View Full Version : Half Life 2 running real slooooooooooow! Help!
I've just brought Half Life 2 but it appears to be unplayable on my PC, one I considered to have a reasonable setup on.
I'm running Windows 98 SE with 512ram, a Ti4200 graphics card and an AMD Athlon XP2400, but even on the lowest settings Half Life 2 is running like a slide show when in open areas and pretty stuttery the rest of the time!
Is my PC not up the demands of this game or do I potentially have another problem?
Any ideas/help?
I would guess your PC isn't up to the job. Win98SE is an old OS, and the game isn't (probably) designed to run correctly on it.
I would guess your PC isn't up to the job. Win98SE is an old OS, and the game isn't (probably) designed to run correctly on it.
It does however state Windows 98 on the box, unlike some newer games such as Doom 3 etc. So I would have assumed it had been tested on said OS
anephric
26-04-2005, 11:00
Actually, you should be able to get some level of performance out of that rig, not the badness you're describing... what res are you running in?
Try here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19405
There are problems aplenty with HL2 in Win 98SE. Have you updated all your drivers for 98SE? Have a Google.
Anthony.S
26-04-2005, 11:00
HL2 will run on most fairly recent PCs quite well. I would guess you need to drop the rendering options down to directX 7 in the game options
anephric
26-04-2005, 11:02
Make sure all your background processes are shut down too, and turn off virus checkers, firewalls etc (make sure you're offline first!)... anything that could eat up clock cycles.
Get rid of backdrops etc. Get rid of Windows effects/themes etc. Give your HD a good defrag. Yaddayaddayadda.
anephric
26-04-2005, 11:05
HL2 will run on most fairly recent PCs quite well. I would guess you need to drop the rendering options down to directX 7 in the game options
His card supports DirectX 8.x tho.
Actually, you should be able to get some level of performance out of that rig, not the badness you're describing... what res are you running in?
Try here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19405
There are problems aplenty with HL2 in Win 98SE. Have you updated all your drivers for 98SE? Have a Google.
Reading that report my setup should run this game just fine.. but the results are far from it!
I originally tried to run the game in 800x600 and then knocked it down to 640x480 because of the problems, but this made no difference :shrug:
I've recently defraged the HD and I also recently run Windows Update to get any udates going. So I'm really lost as to why this game is performing so badly. I've also been running games like Call of Duty etc with absolutely no problems, but saying that my PC refused to run Painkiller the other day even though it was running fine several months ago (I removed it and re-installed), so perhaps there's a problem with my PC
His card supports DirectX 8.x tho.
Yep, shows that as the default.
I'm pretty sure it's not the card or the processor but maybe some other issue causing this problem. Damn annoying all the same cos I've been dying to play this game!
have you got any AA or AF on, this will really hit your system speed
Anthony.S
26-04-2005, 11:19
His card supports DirectX 8.x tho.
I know, thats why I said drop it down to 7 as it seems it's too slow when set to 8. I assumed by default 8 would be used. :shrug:
have you got any AA or AF on, this will really hit your system speed
What are these and how do I check (appologies for being a jargon numpty!) :)
msm13579
26-04-2005, 11:25
windows update won't get you updated sound and graphics card drivers, which are the most important for games, so if you haven't already....:) just get the latest one from the nvidia site for the graphics.
windows update won't get you updated sound and graphics card drivers, which are the most important for games, so if you haven't already....:) just get the latest one from the nvidia site for the graphics.
I've tried on several occassions to update the drivers for my graphics card, only for this process to completely bugger my PC up every time, only being cured by re-installing the original drivers back on. I don't know why it does this, but I've kinda given up trying now.
I'm getting to the point where I think a format and upgrade to XP is on the cards!
anephric
26-04-2005, 11:31
What are these and how do I check (appologies for being a jargon numpty!) :)
Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering.... processor-hungry things that make your visuals look nice. If you've selected "Low" in HL2 graphics preferences, these should already be off, though, unless you've got "Application Preference" overriden in your GPU preferences.
SqueakyG
26-04-2005, 21:56
The Ti4200 is a really good DirectX 8 card (far better at doing DX8 than my crappy Fx5200 can do DX9!). So you're fine there. Processor is fine. Memory is fine.
I think what's failing you is the graphics card drivers. They have to be the best drivers for the card and the game. The very newest drivers usually work best, especially for new games; but sometimes the drivers from that card's glory days are best.
I think you're having trouble installing newer drivers because you've got Windows 98... a notoriously stubborn operating system for handling drivers and hardware, especially when Windows 98 has become eccentric with use, and when the drivers are mostly intended for Windows XP anyway.
Thanks for all the replies.
After much fidling and tweaking (and failing yet again to get any updated drivers to work), I re-installed my old drivers and I've now managed to get HL2 to run in a semi playable state at 800x600 (although going underwater is still proving a real chore with horrendous slow-down).
I think an XP upgrade is now the only way forward!
vBulletin® v3.8.5, Copyright ©2000-2012, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.