Old games lag on new PC?

[stefan37]

Hi I have bought a new PC last year. The configuration is : i5 3570k, ATI 7870 2GB OC, 8GB DDR3 RAM, mobo GA z77x UD3H, and Seasonic 650AM PSU. Problem is when I try to play some older games they lag. I have tried Ascension to the Throne (that game worked fine for me on my old PC), also Warcraft III lagged. Are there any fixes to that?

 

[Krazeee]

Well when you lower your graphics settings, do they still lagg?

Also, Make sure your drivers are up to date.

 

[Pummel]

When you say lag, do you mean very low FPS or does the system hang for a few seconds and then continue?

 

[stefan37]

I meant low FPS, I have discovered that on Ascension to the Throne when I turn off the grass display it runs much better, but that is an old game with bad graphics idk why I have to turn off the grass... I mean I played Skyrim, Dragon Age, Bioshock all on ultra settings and they worked flawlessly. Warcraft 3 still has some stuttering though...

 

[excaliburr]

I run into the exact same problem. My PC runs crysis 3 on high pretty decently, but lags when I run intense games of the old command and conquer games (about a decade old). I don't know why, maybe the games aren't optimized for a newer OS or hardware? I too think it's silly that my old, cheap laptop runs these better than my new rig. However, updating to the most current drivers for my hardware, as well as slight overclocking seemed to really help. OCing my fx-8350 from 4.0Ghz to 4.3Ghz made all the difference for the older games.

 

[Krazeee]

Probably because they were made for Windows XP.

I think that is why, I looked at Ascension to the throne and on the retail cover it says OS: Windows XP SP2

It's normal I guess, Bf4 runs better on Windows 8 than it does on Windows 7 and when making the jump from XP to Windows 7/8 I'm sure the game has lost many features. And sometimes it could be that the game uses really old DirectX support. I looked at Warcraft III and it was released in 2002! Definately made for XP...

That's your reason, you could try running the game in compatibility mode (NO idea if this will work).

 

[Tibbs01]

I can't say for sure on those two titles, but often in older games they can't handle modern multi-core cpu's very well. There are a few titles where you need to go in and force the application to just run as a single core on the cpu.

You can try this:

ctrl+shift+esc>processes tab>select and right click the process (in this case your games name)>select set affinity>only have one cpu checkmarked. You will need to have administrator controls to do this of course.

Edit: I should note that there are better ways to force one cpu than this but they end up forcing it for everything you are running and then you have to go in, force it, run your game, undo it and restart etc. which can be a pain. If the affinity route works then it is the quickest and easiest but the processor doesn't always enforce your affinity setting. I can't tell you exactly why but others here would know better.