Got a problem that's been bugging me for 2 months. I play Day of Defeat (well, I DID) and everything worked fine with my onboard vid card. As of 2 months ago whenever I play the game my fps is 4!!! Not a typo - 4fps! This happens both online and offline, and it's also slow and jerky when playing the Call of Duty demo. I've run net_graph in the DoD console and in net_graph 1 my fps=4ish, in=1.2k/s and out=0.6k/s tops. Since the problem started I have switched to Comcast Digi Cable (I used to be on 56k modem which worked fine) and have reformatted my machine and replaced the Intel845GL drivers. Also done the soundcard, and I think I've replaced every driver on the damn thing. :S Short of buying a new soundcard, is there anything I can do to fix this? DVDs are also stuttery on my machine. My system: 1.8GHz Celeron 256MB RAM Intel845GL onboard sound (SoundMAX name on it) AwardBIOS rev. 3.02 As I said, vid and sound are onboard, but this never caused a problem when I played before. Also the problem started before I upgraded to cable - in fact the problems seemed to appear quite spontaneously. Please help! I'm stuck!

Onboard graphics cards are very weak... Also, you are running a celeron, so the motherboard with the onboard sound/video wont be the latest, and wont be very good for games at all to be honest. Recently, DoD has had a graphics overhaul, and it has actually become pretty demanding of your system, maybe this was when you got your cable, and was able to download DoD fast? (its also been about 2months or so since DoD 1.0 came out) And to be honest, there is no way you're gonna get the call of duty demo to run smoothly on a system like yours, especially with onboard video and sound. If you want a good, cheap sound card, the current radeon 9600PRO is the best for a sub $200 card, but also performs best on an agp8x enabled motherboard. And you can pick up a soundblaster 1024live card, or even an audigy, for around $50 If DVD's never used to run slow, and are now, try some system maintenence, try running the disk defragmenter in windows (WARNING - will take a VERY long time to do If you haven't done it, and DON'T use your PC whilst defragging) and check out www.tweak3d.com It wouldn't help to defrag anyway! Hope this helps Dan

http://www.windowsxpatoz.com/cgi-bin/performance/index.cgi?answer=1036282631&id=1036282433 Stop jerky graphics ============================================= http://www.windowsxpatoz.com/cgi-bin/performance/index.cgi?answer=1036284156&id=1036282433 Problems enabling DMA on IDE drives Are you experiencing jerky DivX;-) movies or does your mp3s click and pop

Thanks for the help guys. Dan, sorry for my typo. I meant new graphics card, not soundcard, but as I'm sure you'll agree I could do with both. It didn't occur to me that Call of Duty would be very slow too - I assumed it looked jerky for the same reasons as DoD. I just can't figure out any reasons for it being like that! Anyone got any ideas what would cause problems like that? If we can figure that out I'll know where to look for solutions easier! As for maintenance, I defrag regularly anyway and use the Disk Cleanup often too. Johnw, thanks for your suggestions too. My IDE drives are already set to DMA. As for the Zip drive suggestion - I have no removable drive, but there is a partition on this machine containing Hewlett-Packard's system restore stuff. (Which is bloody annoying but I can't do much about it as HP decided I couldn't have the XP disk. This is what I get for having a computer designed for morons who should look but not touch...) Do you think I could disable THAT drive with no ill effects, just to test it? Going to replace my graphics stuff with a GeForce4 Ti4600 PCI card, but to be honest I'm not confident it'll fix anything. Someone has suggested to me that changing my BIOS graphics settings to 48MB would help. My BIOS says I can do 1MB, or 8MB. (Onboard VGA setting). Does anyone know if my BIOS has an advanced settings bit? Nothing like that is evident from what I can see. (I have AwardBIOS 3.02 (05/08/02). Thanks again! M

http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/home.html http://www.scale.hjem.wanadoo.dk/Starstorm/RefreshForce%20V1.10.zip RefreshForce universally and permanently fixes the Windows 2000/XP refresh rate problem on ANY variation of graphics cards, monitors, or drivers!!! No messing around, no hassle, it WORKS and it's SIMPLE! Completely fixes the Windows 2000/XP refresh rate problem Functions regardless of graphics card, and driver versions One-time execute, no reboot required, and no background program Ability to push Plug & Play monitor drivers over 85Hz Support for systems with multiple display adapters Automatic backup facility Sophisticated and unique display optimization technology Ability to actually lower refresh rates as well as increase them, if software causes display corruption and... It's freeware!