[jelboy]

Hi there all

I recently upgraded my pc. I went from a AMD 3700+ single core cpu to an AMD X2 4400+ dual core, 1gb to 2gb ram and a crappy old Maxtor 300gb hdd to a WD Raptor 75gb and it doesn't seem to be that much quicker... still a bit of lack and graphics stuttering on games sometimes. I cannot go up to the latest graphics driver on my X1800XT cos my 19" wide Viewsonic monitor reports a bad sync and stays black on boot up so I am using the preious aTI driver. Other than that I have a clean instal of XP SP2, and have even upgraded the bios to accommodate the new chip.. Am really at my wits end and would like to know anybodies suggestions
Thanks a lot

Jez

Edit:
I have moved your post to the correct forum.

[Wolfeymole]

Were all these hardware changes done before you installed the OS or after?

[jelboy]

Hardware changes then new os onto blank hdd...

[alex]

Originally Posted by jelboy

Hi there all

I recently upgraded my pc. I went from a AMD 3700+ single core cpu to an AMD X2 4400+ dual core, 1gb to 2gb ram and a crappy old Maxtor 300gb hdd to a WD Raptor 75gb and it doesn't seem to be that much quicker... still a bit of lack and graphics stuttering on games sometimes. I cannot go up to the latest graphics driver on my X1800XT cos my 19" wide Viewsonic monitor reports a bad sync and stays black on boot up so I am using the preious aTI driver. Other than that I have a clean instal of XP SP2, and have even upgraded the bios to accommodate the new chip.. Am really at my wits end and would like to know anybodies suggestions
Thanks a lot

Jez

Edit:
I have moved your post to the correct forum.

Hi Jelboy.

I'm assuming the upgrade was primarily for gaming?

Whilst the 4400 has two cores it doesn't have any extra mhz speed and as the core architecture is the same you're not going to see any benefit when gaming as very few games take advantage of more than one core.

The extra spin speed of the Raptor (nice choice by the way) is not going to help when gaming other than enabling quicker load times, but only if you are keeping it de-fragged as any hdd will work faster reading sequential data rather than going to different areas of a platter to search for the next part of the load segment.

The extra gig of ram will help but your problem may be with your card. I'm assuming your tft is running at 1280x1024?

As you can see, overall, for a gaming experience you havn't really changed much as far as your games are concerned.

[gerbery]

See if the drive is fragmented. I think even the fastest HDDs today are still affected by fragmentation simply because the files we play with are so *many* and so *big*. It wont be surprising if you miss the smooth performance that your new system was capable of inspite of the most advanced components installed if the HDD falls 'ill'.