Need help, driving me nuts! (CPU & Graphics)

First off, I have a simple question. I have a ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card. Side notes: AGP, 512MB memory. Anyway, I figured I could go full on graphics with the following games: Renegade, World of Warcraft, and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Same for all games, I still get FPS lag. So it got me thinking that it has to be my CPU. Could it be my CPU is indeed out of date, holding me back from top performance in my graphics?

Now, this all leads to what is "driving me nuts" :confused

My CPU is an Intel Pentium 4A 2675 MHz, 512KB L2 Cache - what socket is it? I have researched google for hours now, cannot find out which socket, AIDA 32 doesn't even tell me. I believe the socket is LGA 775, but it very well could be Socket 478.

Thanks in advanced,
Crayons

 

In order to be of much help more info is needed.

If it is a branded computer what brand & model ?

If it isn't a branded model what brand & model is the motherboard ?

How much memory ?

What kind of hard drive.

There is much more to a computer beig "hast" then just the CPU .

BTW, Aida32 was good in it's day but is too outdated .

To get some real information download & install PC Wizard.

http://www.cpuid.com/download/pcwizard/pcw2009_v188.exe

You might want to take the checkmarks out of the boxes when "Ask" [Ask.Com] shows.

 

Dell Dimension 4550 (Not everything is stock) Just an FYI: My mother gets her old office computers for free when they do updating. The sad thing is it doesn't happen again until 2012.
1 gig RAM

Hard drives;
both are 80GB
both are ATA

C Drive(MAIN): SAMSUNG SP0802N
E Drive(SUB): IC35L080AVVA07-0 (No clue what brand, came with a dell I believe) Also, I never re-formatted this hard drive. I found it in my closet, and decided I could use the space. I believe I have a virus on here in the System32 folder. If it isn't a virus, I cannot delete it. It would be one old virus, though.

Well I haven't defragged in a while, so I did just that. No improvement in performance. This is an old machine, but I don't do much on here other than school work and slight gaming. Due to hard economic times I have no bothered to build a new PC. Although looking through HP they have some good deals. Anyways, side notes: I have discovered that my C drive has 14% space, so in the mean time of waiting for a reply, I am going to move stuff over to the E drive. I also have to install an anti-virus. I'll re-post if any improvement in performance is discovered. WoW is currently down, so I won't be able to test anything in there.

Thanks in advanced,
Crayons :cool

 

WoW is your most intensive game on that list. Here's the recommended specs per the Blizzard page:

- Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2
- 1024 MB RAM (Vista - 2048 MB of RAM)
- 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better
- Two-button scroll-wheel mouse

From that, your graphics card looks like it's just fine for that. I'd look at your ram first, then your cpu. You say you have 1gig ram installed, which should be ok to run the game IF you are using XP as your os. If you're runnning Vista, 1gig is not going to cut it. Personally, if you're on an XP system, I'd still add at least another gig of ram if not 2. If you're running vista, I'd definitely add 2-3gig ram. Running enough to ram to meet the recommended specs of a game will do just that- run the game. If you want it to run well and smoothly you want more than that, and ram is cheap and can make a huge difference... you should be able to pick up 2 gigs for under $30 easily from newegg.com or tigerdirect.com, that's after tax and shipping.

Your cpu looks like it's a single core processor, if that's the case then it's probably also holding you back.. Dual core cpus are cheap anymore, and will run WoW just fine. For your socket type, use a program like Belarc to find out what specific motherboard you have, then go to the manufacturer's website and look for it. Failing all else you can contact their tech support and they ought to be able to tell you from the info you can give them from the Belarc program. I suggest that route because I couldn't find your cpu either on the Intel site... they might be worth a try to chat with thier tech people also tho, since you know what your cpu is. Also, you will need to know what kind of mobo you have before you can by ram for it (DDR, DDR2, etc...). I would definitely look at your ram first tho and see what kind of difference an upgrade there makes... it's going to be a much cheaper upgrade than your cpu.