To improve Half Life Performance

[Maglife]

Hello, I just recently purchased HL2, tried runing it on my Nvidia Gforce2 GTS, and was really slow, went to compUSA and picked up a 9800 pro. Running on windows 2000 on a 2700 XP the game is still not up to par. Am running on 800 x 600 with everythign on High. The worst is I get this studering affect, when the frames come to a stall and the sound repeats like a broken record.
What should I do.
Bring the VC back and pick up an x800 pro? or should I get a new processor, what would make the greatest improvement?
I'd like to keep the same MB if I could because I am running a raid and I don't want to reformat all my drives again. If I am not mistaken the newstest AMD chips require new Mbs correct

I am not a real gamer by no means, but HL was the only game I got into and HL2 is just amazing, but I think Valve could have done a much better job when it comes to CPU and VPU optimizations. My system is only maybe a 1 and a half years old at the most, with a brand new VC. Also what is up with this 20 minute first load up decrypting crap. When you pay over 50 bucks for a game let the damn thing play why take another 20 minutes out of my time, Geez.
anyways any imputs are apreciated.
cheers. :bounce:

 

[wbcninjaofmist]

post your entire pc specs , everything , + how much ram do u have?

 

[Maglife]

sorry.
Amd XP 2700+ on a Soyo Dragon KT400 MB
512 MB ram. ( dont' know what Mhz)
Radeon 9800 pro 128m vc
Sound Blaster live Value
100 Gig Maxtor HD running single (C: drive)
2 80 gig Maxtors running raid.
Thanks.
Mag

 

[Asus]

Your system is up to par and with a 9800Pro you should be able to use some detailed settings at 1024x768.

Clean the nvidia drivers off your system with Drivercleaner?
Have much running in the background or have the newest GFX drivers (4.12 now) from ATI.com?

 

[blahblahblah]

Has the stuttering problem been fixed yet? I had that problem on my X800 Pro. They supposedly came out with a patch fixing it, but I haven't played HL2 after the patch came out.

 

[Maglife]

Thank you for quick replies. Am running newest drivers from ATI, just dowloaded that driver delete program, once I figure it out I'll let you guys know. I think that maybe hve been the problem, there is something wrong with my windows and it won't let me delete any software that is installed, it gives me some error. So I never uninstalled the Nvidia drivers. I deleted the nvidia card itself in the device manager, then rebooted and installed ATI card. I'll let you guys know,
Thanks.