Help with performance issues.

Hey guys, I just rescently built my new computer. I have an Athlon XP 2500, Asus A7N8X Deluxe, Sapphire Raedon 9800 Pro, Hercules Digifire 7.1. The ram in my system is Geil PC 3200 Ram with a 512 and a 256 in it and they also include heat spreaders. I have all the latest drivers and the latest bios for my motherboard. In the bios the only things I changed were I made the processor at 200 X 10.5 and put the settings at agressive. I left it at stock voltage. I also changed the video card to AGP and turned the onboard sound feature off. Now the problem is my performance in many games is very bad. Max Payne 2 and Rainbow Six 3 do not run very good at all. I put them both on pretty much the highest settings, maybe my expectations are to high but I feel I should be able to put the settings all the way up with no problems on these games. Even the resolution is set at only 1024 X 768. In RS3 the fps drop below 40 often and the slowdown is very noticible. In 3D Mark 2003 I score around like 4700 which seems to be almost 2000 lower then many of you with similar systems. My question is what could I be doing wrong, are there things in the bios I am not setting or other optimizations I am not doing. Keep in mind yes I am overclocking but the performance is pretty much the same when I leave the system clocked where is should be. Could there be something wrong with my video card or anything like that. Also my computer temperatures are very good and never go above 25 C and the CPU temp never goes above 40 C. Thanks any help is appreciated!

Welcome to the forum!!!

Your 3Dmark03 is actually good. I get 3500 with my rig with default settings. I play Raven Shield and I don't see any slowness at all. I believe you may a problem with your HD. Have you done a disk clean and defrag before you load programs? Also, how much disk space do you have and how big is your HD?

Well, 4700 3D Mark 2003 on default seems to be average but u should try clocking up the GPU LINK

I get 5200 3D Mark 2003 and 16570 3D Mark 2001se on my 9700pro@380 memory@322 with a clock at 2327mhz on my 1800+jiuhb 0307 and my system is extremely fast at almost any game Serious Sam and UT2003 are smoking fast even when compared to the benches tomshardware posted (tom must lie).

Memory is set at 211 with 2-2-2-5 timings Corsair 512megs

On GL Excess I got a score of 12000 somthing but beating out lots of 9800pros even.

I duno about the rumor on the cats3.8 but sure hasn't affected my card or system.

Hey sniper, I don't think it's my hdd. I just built this comp a few days ago so there isn't an excess amount of data on it. I have an 80 gig Western Digital with 8 meg cache. That's why i'm just not sure if I optimized everything properly.

have u tried defragging, since it's a new hd, everything gets mixed up when u install everything. that may be a factor but i dont think it's the only culprit

I can tell you from experience, that geil memory could very well be causing you problems. I had to replace mine with some corsair (see sig.). Usually, Geil ram runs just under what is advertised. The fact that you are running two different sizes in dual channell may also be causing problems for you. I can't remember where I read it, but that issue has been posted before. Try testing with just one stick in and post results. And most definitely get powerstrip and oc that video card as hang ten recommends. Look at what my 9500 red pcb gets!