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Okay I'll try to be brief here, brief as I can anyway.
One of my best buds got a new machine. Here's the specs:
First, his old computer was 100% identical to mine in every way but he used to get all kinds of terrible performance issues, odd lag in online games, random crashes, terrible framerate fluctuations, etc. That computer has now been given to another friend who has no problems with it whatsoever. I know the problems weren't spyware because I checked out most of them myself, plus he knows enough about computers to run regular scans, etc.
His new computer is having some similar troubles despite it being massively better than his old one. I think the xfactor involved might be his monitor--it's the only thing that was different about the old computer from when he had it and when he gave it away, and it's the only thing that his new computer still has attached to it from before.
The monitor is a really old 21" Compaq monitor. It comes from a p3 500 mhz, that's how old it is...
Anyhow currently he is having some messed up issues. Constant slowdown and framerate troubles (that he didn't have for the first two months he had the computer) for one thing. When we play Generals online, the whole game is much slower than normal (even for me, and I'm the server). He also tells me that occasionally the monitor just degausses itself from time to time.
When I set up the machine for him I tried to get him the drivers for that monitor, but I think something must have gone wrong because the menus in games like WoW had shown some refresh rate options while it was a 'Plug and Play' monitor, but once I installed it's drivers it would only allow me to set it to 120hz, which is WAY higher than it should be at 1280x1024 res (in that particular game). Also the monitor seems to not like most resolutions, it's capable of 1162x864 (numbers may be wrong, sorry) and 1280x1024. I figured with the horsepower he had we could through it right to 1280x1024 but againt he monitor's crap so he's set at that weird 1162x864, which is where I think his problem is.
But there's also the problem of his dual core. See, he has an legitimate copy of XP that our ****head friend registered without permission on another PC, thus disallowing this new one to get service pack 2, which I've been told is required for the dual core to actually work properly.
I guess basically, my question is, based on the type of problems he's having, do you think it's the monitor or the fact his dual core is not being used correctly that's giving him all this grief? (For the record I think it's the monitor; at a Lan party he used MY monitor and everything seemed to be working great...but then again he didn't have it all installed yet, so I didn't see any real good game performance). But I've also heard dual cores without SP2 run like crap and ruin a lot of games (like Generals). But it's a hard call because like I said, the problems are getting progressively worse (which I deem to the monitor dying more and more because the vid card is overpowering it).
Any thoughts from you tech gurus?
One of my best buds got a new machine. Here's the specs:
- Athlon AMD 3800 dual core processor
- 1 gig corsair ram
- ASUS nforce4 mobo
First, his old computer was 100% identical to mine in every way but he used to get all kinds of terrible performance issues, odd lag in online games, random crashes, terrible framerate fluctuations, etc. That computer has now been given to another friend who has no problems with it whatsoever. I know the problems weren't spyware because I checked out most of them myself, plus he knows enough about computers to run regular scans, etc.
His new computer is having some similar troubles despite it being massively better than his old one. I think the xfactor involved might be his monitor--it's the only thing that was different about the old computer from when he had it and when he gave it away, and it's the only thing that his new computer still has attached to it from before.
The monitor is a really old 21" Compaq monitor. It comes from a p3 500 mhz, that's how old it is...
Anyhow currently he is having some messed up issues. Constant slowdown and framerate troubles (that he didn't have for the first two months he had the computer) for one thing. When we play Generals online, the whole game is much slower than normal (even for me, and I'm the server). He also tells me that occasionally the monitor just degausses itself from time to time.
When I set up the machine for him I tried to get him the drivers for that monitor, but I think something must have gone wrong because the menus in games like WoW had shown some refresh rate options while it was a 'Plug and Play' monitor, but once I installed it's drivers it would only allow me to set it to 120hz, which is WAY higher than it should be at 1280x1024 res (in that particular game). Also the monitor seems to not like most resolutions, it's capable of 1162x864 (numbers may be wrong, sorry) and 1280x1024. I figured with the horsepower he had we could through it right to 1280x1024 but againt he monitor's crap so he's set at that weird 1162x864, which is where I think his problem is.
But there's also the problem of his dual core. See, he has an legitimate copy of XP that our ****head friend registered without permission on another PC, thus disallowing this new one to get service pack 2, which I've been told is required for the dual core to actually work properly.
I guess basically, my question is, based on the type of problems he's having, do you think it's the monitor or the fact his dual core is not being used correctly that's giving him all this grief? (For the record I think it's the monitor; at a Lan party he used MY monitor and everything seemed to be working great...but then again he didn't have it all installed yet, so I didn't see any real good game performance). But I've also heard dual cores without SP2 run like crap and ruin a lot of games (like Generals). But it's a hard call because like I said, the problems are getting progressively worse (which I deem to the monitor dying more and more because the vid card is overpowering it).
Any thoughts from you tech gurus?