Why do I have to restart my PC before gaming?

Question

Before I play a good FPS on my computer, I have to reboot, or otherwise my frames per second drop dramastically. This only happens with games like BF2 and Counter-Strike: Source. Are these games big resource hogs? I have the ATi x700 PRO, 256MB.

Answer 1

Yes, all newer games are resouce hogs, especially 3D games like shooters. Your framerate drops because, due to the other things you were doing with your computer, programs are running and RAM is being used. This gets in the way of the game. When you reboot, all of this is cleared out and the game has the computer's resources all to itself.

I created a "kill.bat" batch job and put an icon on my desk, so I could stop all possible processes before running a game. Look at the processes in your Task Manager. Most processes with the user name on them (not the "system" items) can be killed without a problem. I recommend you create a kill batch file like this - it will save you all the time rebooting.

Answer 2

Most likely, you are low on memory resources, which you sound like you already know that.
Do you have an internal video card or a IDE video card? If it's internal, your motherboard holds a video card that shares it's memory with other applications. It's "shadow" uses a certain amount of memory just for video. Let's say 8Mb. As applications are being used on your computer, and memory is scarce, it pulls from this shadow. Then, as you start to game, there's not enough video memory to run the game. Once you reboot, all memory is released and now 8Mb is now allocated back to the video card again.
That's where the IDE video card comes into play. The external video card does not share memory with applications. It pulls the memory straight from the card and no application can take memory from that card. Therefore, video and graphics can be at it's top performance.

Answer 3

Yeah BF2 on high settings is especially a hog.

Rebooting helps because it clears out you systems temporary resources. there are a few things you can do to try help performance. Clear out your games cache folder for one.

Another thing i heard which i can't make any sense of but people claim work is to rename the BF2.exe to something like BF2Better.exe.... Don't know what it does but it seems to help. Other things you can try are disabling any antivirus software you have running.. and adjusting your graphic setting and installing latest graphics drivers..

Good Luck