computer hates games

[speedyink]

Ok, I have a Compaq Presario with:
AMD athlon XP 2600+ (2.13ghz)
512mb of RAM
120 gig HDD
Windows XP
Nvidia geforce 5200fx 128mb video card.

My problem is, that when playing newer games, it takes FOREVER to exit out of them, and after its finished the computer will run like crap until you restart it. Everything else is fine, except there are some games I would expect to run better. This happens the worst with the Sims 2 and Myst: Uru. Its so bad that my friends computer with half of everything that you see above (yes, exactly half), and it exits out of those same games MUCH faster, and runs good without rebooting. Do I have crap RAM or something?

 

[tweaker]

The amount of RAM have great influence on the time needed to exit your games, try and free up as much as you can by disabling unnecessary background processes. Go through some tweak guides and learn how to optimize your system & keep it clean.

there are some games I would expect to run better

As for gaming performance, the biggest problem with your system is that horribly slow 5200 video card.

 

[speedyink]

I forgot to mention that I close all "user" process except for explorer and task manager before I play the games. As for slow video performance in games, its fairly good, but I plan on building a computer soon, so I'm not buying a new video card for this machine.

 

[Blue]

I'm going with ram on this one also. Add another 512 and this problem should go away.

 

[chainzawz]

I'm going with ram on this one also. Add another 512 and this problem should go away.

Yeah adding another 512 will greatly improve the smoothness of what u have running! I had 512 originaly and then i added anothe 512 and bam it works better then ever before!

 

[speedyink]

alright, thanks. I'll see about adding another 512 stick.

 

[flame1117]

what kind of ram to? SD, DDR and speed, if its low speed SD then you could upgrade your PC to a higher speed DDR and that would help too. but just plain more ram would also help i have DDR400(512MB) RAM and i exit out of the sim2 quickly.

 

[speedyink]

I dunno, its a Compaq so Im guessing its cheap crap. The next computer I buy will be custom built. That one will have good RAM, since I now know first hand what crappy RAM does.