Howdy! I want to improve my PC's framerate/smoothness. When playing Left 4 Dead off of Steam, it gets clunky to the point where it completely interferes with my playing ability. Here are my computer stats:

Compaq Presario AMD Anthlon XP 2900+
2.00 GHz, 512 MB of RAM

And this is my graphics card:
ATI Radeon 9550 / X1050 Series

Other than adding the graphics card, I've never done anything to my PC. How should I enhance my PC?

a quick fix, add some ram. But don't expect miracles and an extention of the PC's life by another 5 years or something, adding ram would just be a quick fix.

I don't think it is worth doing anything to the PC I mean adding some more ram will help abit but really that PC is just old.

Go to run on Start panel and type in:   msconfig

Then go to the startup tab and you can disable everything there but if you want your anti virus don't diable that.

Then go to the services tab and click hide all microsoft services at the bottom. You can disable everything there but again leave your anti virus on if you want that.


Click Apply and restart.

It should free up some memory and make your PC run faster but don't expect any miracles because your system is old. Remember if you want to set it back to how it was before just type msconfig again and enable everything.

Other than that check if your drivers are upto date and if you don't have any anti virus then just download spybot and do a scan to see if you have any spyware.

Oh and make sure you defrag your harddrive because that can improve your framerate.



You can get cheap PC's that are ALOT better than yours for like 400 these days anyways so it might be worth checking one of those out.

You can get 4GB (Two 2GB sticks) of 800Mhz DDR2 Corsair RAM for $20 (after rebate) from ZipZoomFly (at least, I just did).

What settings are you playing at?

Getting more ram would be the cheapest and easiest way to get a noticeable increase in performance. Dual core athlons are pretty cheap so it wouldn't be a bad idea to upgrade your CPU as well.

yep, more RAM, new GPU and new CPU

I'd say probably every 4-5 years you should spring for a computer upgrade, get the big components; gpu cpu and add more ram. It's expensive but if you're playing games on the rig, it's an investment that you have to make to stay current.

"I'd say probably every 4-5 years you should spring for a computer upgrade, get the big components; gpu cpu and add more ram. It's expensive but if you're playing games on the rig, it's an investment that you have to make to stay current."

Compaq Presario AMD Anthlon XP 2900+
2.00 GHz, 512 MB of RAM

That needs replacing first, you need a faster CPU and 2 GB ram for any modern game.   Then a new GPU, COMPAQ is a garbage brand, you are much better off building your own or buying generic and just upgrading parts like the GPU, don't waste money on a "name brand" PC that is really just low end parts that are overpriced.  Our work gives out HP machines, they all suck ass terribly

as as a cheap upgrade then yes got for some RAM, I dont know how many slots of RAM that Compaq has or the memory standard so I'd be carefull to buy RAM that works, but you should be fine with 2Gb for Left for dead.

Try to play on reduced resolution with graphics options turned down or opted out. Turn off any miscellaneous apps such as anti-virus and the like in the background. Also visit www.tweakguides.com for some advice on how to refine your performance.