my windows drive and 125GB free on my data drive. Could it be that my SATA drives are not setup correctly from the first moment I installed Windows? How would I know if its the right drivers for the SATA disks? How can I measure what they are doing and how would I know if thats the issue?

If you didn't have the right SATA RAID drivers, your system wouldn't find any drives.

Quote from richy : What the hell is that VIA-P VT6205-DevB USB Device and VIA-P VT-6205-DevM USB Device?

A VT6205 is a card reader chipset.

Quote from richy :Second:
All of my hardware seems to run through USB. And I dont know if this is limiting performance somehow. My modem, my input, my printer and my drives? does SATA use USB? man i dont know enough about computers for this.

USB is reasonably fast. No SATA does not run through USB. They do run through the same chipset though. The argument being that if the chipset is doing too much, the other duties it should perform slow down.

As a thought, when you experience slow downs, do you hear the hard drive(s) working at all?

Quote from richy :Third:
See fig 3a for my device manager. there is an ethernet card installed or something that hasnt installed properly but i have disabled this. will that cause problems in my system? does the rest of my device manager look ok to you or does something look wrong?

It shouldn't affect things. If you're not using the ethernet port on your system, either remove the offending card, or if its built in, disable the port in the BIOS. It's usually under advanced setup or integrated peripherals.

Quote from richy :Fourth:
ive heard about having to revert to old drivers or to third party drivers to get better results and to avoid issues, what should I try as far as drivers go for my graphics card?

Try a version or two up from the ones bundled with your graphics card. As a general rule of thumb they are usually the best ones. jakg will tell you that the 93.71's are crap. Personally I'm not having any problems with them.

Quote from richy :Fith:
USB ADSL modem good or bad? Should it handle the bandwidth fine? Or should I purchase a router and get that ethernet card setup properly? Anyone know a lot about this area? I dont think my ping is the fault here its definately some sort of system lag, it happens in a replay.

Unless you're getting impossible speeds from the ADSL network, USB should beable to cope fine. As you've said, you're not getting a problem with bandwidth, it's client side rendering.

Quote from richy :Sixth:
Should I put my monitor refresh rate to 75hz to get better results with V sync or anything else?

Depends on the monitor. If you have a flat screen, leave it at 60Hz. Technically it shouldn't apply to flat screens as they don't work in the same way to CRT's, but I find that I get better visual performance from setting to 60Hz, and also disabling Vsync will provide "higher" peak FPS (if you have an old one, you may wish to not do this, as you may experience tearing).

Bear in mind that FPS is a crap measurement of performance. Frame time is more appropriate, but it's harder to judge.

Quote from richy :Seventh:
How would I know if my power supply voltage is not enough, ive heard the 6800 ultra is a drain on power? I dont really know too much about what power supply I have in there or if i should upgrade to a better one.

Things would stop working, slow down, etc. Check out this PSU calculator (take it with a reasonable pinch of salt):
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp

Quote from richy :Ninth:
temperatures of my hardware. im not sure what the temperatures are at on all of my hardware. how is the best way to monitor all of my critical components. i keep my computer locked away in a wooden desk cupboard which probably makes it run hot and i havent opened the case on it for near on a year maybe more. should I give it a clean? swap cards into different slots? should i monitor my fan speeds?

Use something like speedfan to monitor your temps. Bear in mind that the sensors on computers usually have a +/- degree tolerance on them. Yes it's a good idea to clean / dust out your PC. Obviously don't do it when it's on, and preferably don't use a vaccum cleaner.

Quote from richy :Tenth:
Faulty memory or other hardware? How can i run stress tests on all my gaming critical hardware to see if its all functioning well under pressure. I have a really old copy of PC Check on floppy disk but its very old now and may not work as well on my PC. Should I use dos based diagnostics or windows diagnostics is fine for this kind of fault finding. whats good free software to diagnose my computer?

For memory, use Memtest86+. For CPU's you want any number of calcalating programs. SuperPi, "CPU Stability Test", PCMark, etc. All of these have free versions. For GFX the traditional e-penis software is 3DMark. You can find both PCMark and 3DMark on FutureMark's website. Be aware that if your system really isn't stable, you could damage it when you push it to it's limits. There are supposed to be safety features to prevent it, but they can fail.

Quote from richy :Eleventh:
Other current problems with the PC that piss me off i dont know if they are related? who knows. on boot i get detecting USB mass storage devices for about 5 10 minutes and then it boots into windows. ive had that problem since i installed my hp printer. i think it conflicts with those 2 VIA-P devices earlier. but even when i disconnect it i still get the fps problem. this printer has memory card readers on it and my floppy drive has memory card readers on it too, conflict?? ah i dont know im just a newbie. Also my microsoft optical mouse tends to have fits and spin all over the screen but i beleive this is due to the surface im using it on.

The mouse is likely to be the surface, test it by using any old book as a mouse mat for a day. As for the USB mass storage device issue, does it go away when the HP printer is not plugged in? Do the Event logs (right click my computer, goto manage, expand system tools, expend Event Viewer, check under Application and System, around about the times it runs) have anything interesting in them. Interesting is something you learn over time unfortunately. Some errors are bullshit, others are not. It sounds like something on your system is either in deadlock, or you've got a race condition between 2 programs. Rarely will you get a race condition, so it's more likely to be deadlock - which can be caused by some services and drivers, or programs that run on boot.

Generally, do you notice any reoccuring pattern when you get slow downs? Hard drives working heavily?

Personally, the slowdown sounds like the whole machine is coming to it's knees as something kills the chipset. Typically desktop RAID'ed machines, which don't have a dedicated RAID controller produce this behaviour under extreme load.

Edit:
I've done some further research. Disable the 2 VT6205 devices and / or remove any card readers you have attached to the system and reboot. I'll be interested to see if it resolves your slow boot up problems. It would appear that a number of devices using this chipset are presenting similar problems across multiple OS', including Windows and the Free/Open/Net BSDs.
Tops marks TAA.

Hopefully it will solve the issue to.
Quote from Bob Smith :Tops marks TAA.

Hopefully it will solve the issue to.

Wish I could get some sleep now though
#8 - richy
Ok i have disabled the 2 imaginary drives by right click a real drive, selecting hardware tab, then using the drop down to "disabled" i checked in device manager and next to both of the VIA-P things its got a red X and is just disabled at the moment.

pc was still slow to boot, im guess i need to disable them from being auto detected in the BIOS too. i guess ill have to pull my floppy drive out, fingers cross there is seperate cables inside and i can just disabled the memory card readers and still use the floppy.

it seems like I may have got an FPS increase but its hard to say without trying to race it on a full server. but it looks to have helped. a lot! but! still only getting low rates about 20-40 im not sure if this is correct. ive got some to do still from the other parts will see how it goes.

still have to do the other drivers too and see how it all goes. thank you all so much for the help so far.

Edit: I have noticed something, and thats when I load up a game that runs in 3d or the comp is under strain the fans are on full rpm? possibly hinting to temperature??
Quote from richy :Edit: I have noticed something, and thats when I load up a game that runs in 3d or the comp is under strain the fans are on full rpm? possibly hinting to temperature??

It's reasonably common on the last few systems I've built which use stock coolers, they spin up the fans in preparation of the on coming beating they'll get
im running to 92 drivers as suggested earlier now. it felt smoother and looks like i got more fps increases but i dont know wether the problem is fixed. it was ok with 3 people on the server but slightly busier and the rate dropped hugely.

What exactly should I be aiming for based on my PC specs? Should I atleast have 100 fps solid or what?

damn its 4 am ive got to sleep, will continue the quest tomorrow.

edit: oh also installed speedfan couldnt see anything over 60 degrees will double check tomorrow and post exact details, too tired now!
#11 - Woz
Norton... hmmmm

My advice would be DELETE IT. There are a few reasons for this. From supporting software I developed I found MANY MANY issues were caused by Norton being on a system. Not sure if its better now but experience is that it is a resource hungy AV system that virus writers test against Norton to make sure they can get past it. Best to avoid ALL of the big names in AV for this reason. Pick a low resource one like AVG.

Another thing to try is turn off hyper threading in the bios. LFS and many other apps will work better without it. Each time the chip switches virtual cpu it has to take state as some registeres are shared. HT helps in some situations and makes matters far worse in others.
ive stopped norton from running now its added a few more FPS in but i feel less secure, going to download that alternative. I wonder if itll find any extra viruses that norton missed.

so far ive seen a bit improvement. while im driving i get a more constant 30-40 FPS. If i look left or right it goes up to 100 FPS. While watching a replay it will drop to about 10-20 in places when viewing the whole grid.

Its playable now. I dont know if its quite running at its full potential though. Im still trying as much as I can to get this system at its best. Overall it feels much better.

Ok, the other things ive still to do is 1) test all my hardware. 2) monitor the temperatures while I play. 3) reinstall windows 4) clean the computer up 5) remove that floppy, see if it can get a quicker than 10 minutes to boot. 6) update / tinker with the BIOS settings to get full potential...

will update more later.

see fig 5a for my temperatures ive had my computer on for a bit and played some music etc.

my windows install is about a year old ive had some hardware changes like new printer and bluetooth adapters ipods etc being installed. i might start new, with the help ive got from here and on the web for how i can keep my PC running sweet, i can try and monitor more of whats going on with my computer...
Attached images
fig5a.jpg
#13 - Jakg
Quote from richy :ive stopped norton from running now its added a few more FPS in but i feel less secure, going to download that alternative. I wonder if itll find any extra viruses that norton missed.

so far ive seen a bit improvement. while im driving i get a more constant 30-40 FPS. If i look left or right it goes up to 100 FPS. While watching a replay it will drop to about 10-20 in places when viewing the whole grid.

Its playable now. I dont know if its quite running at its full potential though. Im still trying as much as I can to get this system at its best. Overall it feels much better.

Ok, the other things ive still to do is 1) test all my hardware. 2) monitor the temperatures while I play. 3) reinstall windows 4) clean the computer up 5) remove that floppy, see if it can get a quicker than 10 minutes to boot. 6) update / tinker with the BIOS settings to get full potential...

will update more later.

see fig 5a for my temperatures ive had my computer on for a bit and played some music etc.

my windows install is about a year old ive had some hardware changes like new printer and bluetooth adapters ipods etc being installed. i might start new, with the help ive got from here and on the web for how i can keep my PC running sweet, i can try and monitor more of whats going on with my computer...

you really want to test that at full load (i like to run Folding at home for 10 mins) to get the full load temp, but i think it's reading your CPU at 57 degrees!

55 MAX is what you want, and if you get a low FPS chances are the CPU's underclocking itself to keep it cool

You could try cleaning out the heatsink, or re-applying it if neccasary
Any temp lower than 70 deg of Celsius is OK is your CPU has Prescott core which it uses I assume. Try to disable VSync in LFS as well as in nVidia drivers. Set Z-Buffer depth to 16 instead of 24bit in LFS Graphics settings. These things are known to cause some weird performance issues.
About that long detection of USB devices- try to plug your HP printer to another USB port. Also, if you have no USB keyb or mouse, disable those options in BIOS.
If you are up to some driver mess up, try out 93.71's for nVidia. I don't know which chipset your MoBo uses(or too lazy to find it out ), but i assume it is some i9xx series. It uses unified drivers, so check out Intel site and get an update - it might help solving some chipset-related issues like IRQ/DMA conflict.
About your SATA drivers. If you have configured your HDD controller like RAID or AHCI in BIOS, you are supposed to install drivers for it. It must be done in early part of WinXP installation - when installer prompts you whether you'd like to install any extra drivers(press F6 to do that).

If you want to check your how high your temp can get, get Prime95 and CPU Burn-In test and let them run simulatenously. This will utilize both CPU threads and makes some serious heat...

(huh.. kinda long post, I hope you will get something from it...)
should i be aiming for 55 or 70 because im inbetween. its showing little flame icons in speedfan though. do i need to find my processors model number out?

ive gotten myself a new "optical friendly" mouse mat will see how it goes.

havent done the other stuff yet.

i ran a memtest overnight and it got to about 46% i think with no errors.
If you are under 65, you are 100% OK, that little flame in SpeedFan says nothing, just stupid eye"candy". Memtest ran overnight and comleted just 46%? Really weird, my Celeron A 333MHz with 640MB RAM finishes Memtest86 in about 20 minutes, if not less. Didn't you enable some continuous testing? If it's so, I assume that errorlog or how it is called was showing zero.
If you didn't update the BIOS, do so. To identify precisely what CPU you have, use CPU-Z. Post a screenshot of CPU, SPD and Memory tabs somewhere if possible.
hi this is why i am worried about temperature a bit... see fig 6a and 6b. this is my system in its desk cupboard thing. theres a hole on the case which is for airflow which is almost up against the wood but it can get air in there...from the back and the front and down the sides but i am just a little concerned about it.

here is some data from speedfan about my drives see fig 5b and 5c. here is another shot of my running temps which seem to fluctuate a lot and there is one reading that says -6 or something i dont know whats going on there with that sensor, it seems to change a lot see fig 5d.

hmm

im still too lazt to drag my pc out of the cupboard, clean it and look inside and disconnect the floppy drive its a mission but i will do it soon. i need to sort out the birds nest of cables round the back ...

ok to update the bios, this is the readme. see attachment. should i just use a floppy disk or use some other way?

thanks again for the help everybody.
Attached images
fig5b.JPG
fig5c.JPG
fig5d.JPG
fig6a.jpg
fig6b.jpg
Attached files
7058.TXT - 569 B - 226 views
How to flash the BIOS.doc - 34.5 KB - 246 views
Quote from MadCatX :If you are under 65, you are 100% OK, that little flame in SpeedFan says nothing, just stupid eye"candy". Memtest ran overnight and comleted just 46%? Really weird, my Celeron A 333MHz with 640MB RAM finishes Memtest86 in about 20 minutes, if not less. Didn't you enable some continuous testing? If it's so, I assume that errorlog or how it is called was showing zero.
If you didn't update the BIOS, do so. To identify precisely what CPU you have, use CPU-Z. Post a screenshot of CPU, SPD and Memory tabs somewhere if possible.

yes i didnt really have time to look at all the results i had to reboot my pc for something. ill run the test again though. any tips on options to pick, its 2gb of memory so it might take a while to test it.

The cpu-z program is awesome!!!

see fig7a to fig7e for my results using cpu-z.

its a prescott does that tell me what temps is ok for it to run at?
Attached images
fig7a.JPG
fig7b.JPG
fig7c.JPG
fig7d.JPG
fig7e.JPG
Mine Prescott running overclocked at 3.41Ghz doesn't throttle down until is reaches about 72 degrees of Celsius.

I just looked at CPU-Z readout and I found something that is not 100% OK. On the Memory tab you can see FSBRAM ratio whic is 5:4. That means that Notrhbridge(chip handling communication among CPU, RAM and Graphics) has to match 4 RAM clockticks to 5 FSB clockticks. This is not good and it makes some delays in RAM-CPU communication. Your RAM modules seemes uncapable of 400MHz, so if I were you, I would get 400MHz DDR modules. Also downclocking RAM to 266 MHz makes FSBRAM ratio 3:2 which is a little bit better(but you should consider that slower RAM frequency will cause some performance penalty too).

BTW, 160MHz RAM frequency? This looks weird, didn't you overclock anything? It should be 166MHz.
your machine has about 2 to 3times the power of my computer (1.5GHz Centrino laptop with 512ram and an nvidia gForceFX5...)

if you got problems with lfs, your computer is ****ed in some ways.... i think there is something wrong with your grafix drivers...
im not sure about the memory FSB speeds that may be a setting that ive got it at in the BIOS. this is going to be my next post to you all. it will be a listing of all my bios options whats ive set them to and what options it gives me. will be back with that later...

Another update: See fig8a to 8d for my PC Mark results. Does the speeds of my hardware seem ok? Im unregistered does that matter? Not quite sure what the results tell me.

im going to do some 3d mark testing soonish.

So anyone know about fans?

i think mine has some sort of "intelligent" fan management or something handled by the chipset? should i tweak that?

got any tips for good PCI card fans or fans i can use for my hdd that are quiet. any kinda heatsinks i can glue to my drives?
Attached images
fig8a.JPG
fig8b.JPG
fig8c.JPG
fig8d.JPG
Ok this is not good!

3d Mark test results all came in at less than 10 frames per second...

see fig9a for my temperatures when I finished the test.

Ok and here is the overall results for 3d Mark. I have the 92.91 drivers in which arnt the recommended ones, should I put the older drivers in then try the test again looks like something is severely wrong. See fig10a to 10d.

Ack, save me!
Attached images
fig9a.JPG
fig10a.JPG
fig10b.JPG
fig10c.JPG
fig10d.JPG
i kind of noticed the clock speed in cpu-z lower than normal and slowly raising to 3400 hz again... as the temp went down i think.

i changed my ddr fsb speed to 333mhz. its original value, i put it to 400 mhz myself...but its still the same. im lost with this.
:bowdown: small update, i downloaded AVG and ran that and no other viruses found thank god.

this is definately something that ive done to my computer to make it like this.

during the 3d mark test, on the cpu test it crawled at 0 fps what does that mean, my processor is struggling with 3d graphics or something?

or is it that my memory is not right for this machine if so i will phone up evesham but would they supply me with memory that is not suitable????
I would go for faster ram check if your CPU is capable of using faster RAM speeds get +400mhz
Get new Chipset drivers... etc
ive got

AMD athlon xp 4200+ running @ 2.2ghz ,
1gig DDR ram @ 400mhz
7600Gt agp 256mb memory
Xion Powerreal 500W powersupply

and im running @ 45-60fps when normally driving , with twin drifting = 40-50
when with 3 cars its 25 fps :S

Sorry my for my blind-ishness

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG