Athlon 2600 a bottleneck?

[rooster]

Hey guys - I hate random "why is my computer slow" questions just as much as the next guy but I find myself in a real pickle with this one.

First, my system:

2600+ XP
1 gig ram @ 333mhz
ASUS NF2 mobo
ATI 9800 pro 128mb on Cat 5.5, XP/SP2

So, according to different benchmarks, I am under the impression that at 1280x1024 (lcd native) I should be running around 60 fps, if not higher. Which, I would be perfectly happy with because I personally can't tell a difference above that.

However, as I have recently tried out several multi-mods for HL2 (HL2:CTF, Plan of Attack, HL2M, CS:S) I've noticed that my system is stuck in 30-40fps land and is not shy about dipping into the teens at the least opportune moments possible. A redeeming quality does however appear to be that as long as I'm a 3x3 room with nothing moving, I can in fact hit 60fps.

So, am I kidding myself with hopes of decent FPS or is installing Cool Web Search (or some other software issue) finally coming back to haunt me?

Thanks,
Rooster

 

[gweedodogg69]

is V-Sync on?

 

[jondy]

The answer is most likely yes. CPUs are HL2's bitches.

 

[rooster]

V-sync is off. Yea jondyfun I'm kind of guessing that too. I guess one thing that I did not mention is that scaling the graphics increases frame rates quite a bit when I'm just walking around empty areas but when there are other people running around and other such things then the frame rates go back to being quite low. I assumed that the processor has been my problem but I've been hoping that my prediction is wrong.

 

[Ti133700N]

I've never seen an Athlon 2600+ bottleneck a Radeon 9800PRO. How do you score in 3dmark03?

 

[Asus]

My friend has an Athlon 64 2800+ and a 9800Pro. He gets above 60FPS in HL2. Lowest he has had is around 30FPS dips in CS Source, so he says.

I haven't really seen any HL2 benchies with a 9800Pro and an Athlon XP 2600+.
Here is Far Cry on different CPUs with a 9800 XT and X800 Pro though.

I'll look for some benchmarks and see if I can find one with a XP2600+ and 9800 card.

 

[rooster]

I actually haven't run standard benchmarks in a while so I'm going to run some 3Dmark and let you know how it looks.

Thanks a lot for helping guys, really appreciate it.

 

[Asus]

3Dmark2003 and 5 are basicly only for testing GFX cards. You will have almost no difference with different CPUs with those 2 tests.

 

[rooster]

That is true.

I did however run 3DMark tests with seemigly expected results:

3DMark2001 SE: 13860
3DMark2003: 5476
3DMark2005: 2350

So it would seem that my 9800 is running as it should with this in mind.

So I don't know.

 

[Ti133700N]

Yep everything looks good. So the only thing you can do are the standard procedures, scan, defrag, remove spywares, kill any unneeded processes. And of course you can try to overclock your 9800PRO, this could give you an additionnal 5fps with stock cooling. But the best thing would be to run at 1024x768...

 

[jimbo118]

your res seems a little high for your comp tbh, i have a 3.2ghz p4 with a gig of ram and a x800xt 256mb and i play on 1280/960 and it can lag like a bitch sometimes, like jondy said, hl2 is very cpu intensive.