DECENT SYSTEM, BAD FPS, please help!

Okay so im a noob, just to get that cleared up.

heres my computer specs :
-Geforce4 MX440
-Intel pentium 4 processor, 2.8
-512 RAM


I have downloaded the new drivers from Nvidia for my graphic card.. and i can only get 60 fps when i play counterstrike. My friends all run at 100 even with much shittier computers. Should i overclock? get diffrent drivers? change settings? what do you recommend to optimize performance.

Ps: please tell me if I posted in wrong forum.

Thank you for time.. much appreciated.

 

Make sure you're not comparing apples and oranges. That is, are you running at the same screen resolution as your friends who are getting more fps? And is your color quality set to the same color bit depth as your friends? If you're running at say, 1024x768 resolution with 32 bit color and your friends are getting those 100 fps at 800x600 with 16 bit color, then you're asking your graphics card to do much more work than your friends' graphics adapters are doing and you can't expect your fps to equal theirs. To make a fair comparison you need to be certain that everyone's running at the same screen resolution and same color bit depth.

And do you have as much RAM on your graphics card as your friends who are getting the faster frame rate? Is your card an AGP slot graphics card or PCI? If it's AGP you might try adjusting that RAM setting for AGP. I think you have to do that in BIOS at bootup and can't recall exactly what it's called -- but typically you can set it to 32, 64, 128 megabytes, up to the max amount of RAM on your graphics card -- try different settings there to see if that will increase your frame rates.

In addition, many graphics cards allow a number of other adjustments that can, I think, affect fps. For example, if you have anti-aliasing turned on and your friends don't your fps will take a big hit there. Again, check to see what graphics options, like anti-aliasing, your friends with faster fps may have turned off and make sure your settings are the same, or as close as possible.

With my ATI graphics card, there are several sliders I can adjust with "high quality" (better looking graphics) at one end of the scale and "better performance" (but lower quality graphics) at the other end of the slider. And there are separate sliders for Open GL and DirectX graphics -- make sure you're not comparing fps for different API's (e.g. comparing OpenGL frame rates with DirectX frame rates).

In addition, what is your monitor's refresh rate? Is it set the same as your friends' monitor refresh rates? I'm not certain this would affect fps, but think it might. Maybe someone else here can weigh in on the possible affect of monitor refresh rate on fps.

Finally, make sure you're comparing the fps running exactly the same version of the same game with the same patches applied. Comparing fps between different games or even the same game but different versions or patched differently could produce different results. Game patches can sometimes increase frame rates and if your friends are running later versions of a game and you're running an earlier version or haven't applied game patches that your friends are using that could also result in your getting lower frame rates.

Lots of things can affect your fps and it's difficult to make comparisons without knowing all the details of your friends' systems that seem to be waxing you in the fps race. Given that you say your friends' systems are getting much higher fps with less powerful hardware I'd guess that no one setting or option I've described is going to account for the difference -- most likely it's a combination of some of the above factors and possibly others too. Comparing frame rates on different systems is difficult, but I'd at least check the things I've mentioned above for starters.

The main thing, it seems to me, is that your display is easy on your eyes, the display looks good, and that you don't suffer noticeable lag in screen updates that interfere with your control of the games you play. If that's the case, why worry about fps? It's just a number as long as you can play the games you wish without problems. And I'll bet that the 100 fps your friends are telling you they get on their systems are either exagerated and/or the result of turning off or down some features (like anti-aliasing) to reduce the load on their graphics card in order to boost the fps. 100 fps is awfully fast and I'd be sceptical of their claims, given you say their hardware is less powerful than yours. Have you seen their systems actually running at 100 fps with the same options, color bit depth, and screen resolution, while running the same version with the same patches of the same game?

Hope this is some help -- good luck!

 

Okay, ill try some of your suggestions. Thanks alot!

Anybody else got anything to say?

 

Check ur settings on CS, More than likely ur settings will be higher.... Ie, I had a 64 mb vid card running cs with an average FPS of 50. Then I got a fx 5700 256 mb and my fps went down to 40, Generally this is because CS applies automatic configurations for each video card. if u check ur video options it will have stars saying "recommended for your video card" or something like that. Check what ur friends say for the settings and compare them to urs. Make them the same and test ur cards again.