what can I do to improve the performance of my PC?

Question

my specs are pentium 2.4 ghz, 512 mb ram, geforce 5500 256 mb, 80 gig. my CounterStrike Source sometimes have some framerate issues, what do I do to improve the PC's performance?

Answer 1

Defragmenting can help some but only if it's being used alot by the game. Checking for spyware and removing can help only if you happen to have spyware on the computer. The cpu isn't that bad, but you do need more ram if using win 2000/xp/Vista. 1gb minimum, 2gb recommended (that game doesn't need that much ram, but there are others that do). The video card will speed it up the most as this chart shows.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

Answer 2

There are a few answers to this question. One way of improving your pcs performance greatly would be to upgrade your amount of ram if you have any free slots open. 512mb is really not enough nowadays and ram is really cheap as well. I would suggest buying another 512mb stick of ram which is about 30 dollars. Before you buy this though you have to make sure you buy the right speed for your motherboard. Also upgrading your processor to 3.0 ghz or more would be good as well and 3.0ghz processors are pretty cheap too, about 70 dollars. If you want to be able to receive better fps in your games then you will definitely need to upgrade your video card. You can buy a decent video card for about 100 dollars. When buying the video card though you will have to make sure it is an agp card unless your motherboard supports pci-express. You could probably get a 6600gt or a 7300gt which would make your games run a lot faster. Like the other answers a good way to increase performance is to defragment or to download a good anti-spyware program(I suggest ad-adware) and delete some spyware. This will increase performance slightly but it wont really help increase the game speed much. The cheapest thing usually though is to increase ram, because 1 gig is usually the minimum currently. Also if you plan on upgrading hardware dont buy it from a local store as they are usually tremendously more expensive. The best online store for computer hardware is newegg. They are really fast and reliable. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Get more RAM stat! 512 is not enough for gaming. I have 2 gigs and I run all my games on max settings no problem (but I have an XFX geforce 7950GT). Get some more RAM, and you'll be sure to see a performance boost.

Answer 4

These tips will help alot.

A major cause of slow PC's is fragmentation of the hard drive.
You need to defragment the HD at least once a week if not more depending on how much you use your computer, and what you do with it.

One way is to use the defragment utility built into Windows XP. It is slow but does the job rather well. Go to:
Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools and then click on System Defrag to run the tool. It may take several hours, so let it run overnight or simply walk away from your PC for a few hours.

A great program for defragging automatically is Diskeeper. It costs $30 but is well worth it. Go to http://www.download.com and search for Diskeeper. Read the Publishers Description and the Editor and User reviews. It can be scheduled to run automatically as the program deems necessary, and if you are using your PC and the program launches itself, it will take a backseat to whatever you are doing and give you the priority for CPU usage. I think you'll agree it's a good program to have. It precludes your needing to remember to defrag at regular intervals.

Another major cause of a slow PC is programs that are running in the background. Here's another really good Microsoft tool. It’s called Autoruns and it was written by SysInternals who were recently bought up by Microsoft.

Before you download the program create a folder under program files called Autoruns. Leave Windows Explore open.

Launch Internet Explored and go to the following Microsoft web page.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/autoruns.mspx

Go to the bottom of the page and download the Autoruns program. After it downloads open the file. It is a Zip file. Unzip the file and you will see 4 files. Drag and drop those 4 files to the Autoruns folder you created under Program Files.

Once you have the 4 files in the C:\Program Files\Autoruns folder you can double click on the file titled “autoruns”.

This will bring up a window with several tabs at the top. Click on the “Logon” tab. It will list the programs that are running on your PC and eating up resources. Look them over carefully and turn off any that don’t absolutely have to be running. Simply click on the “check mark” in the little box beside the program name. Clicking on it will remove the check mark. Once you have edited the Startup list, click on Apply and then on OK.
NOTE: Leave items that show Windows; System 32; Program Files; etc. alone. Shutting them off may cause some things not to work.

Once you have exited the window, reboot your PC for the settings to take effect.

WARNING: Don’t go into the other tabs and start deleting things. You will probably give yourself major headaches if you do that. Stay focused on the “Logon” List only.

Another good thing to have is a little program called FreeRAM XP Pro. It is free and is available from http://www.download.com This program puts a little RAM meter on the System Tray and shows how much RAM you have remaining that you are not using at any given time. I think you may be surprised at how little RAM you have to run other programs. Also, once it is installed you can right click on the little meter, then click on RESTORE and it will open the RAM display window. You can tweak the settings so it will display your CPU usage also. Then just click “Minimize” and then “To System Tray” to return to the Task Bar.

What happens when you run out of or run real low on RAM is that the OS recognizes the low or no RAM situation and starts using a section of your hard drive as memory. This is called virtual memory, or a swap file. The PC is constantly writing and reading from your HD. Comparitively, it is a very slow process. Check your motherboard manual and determine how much RAM each slot can hold. It will also tell you what type of RAM you need. You can also go to http://www.crucial.com or http://www.4allmemory.com and run their analysis utility to determine what kind and how much RAM is installed in your PC. Depend on your MoBo manual to determine the RAM limits of each slot though.

Hope this helps

Answer 5

Look at your graphics card and upgrading your processor to handle such a large frame rate. keep it free of crap like spyware and you should be ok.

Answer 6

defragment your drive.