Hello every one at the Tek Forum,

1st ever post, but it looked like a place were people have experience, so i tought it would be a good idea to post up.

I recentley bought i gaming PC, Cost me a hole in my pocket at the age of 16

But there seems to be a problem,

Im not getting as much out of it i thought i would be,

Counterstrike soruce still has poor frame rates,

Some parts 80 fps, but when shooting becomes choppy,

And in many games, fps should be alot better than i thought.


Here are my system specs.


Operating System

Windows XP Media Center Edition Service Pack 3 (build 2600)

Main Circuit Board b

Board: Packard Bell BV Cuba MS-7301 1.0
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD W7301VP2.309 02/17/2007

Memory RAM

1024 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot A0 has 512 MB
Slot A1 has 512 MB

its DDR2 btw,

Display

NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT [Display adapter]
NUL M19W [Monitor] (19.1"vis, July 2006)

CPU

3.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium D
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Harddrive






Anything esle you need to know?

Please post up what upgrades you think i will need?



Thankyou

adding the CPU (processor) and harddrive may also help

Seeing as graphics are mostly limited by the GPU, Id consider upgrapding from the 8600 to EITHER an ATi 48xx [or 38xx] series card or an nVidia 9800GTX [or 9600GT]. An nVidia 8600 isnt exactly the cream of the current graphics crop. Also, try defragging your HDD. It should do the world of good.

PC World... The Pentium D is a little crappy nowadays & 1GB aint enough.  

Upgrades:
New motherboard (the pb one will break in about 6months time anyway)
Core2Duo CPU - a clocked E4xxx would do nicely.
4GB RAM
New PSU to power it - dont listen to anyone who says you need a $400 PSU - theyre retarded.

The gfx card youi got aint brilliant but this sounds more memory/cpu to me.

I would agree with SDP, if you can upgrade the processor, if your motherboard can take it, to a dual core. Even an E2180 would boost speed on that front. A new motherboard will mean stripping the whole system and, who knows, yours might just last another few years.

For memory its a bit unclear, but 2gb is nice to have and a cheap enough upgrade. 4GB might be a little excessive. Even Crysis runs well enough in 2GB on mine.

It would also be good to have a better graphics card, but the chances are that would need a new, more powerful, power supply unit (PSU)

when did you buy it ?

and how much did it cost ?

I would upgrade the drivers in the 1st instance.  Then if that doesnt help I would be inclined to do a full-on format and reinstall.  The hardware itself is fairly capable, it may just need some tweaks.  There is nothing in that system that would indicate a serious problem.  The Pent-D chips arent the best, but they are plenty for most things (They are Dual Core after all), they just run a little hot for some people.  Perhaps when playing games you might want to turn the AA down.  They older 8600 cards arent exactly the best at large res when you have the Anti-Aliasing turned up high.  The only hardware upgrade I would suggest at present is an extra 1Gb of RAM.  Youll see much improvement from that.  CS-S works fine on my Laptop in medium settings, and im on a TurionX2 with nVidia 6100 shared graphics.  

ahhh, youre right beaker... I forgot all about the pre-installed junk that will be on it !

defenatly needs a format and re-install.... personaly Id go with the normal version of XP, not the media center one !

and remember... if you dont have another pc handy with internet access then youll need to download all the drivers etc.. youll need and stick them on a cd !

Thanks for the replys guys.

But still,

What / were can i get my drivers.

Do i need one for my Motherboard?

I tryed searching every were for it but couldnt!

:@

Help me please!

It cost me 255£

And the CPU is duelcore

The board is an MSI board (Packard bell normally are).  However they are OEM boards.  Best thing you can do is use http://support.packardbell.com/uk/ to find the right drivers.  sorry cant be more help.  It appears that the MSI website hasnt heard of this board either.  

Try to drop all your grapics detail to low ,Filtering to bilinear, set antialiasing to none, and vertical sync disabled and defrag your drive and see if it helps,if your fps improve try to increase your details one by one unitl your fps is acceptable. if not then its time for an upgrade.

First thing to do is to install official drivers for your hardware. Your most probably on windows default or PBs own versions.

Chipset and graphics card being the most important.

Your Chipset is made by VIA (PT890 Northbridge and VT8237A Southbridge)
So get to - http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2 and track down the appropriate drivers.

You Graphics card is obviously nVidia so get to http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us and find the right ones.

It might be an idea to uninstall your current ones before installing new ones.

Next thing to do would be some cost effective upgrades, RAM is dirt cheap at the moment.
Your motherboard can support up to 3Gb of DDR2 400 or 533.

After that it gets more expensive with GFX cards and CPUs but for future reference your board can take any skt775 Intel Core 2 Duo (533 / 800 / 1066 MHz FSB) and any PCI-E 16x.

You could try http://halfdone.com/ukd/ or http://www.zhangduo.com/udi.html to help identify hardware in your computer.  Especially if its appearing as Unknown in device manager.