Re: Any tweaks to speed up games under XP?

From: pjp (pjp_is_located_at__at__hotmail_._com)
Date: 03/13/04 

Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 12:49:28 -0400

XP Pro with integrated sp1 plus all criticals from Update site applied.
Latest VIA 4-in-1;s applied as first install after OS up and going.
DirectX9.0b, passes all DXDiag tests and there's "No Problem ..." all
around.

Tyan Trinity 400 S1854 motherboard
PIII at 733Mz (to spec)
512 megs ram running at 133mz fsb (to spec)
Radeon 64 DDR VIVO (7200)
Xpert98 (2nd display multi-monitor)
two wd hd's, 15 & 40 gigs with plenty free space on each
Creative SB-PCI128 sound card

2 Logitech Rumblepads
2 Logitch wheels (MOMO Force & Racing)

Mustek flatbed scanner "Twain", (lpt port pass thru model)
Creative Webcam (also appears as a Twain scanner)
Fuji digital camera as webcam or Mass Storage Device

3 printers, 2 Epson inkjets and an old Canon laser

Logitech mouse
Wacom pressure sensitive tablet

Ethernet card connected to four other older 98SE pc's in-house (TCP/IP and
Netbuie as protocols, including XP)
USR Robotics 56K external modem

2 self-powered external four port USB hubs for all the USB devices. Does
provide 500Ma spec to every port simultaneously, e.g. no attached device
shows any kind of problem in use..

The hardware seems stable an there was/is specific XP drivers for it all (I
was surprised I found scanner driver). The ethernet is up and running with
printers and folders being shared as expected from both sides. I even
managed to get the Guest account to be able to use a proxy server on one of
the other pc's to connect to the net after giving up in frustration at it's
refusal to allow use of the dialup modem connection even though it's
specified as "shared by all" by the "Admin" account that set it up (Users
are ok and can use it). The only problem hardware wise is, I can't get the
back speakers working off the sound card as there appears to be only XP's
built-in support for the card.

This is the one thing I've found really makes a difference for games is, use
batch files to start the game so you can elevate it's priority, e.g. "cmd /c
start /High LinksLauncher.exe" is noticably faster (as I'd expect).

I feel the basic problem is background "tasks" as Performance under
Ctrl-Alt-Del shows cpu bouncing from 2 to 13% continually (but randomly in
magnitude). I've tried to determine exactly what all these various services
do but when you try to research them it seems like the answer becomes a
circular reference and it's never really explained. In particular, it's
undetermined what's going on in the background regarding the ethernet. There
seems to be a number of various services that might be doing some type of
"polling" for shares or something but as they're not really documented I
have no idea what one's I can turn off etc. at no risk to basically mucking
up what works now (the Guest account can connect to web using a Proxy server
running on one of the other pc's as it "refused" anything to do with the
dialup miodem connection). Basically, I'm very wary of blindly changing
things under any version of Windows because as often as not "un-changing" it
doesn't bring the system back to what it was (e.g. unknown inadvertant
consequences).

For example, I have no idea what the "Alerter" service REALLY does, what
"other features" absolutely require it to be running in order to function
correctly nor what these "other services" also do. Ask help for "them" and
you get another reference etc. which eventually seems to lead no-where
usefull.

I have turned off the obvious, e.g. disk performance monitoring service,
indexing and the like.

As usually MS's help isn't helpfull, just frustrating.

"Chris Catt" <notknown@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:uhM4JnPCEHA.712@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> Hi, all depends upon your hardware specs, we really need to know your
> hardware specs before we can give you advice. What we need are cpu -
> type/speed. motherboard, ram - amount/type, video card. If you have any
> problems finding this out then here
http://www.aida32.hu/aida32-download.php
> is a good tool to use. Suffice to say that XP hardware requirements are
much
> higher than those of win98, therefore if you've not much ram, say 128mbs,
XP
> will really need twice that before you get reasonable game performance. I
> expect Jimmy S will have more to say on this, over to you Jimmy :-)
> Chris C
> Chris
> "pjp" <pjp_is_located_at_@_hotmail_._com> wrote in message
> news:OiF0SEHCEHA.2308@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> > Just installed XP Pro as dual-boot with existing 98SE.
> >
> > Same game (NFS:U) running from same folder (e.g. just created new
shortcut
> > under XP) is basically unplayable under XP it's running so slow (slow
> > motion) at 640x480 where-as under 98SE I can run it acceptably at
> 1024x768.
> > All other settings the same including under Properties DirectX settings.
> > Links 2003 and Flight Sim 2004 seem the same but not so exaggerated,
> > probably because they're not high speed "action" type games.
> >
> > Is this typical? I'm running same revision drivers for the Radeon, e.g.
> Cat
> > 4.3.
> >
> > I'm hoping it's all the crap running in the background so wondering if
> > there's any site(s) document what all that crap actually does as MS's
help
> > doesn't even try to explain what they actually "do" in most cases.
> >
> >
>
>

Relevant Pages

  • Re: frame rate drops greatly every 10 seconds
    ... than the game and the various utilities that need to run. ... is i have to unplug my usb mouse when windows starts (i ... Also I have a unknown hardware and some audio hardware thing (which is ... If you installed a seperate sound card, do you have OB sound, and if so did ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: semi-literate newbie
    ... the few hundred extra on the unnamed music supplier or some other ... selected M-Audio hardware. ... M-Box and another sound card. ... I'm becoming familiar with the virtues of Glyph hard drives. ...
    (rec.audio.pro)
  • Re: linux-next: Tree for June 13: IO APIC breakage on HP nx6325
    ... If your patch is applied in its present form, all of the boxes from HP ... The workaround makes the system use the mixed interrupt mode (well, ... but it does not make your piece of hardware less broken. ... If we stopped using parts of some spec, ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: getting arror
    ... Error 80040256 (No audio hardware is available, ... fixed just reinstalling the drivers for the sound card. ... Manager right click on My Computer and select the Device Manager tab. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player)
  • Re: I request inclusion of SAS Transport Layer and AIC-94xx into the kernel
    ... >> largely like SCSI, ... > specified piece of hardware. ... Because what matters is not the spec, ... The same way software inevitably has bugs in areas that haven't been ...
    (Linux-Kernel)