Why so sluggish?

[EZ22]

First my stats:

3 Gig Pentium 4, 800 meg FSB.

512 Dual Channel DDR PC3200

Windows XP

ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

My question:

When I get done gaming (Battlefield, Raven Shield) my computer is super sluggish....I really have to reboot to get it to move like it should. Is this normal?

[VHockey86]

doesnt sound normal at all...
I play games all the time on my xp 2000+ running xp pro with a ti4200 and my comp stays on for weeks at a time without any problems or issues of sluggishness.

[EZ22]

Originally posted by VHockey86
doesnt sound normal at all...
I play games all the time on my xp 2000+ running xp pro with a ti4200 and my comp stays on for weeks at a time without any problems or issues of sluggishness.

Any suggestions on what to check?

[Christian-Comp]

How many sticks of memory do you have?

If it is dual channel enabled and you only have one stick... welcome to the slug club.

You need two sticks in dual channel mode or suffer a performance hit. Trust me on this... I know from personal experience.

[The Terk]

Originally posted by EZ22
First my stats:

3 Gig Pentium 4, 800 meg FSB.
512 Dual Channel DDR PC3200
Windows XP
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

My question:

When I get done gaming (Battlefield, Raven Shield) my computer is super sluggish....I really have to reboot to get it to move like it should. Is this normal?

it could also be the other programs running in the background or if it is online... using programs such as Kazaa(boo) will suck up A LOT of bandwidth
and if you have a lot of un-needed services(autoupdate for windows,etc) that will eat up your memory very quick...hope that helps

[EZ22]

Originally posted by Christian-Comp
How many sticks of memory do you have?

If it is dual channel enabled and you only have one stick... welcome to the slug club.

You need two sticks in dual channel mode or suffer a performance hit. Trust me on this... I know from personal experience.

Yeah, it's a single stick of 512.

If I want to upgrade to a full gig, do I have to buy the exact same brand of ram?

[Christian-Comp]

Not necessarily...

Having identical sticks helps tremendously.
However, it is possible to get by with using two different sticks as long as they are essentially the same. Such as both being double-sided, both having 8 chips/side, both being 64x64, etc. It's easiest to use two identicals though.