HELP! Great system, bad performance

[evlgamer]

Greetings all, first my system specs;

AMD 64 - 3200 (socket 754)
1 gig of pc 3500
eVGA Geforce 6800 Ultra
Soundblaster Audigy 2 zs
34.7 gig 10,000rpm SATA hard drive (recently defragmented)
winxp - service pack one only

I have been playing hl2 with settings all the way up with the exception of AA which i have at 4x. I get frequent moments where the game hangs, and the sound is in a loop, then it will bust back into normal gameplay. this happens after levels load, and sometimes in game. Any tips or news on this issue? Also, how do i tell the game to show my framerate? Thanks to any and all who assist.

 

[dc_pimpino]

Hmm, there's a lot of things that can make a game lag from time to time, It could be your anti-virus software that is scanning the big files while they are being read my hl2/at the same time as you play. It could be not having enough free space, it could be a harddrive with a lot of fragments; but as you wrote you just defragmented it.

You should update all your drivers, which i assume you have already done. You should use anti-spyware software such as: Ad-aware 6 + spybot search & destroy + spywareblaster (all of them installed). Have you checked your bios so that they have been optimized for best performance?

You have a state-of-the-art computer i would say, mostly stuttering/lags/freezes and looping of sounds in-game indicate that your computer is under a lot of stress at the moment(?). Close all programs that aren't necessary to have on while you are playing the game, disable the anti-virus auto-protection while you are playing, close msn messenger, icq, kazaa/dc/dc++ etc, everything but your firewall (if you have one ;P).

Well there's not much more i can say at the moment, come back when you've tried my suggestions! baba!

 

[rdytorave]

The stuttering is a common issue. So long as the game eventually loads, it's nothing to worry about. Currently there is no fix.