Low fps after major upgrade

This is my first post so hi OCF.

Have recently upgrade many parts of my pc to end up with :

GA-EP45-DS4 mobo
q6600 cpu stock speed 2.4ghz
ati x1950 pro gpu
2gb sddr2 dram 533
520w
300gb 7200 rpm ide/sata (?) HDD - system.
1tb seagate barracuda 7200
XP Media Center Edition.
1680x1050 Samsung

Now i havnt OC'ed anything yet - i'm getting to that - but that should be a reasonable system but when i try Forged Alliance skirmish with one easy AI on small map i get 15fps zoomed in 25 zoomed out.

This is right at the start of the game. All settings on max.

I appreciate that i have possible weak points in the ram speed and oldish HDD used for system but surely it should be doing better than that.

I have tried Core Maximizer as task manager indicates that the first core is doin the majority of the work. What's also interesting is i get the same fps if i go massive map 7 aix no fog of war etc.

Any ideas?

turn down your settings, that video card is old and not as powerful as more recent cards are, how old i this game?

if you are getting low FPS, it is likely your video card being pushed too far....

the game is also not likely optimized for multiple cores.

go into your bios and up the FSB to 333 which will put you at 3Ghz and should work fine.. then try the game, if your still getting low FPS - it is your video card.

what drivers did you use for the video card 8.9 from ATI ?

you know i think your probly right in it's the video card - i turned down the anti aliasing to 2x and now it's better. Also the fps for RTS games is low anyway so i may be aiming too high.

Forged Alliance is a year old although it's based on Supreme Commander which is a few years older.

As for turning up the FSB i've yet to understand OCing just yet so that makes me nervous and since i get the same FPS however big map/ amount of units i have i don't think it's a cpu problem.

however i do want to adventure into OCing so is it best to do it through BIOS or can i use something like EasyTune6 to start with? I feel like it would be much easier to make a mistake in BIOS.

and driver i have for ati is 8.530.0.0 - presumably 8.9 is better?

Thanks

Ideally you should use BIOS, it is alot more stable, and if make a setting wrong, move a jumper, replace jumper and turn computer back on, problem solved!

Supreme commander is a quite demanding game. It does make some use out of the 4 cores. It would help to overclock your cpu to ~3.6ghz. However, in the end, you might want a better videocard for higher rez/more AA etc.

The newer drivers might not be necessarily any better, but couldn't hurt to try the new ones. Make sure you uninstall the old driver properly.

It also might help if you do a fresh install OS, depending how many componants you switched out.

You will prolly see a significant boost in performance by getting more better ram, 4gigs of DDR-800. Especially if you start using 4~7 enemy computers (or players).

My situation is reverse I upgraded to a 9800GX2 from an 8800GTS G92 and my FPS is now really low.

My bottleneck is now my e6300 which is to slow if I OC it a little it gets better. My suggestion is like the rest get a new vid card.

With your card being that old, the good news is that a new upgraded card wont cost to much. Sometimes you can find 8800GTS (G92 core) for around $100-120. That would really help FA.

So general consensus is get a new gpu well i have a brother who has the same card but wants to go SLI so fairly soon i'll nick his 1950 and crossfire it in the ep45 - prolly oc them as well by that stage so that should be a good boost in that area. After that i think i'll go for one motherf.cker card in the pcie 2.0 x16 slot.

I'll try the latest driver as well - i'm a bit curious about the catalyst software that comes with the ATI drivers. This time i didn't bother with it just used the driver. Is it worth having?

OCing the q6600 - that will be my first major step into OCing so that's another thread i think.

New Ram - having spent more than budget already i was thinking maybe 2 x 1GB DDR 2 kingston value 800 for the moment then get 4 x 1GB DDR2 1000 hi level stuff. If you overclock ram too much is it likely to damage the mobo or just stop working?

This is a fresh install of XP now - it's about 8 hours old.