Tweakin it.

Please feel free to post any and all links you may stumble across in your adventures to obtain the fasted machine possible.

the first link i have is related to Video Cards. this seems to be a worth while read.

Win XP Service
Tweaking. I generally cut my boot time down to under 15 seconds
for Win XP professional and using just under 85 megs of RAM on bootup.

AstonShell]A complete replacement for
the Windows shell. Uses far less memory than the windows shell,
is more stable and has much better themes. Costs $28 but will be the
best $28 you spend on software ever. Is free if you make a theme for it
and upload it to the website.

WinOverBoost.
Handy utility which tweaks the windows registry and defrags your
memory. While defragging the memory gives very little performance
boost, it does free up a fair chunk of it. Useful for freeing up a
little extra memory before the big compiles.

Alcohol 120%. This program
creates images of CDs or DVDs, lets you store them on your hard disk
and then allows you to mount them on a virtual DVD drive and use them
as if you had the physical disc. Especially useful for LAN parties
where you might not have enough copies of each game.

Another site for windows XP tweaks

HL2 bench utility

What is a bench utility?

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Dark Tree</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>What is a bench utility? </DIV></DIV>

the Webster definition

essentially, its a program that analyzes your machine and rates it in order to establish its power/performance to a certain degree.
it gives you a rough idea how your system rates to other peoples machines.

Lovely. After some "tweaking" of my computer from your help files, my internet no longer worked! I then had to go back to each one and find out what caused the disconnection! Yeah I know- I probably shouldv'e known disabling "Local Connection" would disconnect me, but hey, thats me. Anyway, thanx to that page, my commit charge has went from 266M to 130M out of 1250M! That was very helpful! As for the benchmark, I don't know how to use it in conjunction w/ widescreen displays....

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Dark Tree</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Lovely. After some "tweaking" of my computer from your help files, my internet no longer worked! I then had to go back to each one and find out what caused the disconnection! Yeah I know- I probably shouldv'e known disabling "Local Connection" would disconnect me, but hey, thats me. Anyway, thanx to that page, my commit charge has went from 266M to 130M out of 1250M! That was very helpful! As for the benchmark, I don't know how to use it in conjunction w/ widescreen displays.... </DIV></DIV>

dude, i read this multiple times and its still not clear. can you explain better please.

i cannot tell if you are pissed or thankful or both :/
and WTF is a commit charge?

Recently I've been partitioning my hard drive so that I have one partition for Windows and programs, then another that is simply the 'data' partition. This seems to make hard drive access time a bit faster. the hard drive has to look across a smaller area for OS and program files, even if they are fragmented. Also, it makes defragging take very little time, since the windows/programs partition tends to be much smaller. The data partition is less important to defrag. I like how this method keeps things organized, too.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Orpheus</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>
<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Dark Tree</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Lovely. After some "tweaking" of my computer from your help files, my internet no longer worked! I then had to go back to each one and find out what caused the disconnection! Yeah I know- I probably shouldv'e known disabling "Local Connection" would disconnect me, but hey, thats me. Anyway, thanx to that page, my commit charge has went from 266M to 130M out of 1250M! That was very helpful! As for the benchmark, I don't know how to use it in conjunction w/ widescreen displays.... </DIV></DIV>

dude, i read this multiple times and its still not clear. can you explain better please.

i cannot tell if you are pissed or thankful or both :/
and WTF is a commit charge?

</DIV></DIV>

Lol. Sorry. I was saying thank you....in a kind of roundabout way. What I meant was......I disabled a whole bunch of services on my computer (about 30) that made my computer run faster and freed up a bunch of my ram. However, in doing so, one of those services was controlling my internet connection, so I had to re-enable that service to get back online. Other than that little mistake, the tweaks really did help my computer.
Oh...and commit charge is...well, basically the physical ram. Click this link for a quick def.

i used to have a program that examined and analyzed your video card and told you the maximum over-clock it could safely handle.i cannot recall its name, can anyone remember?

ATI Tool can be used for that.

Ive found a few opensource shells for windows, are they any good? :

Geoshell - http://geoshell.org/index.asp - looks interesting, but ive not heard of it

Litestep - which i cant find the site for :sad:

and several others: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=287349

found this tonight.. seems quite useful.. will let you all know.

Careful when turning services off...you'll find a lot of dependencies that you never knew of. :razz:

Hey guys. I have been having some problems (or not) playing Half-Life 2 with the amount of fps I want. I have been tweaking my computer and Half-life 2 settings and cvars to optimize it but I still don't get where I want to be...

Here is my system:

DirectX: 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
System Memory: 512 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700LE (256 MB)
Audio Adapter: Creative EMU10K1 SB Live! Audio Processor
Hard Drive: Maxtor 6Y160P0 (160 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)

And I have a 23" Apple widescreen display (1680 x 1050)

I have to run the game with these settings:

Textures: Medium
Models: Medium
Shader: off
Resolution: 1680x1050
Water detail: reflect simple

Even with all this I still get really low fps....gets almost to choppy too play around water. I don't use my flashlight in the game because it slows things down noticeably....I don't know the exact fps I am getting but it isn't as smooth as I thought it should be. I do have bump map enabled but I think I only get around 20-30 fps if I have my flashlight on AND around water.

Anyway...gotta run, but might edit this post later with more info....sorry if this is confusing but it just doesn't seem that the game is running at its potential.

IS it possible that it is the high resolution that kills it? Does anyone else have a widescreen display that plays Half-Life 2? I can run the game at 1024x768 with a fixed aspect ratio on my screen but it isn't much better. Thanx guys.

edit:

would adding another stick of 512 memory help me? If so...which should I get?

also, things are even worse when I play Doom3. However...I can play Painkiller with all details and graphics max with NO PROBLEM. 60 fps in that game around water, multiple enemys and what-have-you. The biggest problem always seems to be dynamic lighting that kills my system....I dunno...

This is actually one situation where the CPU speed makes a difference (along with bus speeds of course).

In HL2, The biggest "balls-buster" really is the texture resolution. Even though you should be able to run them on high (since you have 256Mb of Video ram), but try turning that down.

I would imagine though, if you're getting that poor of a performance, there's something your computer is busy doing already. See how it runs after you exit all other applications ... and I do mean ALL (except, explorer and steam of course).

Also, do you have any AA or AF on? (make sure they're off or very low.)

That's about all I could imagine ... unless the FX series is really just that poor , but I doubt that.

I have the anti-aliasing turned off...and I have turned off almost all services except the neccesary ones to run my comuter....

EDIT:

How is my processor and video card? Are they decent comparatively to others?

/ponders

Ummm.... What is your processor?

you know, unless someone has a really big nVidia card, they all seem to say "I am not getting the results i want"

perhaps HL2 just likes Radeon better?
perhaps these people want to much?
perhaps Radeon people are more easily satisfied.

I get s**tloads of frames now on my new PC, but i would have been happy playing at a solid 30fps on my old one. all the time i hear people complain about not achieving a solid 60fps and i just look at the monitor and wonder "WHY?, you obviously got better than 30"

shrugs

perhaps that why i am dancing so much now. i got my 30 and then some.. maybe, showing my dedication to a game i could not play for more than 15-20 minutes for over 5 years has paid off, cause now i can frag for an hour with no ill effects of note. :biggrin:

Teh w00teh Orph! Now you can pick holes in everyones maps for hours at a time! :razz:

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting KingNic</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Teh w00teh Orph! Now you can pick holes in everyones maps for hours at a time! :razz: </DIV></DIV>
you bet :biggrin:

you know, unless someone has a really big nVidia card, they all seem to say "I am not getting the results i want"
perhaps HL2 just likes Radeon better?
perhaps these people want to much?
perhaps Radeon people are more easily satisfied.
I get s**tloads of frames now on my new PC, but i would have been happy playing at a solid 30fps on my old one. all the time i hear people complain about not achieving a solid 60fps and i just look at the monitor and wonder "WHY?, you obviously got better than 30"
shrugs
perhaps that why i am dancing so much now. i got my 30 and then some.. maybe, showing my dedication to a game i could not play for more than 15-20 minutes for over 5 years has paid off, cause now i can frag for an hour with no ill effects of note. :biggrin:

I think maybe ... it might actually be the FX series its self (which is flat out bizarre). Because I have HL2 settings cranked on a GF4 (as "cranked" as they can get anyway).

Dark Tree, I know your machine should run it better then it is at the moment. I'm beginning to think perhaps the drivers are s**tty. If they're completely up to date try getting some older ones that may work better. Or, look for some specific D3/HL2 with FX cards problems around the net.

I was only asking about the processor because, often times, if you're getting a bad FPS it can be because of the processor (not that the CPU processes the video information, but it does have to be ?written? by the CPU to get to the video card.)
I'm sure that's why Orph is getting such insane FPS now (I figure a higher bandwidth between the chipset and the AGP, ram, and CPU helped too)

I have no idea why I didn't post it before...but here is my processor:

AMD Athlon XP-A, 2100 MHz (10.5 x 200) 3000+