Building new gaming rig

[nrgiser]

Right now I have P4 2.53/512/120GB/Radeon 9800AIW. It aint cutting it for the new games though. Half Life 2 loads really slow and is choopy at times and Vampire Mascrade is so choopy it's barely playble. Anyways here is what I was thinking:

MSI Neo2 Platinum
A64 3500+ 939
2x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum
eVGA 6800 GT

Please make any suggestions!

 

[meltdown75]

those specs sound pretty good to me... i would suggest there could be something else wrong, maybe drivers or OS problem.

What settings are you playing at, which drivers are you using etc? details

 

[Regs]

The parts you listed are fine. Make sure you get a good quality 400 watt PSU with all that like an Enermax or Antec PSU.

Keep in mind there has been known issues with the games Audio and aniso filtering causing stuttering. A lot of people here, including myself, experience choppiness from the auto-saves and audio glitches and I've been playing it on a 6800GT, 1 Gig Ram, and a A64 2.0 GHz cpu.

Maybe wait for a few game patches or driver updates to come out, but if you want to upgrade anyway, no better time to do it.

 

[Zinn2b]

YOU might want to read the new post first fella

 

[Cheetah8799]

It aint cutting it for the new games though. Half Life 2 loads really slow and is choopy at times and Vampire Mascrade is so choopy it's barely playble.

Sounds to me like you have something set wrong with your rig. Maybe the CPU or ram speed could be way off in the bios. Or maybe you have the game graphics settings set to the highest values, which a 9800 flat out isn't going to be able to do. A 9800 WILL play the latest games, I have a 9800 Pro and am not having any problems, but I keep my resolution at 1024x768 for most, and don't have AA or AF turned on.

 

[imported_Computer MAn]

Just add another 512mb and the slow load times will go away and so will the choppyness. You can also overclock the processor for some more speed.

 

[nrgiser]

Well I use the latest drivers for my Radeon 9800 AIW. My 2.53 is overclocked to 2.8 so I know the setting are all right. Windows seems fine as weel. So I dunno... :-

I use Santa Cruz Turtle Beach soundcard though....

 

[KC5AV]

I've had problems with choppiness in some games. I'm not really familiar with the Santa Cruz, but I found I had some sound setting wrong (EAX enabled). I disabled that, and everything is fine.

 

[meltdown75]

Originally posted by: nrgiser
Well I use the latest drivers for my Radeon 9800 AIW. My 2.53 is overclocked to 2.8 so I know the setting are all right. Windows seems fine as weel. So I dunno... :-

I use Santa Cruz Turtle Beach soundcard though....

Call me crazy, but I don't think you should need to OC to 2.8ghz to run anything smoothly. And I hope a year from now I can say the same. Your system is fast enough even at 2.0ghz to run HL2, assuming everything else is ok. So I doubt its the actual cpu speed. 9800 pro is more than enough also, so it ain't that. Cross those 2 off your list. And if you do get new hardware, I'll take your old stuff and play HL2 until the cows come home drivers, OS & config are pretty huge though... by chance is anything running in the background?

 

[Interitus]

Agree with everyone here. Either some setting is messed up or you've got some spyware running in the background or something. I run a Mobile AMD @ 1.8ghz most of the time with a 9800 Pro and I don't have a problem in the world even with Doom3 at medium settings on 1024x768. If you're going to upgrade anything I'd consider another stick of 512 RAM.

 

[DeathSniper]

Your rig should be fine. I have an Athlon 1800+ running at stock 1.53Ghz, 1.1Ghz DDR266 RAM, and a GeForce4 Ti4400 and I can run HL2 at 1024x768 @ high detail just fine. Doing the video stress test, it averages 57fps. It sounds like you might have something running in the background...

 

[Momental]

I've noticed the my avast! anti-virus program slooooooooows down my system in a big way when it's chuggin' along.

I'll bet you have something similar that's hoggin' up all your CPU resources, such as an anti-virus proggie. Just turn that puppy off when you're playing and you'll see an immediate difference.

If nothing else, hit 'CTRL-ALT-DEL' and check under 'System Processes' to see how much of your CPU is being taken up by something.

 

[The J]

I believe I read that Vampire: Masquerade is based on the Source engine, which is the one Valve created for Half Life 2. Your problems could be based on an issue with Source since others have complained about it (Half-Life 2, not the engine itself). Note that this is only speculation.