Why does my computer just plain suck???

[Brackus]

Okay, I have been through a few changes (new harddrive, new ram, new vid card, and 2 windows changes)

But, my computer:
1.2ghz athlon, 256 ram pc133, 40+30 gig hd's, geforce 4 Ti 4200 128mb VIVO

But, my computer freezes in unreal demo, and even warcraft 3, like, at lower settings...

Why is this, how can I fix this???

And no, it is not a problem with too many background programs running!!!

Dustin

 

[OllO]

OK, cant find any info on your power supply - what do you have in that department?

 

[lRageATMl]

might wanna check if your running hot as well...what kind of mobo do you have?

 

[Mavrick007]

What drivers are you running? Anything overclocked?
When do the freezes occur in the programs?

 

[CraigRT]

Must be incorrect driver installation
if you do a wrong order for drivers, you can get a problem like this
i've seen it many times before.

 

[Brackus]

Okay, I have the A-Open AK73 Pro motherboard,
my powersupply is just a generic 300 or 350w one...
Ummm.... I had a problem before, it was my ram was too hot (used to have two 256 mbs)
and now, after it restarts, Icheck the heat that the stuff on the vid card is quite hot...

But i mean cmon, I have a damn 4200 128 mb, and its from leadtek... its not bad, it shouldnt be
overheating since I cannot even work it to its potential.

Nothing is overclocked, although I wouldnt mind trying it sometime (ram and cpu likely)

I think thats all the questions, I dont know what to do about bios or mobo drivers, but
I am using 40.72 I believe

 

[dfloyd]

When the games freeze, does your hard drive led light up?

More than likely the problem. Get more ram. I have 512 and in UT2k3 I could use more.

 

[tapir]

Find out the number of watts your PSU putts out on the 3.3 and 5V rails combined. If it's less than 180W theres a potential problem. Another test you can do to see if your PSU is a problem is to underclock your FSB to 100MHz and see if that stabilizes things.

 

[earthman]

bad/cheap PSU for sure.

 

[zShowtimez]

More than likely the problem. Get more ram. I have 512 and in UT2k3 I could use more

Doubt that. I have 256MB PC133 and a GF4 Ti4200, i can run UT2003 at max settings and it runs fine. (No AA and such though)

 

[CubicZirconia]

bad/cheap PSU for sure.

I wouldn't say "for sure", but it could be. It would be worth trying a different psu if possible. I'm leaning towards heat being the issue if it only locks up in games. Try taking off the sides of your case and seeing what happens.

 

[Brackus]

okay... I know a lot of things about computers, but what is a psu?? power supply unit...

And if so, how do I test it?

 

[blade2]

Originally posted by: tapir
Find out the number of watts your PSU putts out on the 3.3 and 5V rails combined. If it's less than 180W theres a potential problem. Another test you can do to see if your PSU is a problem is to underclock your FSB to 100MHz and see if that stabilizes things.

as tabir said, check to see if your Power Supply Unit (PSU) provides greater than 180W on the 3.3V and 5V combined, you do this by simply reading the sticker that is stuck onto it. Also try decreasing the FSB from 133Mhz, to 100Mhz, and just incase u dont know, thats done in the bios..

 

[R3solve]

Ugh....the cpu and vid card and HD's seem fine...I've got a similar setup (with a MUCH weaker vid card tho) and mine performs great. Might I suggest an upgrade to DDR memory? That really does the trick for most setups.

 

[revvy]

your computer sucks b/c you suck... haha, jk..

 

[ShowdOWN]

its not always the computer that sucks... maybe id10t error?

 

[jarsoffart]

Did you upgrade OSes or do clean installs? If you upgraded the old OS might have left some junk causing problems. I'm just speculating, so if I'm wrong don't flame me.

 

[TechMasterChen]

Beat me to it JasonFfart, I was going to suggest the same thing. If you are running Win98 dump it for XP-SP1. I have a 733mhz with 512 Ram and upgrading to XP-SP1 fixed a lot of gaming issues for me earlier this year.