Having trouble with an old PC not being able to run games!? I have an Hp a6500f Desktop (I know its old) and I want to play ne

[Protosouls]

Here are the specs:

E2220 Cpu (stock)

4GB ram (stock)

Nvidia 9800GT 512MB

OCZ 600 watt power supply

The Computer was stored for a long time (about 2 years)

I took the PC out of the closet and tried to fire it up and nothing displayed on the screen but the fans DID turn on inside the case so I then disconnected the power supply and took it out to my garage and blew it out with my air compressor. plugged it back in and it fired up (with the new hard drive installed) I guess the new hard drive is a Segate 250gb 5400 rpm drive from a laptop

So I get it to turn on a display, I then install slim driver in order to update the drivers, after that long process and countless windows updates I install steam. I try to play Crysis 2 Maximum edition The game loaded and once I finally got into game play the frames per second were very bad but it seemed as though it was variable it would play decent and then all of a sudden lag really hard and shutter, Using Fraps I never saw above like 40ish frames a second but it would vary from a wide range while playing. I have tried other games such as GRID, Contagion , and Alan wake with the same shuttering and lagging.

I replaced the power supply and graphics card with better ones A 750 watt and a GTX 650 SC 2gb and there was a minor change and frame rate and still the game shutters, Is the CPU capping the graphics card? Has the ram gone bad? Is the ram to slow?

I would be willing to buy an E8600 but only If it will help with playing games.

I would really like to be able to play most games smoothly, with either of these graphics cards I feel like I should be able to play any game on at least low very smoothly.

Thanks for any help! I am fairly computer literate and trouble shoot peoples computers for them but this is stumping me.

EDIT: As I remember when I first put in the 9800 GT years ago it would play Crysis 1 and other games like Far Cry 2 maxed out.

 

[Unolocogringo]

From 2.4 to 3.3 is a decent upgrade on the cpu. And will help quite a bit for feeding the GPU.
A dual core 2.4 is definitely holding back the 650.

Is the monitor resolution the same?
Graphics detail the same? Most games will up the graphics detail level depending on the card installed in the system.
The 9800 would get low to medium quality, while the 650 would get medium to high quality settings automatically.
Monitor resolutions
All 19 inch monitors.
1024x 768=786,432 pixels
1280x1024=1,310,720 pixels
1920x1080=2,073,600 pixels, so as the resolution goes up the card has a lot more work to do for each frame.

 

[Protosouls]

From 2.4 to 3.3 is a decent upgrade on the cpu. And will help quite a bit for feeding the GPU.
A dual core 2.4 is definitely holding back the 650.

Is the monitor resolution the same?
Graphics detail the same? Most games will up the graphics detail level depending on the card installed in the system.
The 9800 would get low to medium quality, while the 650 would get medium to high quality settings automatically.
Monitor resolutions
All 19 inch monitors.
1024x 768=786,432 pixels
1280x1024=1,310,720 pixels
1920x1080=2,073,600 pixels, so as the resolution goes up the card has a lot more work to do for each frame.

Thank goodness someone who knows something about computers, I posted this on Yahoo answers (man was that a mistake) anyway.

This is the display im using: http://www.amazon.com/Orion-Class-LED-LCD-SLED2468W-Ultra-Slim/dp/B00ACYRLWE/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1403567939&sr=1-1&keywords=orion+tv

Hmm I didn't know it was 60Hz could that be a problem? When running the PC on this TV the display is set at 1024x768 resolution but it is 24 inches.

When running these games I try many combinations of graphics settings from all the way to ulta to down to low the frame rate does not change much between these settings which is why I am leaning towards the CPU holding the GPU back. but the games don't run smooth even at the lowest settings, they will have these shutters in the Frames per second every once in a while when i'm playing.

Thanks for responding to my question, and sharing your knowledge!

 

[Unolocogringo]

Do you have a lot of background programs running?
A lot of programs automatically load on start up.
MS office would be about a 10% performance hit on that 2.4 cpu. Adobe products a couple percent each etc....
On Vista and Win 7 type CMD in the search field above the start button.
In the Command prompt window type MSCONFIG .
In the new window select the start up tab.

Now click on all of the start up programs that you don't need to remove their check mark in the box. They will all still be available for use it will just take a few more seconds for them to start When you want to use them.
Leave things like your Sound manager .mouse /keyboard software .
But Office ,Adobe products, Just checked, Software updaters etc... are just wasting cpu cycles running in the background.
I can wait another second or two for outlook to load and open for a 10% performance boost.

 

[Unolocogringo]

The stutters could be from the slow hard drive.
As windows and games wait for data to be read from the hard drive and place textures and objects in RAM memory. At the same time windows is using the hard drive as virtual memory to store things that are already in RAM memory but are not needed . So it writes them to the hard drive to free up more RAM memory.

 

[Unolocogringo]

Another thing to check is V-Sync.
If your games are running above 60FPS it will cap frame rates at 60FPS to match the TV or monitor settings.
If you are running below 60FPS it will cap at 30 FPS.
This can be turned off in the Nvidia control panel . Some games will over ride this setting so you need to turn it off in the game menu settings also.
60 hz refresh rate is a standard setting for most LED/LCD monitors an tvs.
3D and "GAMING" monitors can go up to 144hz Refresh rate.

 

[Protosouls]

Another thing to check is V-Sync.
If your games are running above 60FPS it will cap frame rates at 60FPS to match the TV or monitor settings.
If you are running below 60FPS it will cap at 30 FPS.
This can be turned off in the Nvidia control panel . Some games will over ride this setting so you need to turn it off in the game menu settings also.
60 hz refresh rate is a standard setting for most LED/LCD monitors an tvs.
3D and "GAMING" monitors can go up to 144hz Refresh rate.

Okay I will definitely try to unchecked some of those start up programs. What you are saying about the hard drive makes a lot of sense, I added "ram" by using hard drive space as ram, Because some of the games would not run because the computer did not have enough physical ram to play the game. Since I got the new graphics card with more V Ram I will try to turn off the borrowed "ram" from the hard drive and see of that gives me any kind of performance boost. If it doesn't I may consider getting a faster hard drive. Would a 7200 rpm give me any kind of difference in performance?

Thanks again!!

Update:

Okay checked into the start up programs only had three they were all nvidia or sound related. I then disabled the page file (Virtual ram borrowed from hard drive) that didn't help. I then grabbed a 19" monitor I had and tried that. no difference. So I took a different desktop and took my OCZ 600 watt power suppy and put it in there along with my 9800gt. installed steam played Alan wake, Runs perfectly smooth on max settings..... Dang. So this other desktops specs are not much better so something in the other PC must have failed or something. The other PC has an AMD athlon II x2 250 CPU and 5gb of Ram. The only big thing it has on the other desktop is the hard drive it has is a 1TB 7200 rpm drive, the next step I'm going to take is to take the drive out of this desktop and put it into the other computer and see if that does anything.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions!

Okay another update:

The PC will not boot up with the 1TB 7200 rpm drive I get a blue screen that says windows encountered an error and shut down.

Not sure why the drive won't boot on the other PC..... Wanted to try swaping out the ram but they are two different types....