Lagging!Why? Inadequette Hardware...?

[Duxdude]

My journey has finally come to this. After starting out with a 1.3ghz T-Bird Processor, 384 MB of PC133 SDRAM, and a GeForce2 MX, I have finally made the 180-degree revolution with some of the newest hardware out there. I am a big advocate of playing games on the highest settings and super-smooth at that. So, I now am running more-than adequette hardware....or so I think. If one could examine my current system specs and tell me any possible bottleneck's I have,please, be my guest.

MO-BO: ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (8X AGP Support, nForce2 Chipset)
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (1.83ghz/333 FSB/ Barton core)
Heatsink: Thermalright SK-7, all copper
Fan: Thermalright Smartfan II
Thermal Compound: Antec Silver
RAM: GEiL Golden Dragon Dual Chanell, PC3200 DDR, 512 MB (2x256)
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (128 MB,set at 8X)
OS: Winderow Server 2003,Enterprise (NTFS)
HD: IDE 40 GB 7200 RPM, Samsung
Power Supply: 350 Wat ATX

My speaksers, keyboard, and monitor are a tad old, but as far as hardware goes, my games should be running optimal at highest everything,should they not? The only bottleneck I could think of is the harddrive....but it is still 7200 RPM. I will soon be upgrading to S-ATA.

In any event, in the 3D Mark I was getting some good frame rates...until I turned on AA 4x and Antriscopic filtering. Then, I was getting FPS of between 1 and 17. Horrible! Even in real-world games, namely the helicopter sequences in Delta-Force Blackhawk Down (and following after that) games lag! How can this be? I hear people with worse systems than mine running these games fine. What is the deal? What must I upgrade to make things flawless? Video card drivers are newest... In any case, all help is really appreciated.

[Telexen]

AA is supposed to kill performance...it greatly increases graphics though.

With 3DMark 2003, I'm not sure you can turn on both 4x AA and Antriscopic filtering and expect anything...even with a Radeon 9700

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

Also might want to get a bit bigger power supply, 350 is low for what you have running,

Uh, I wouldn't consider Windows 2003 Server, Enterpise a good gaming OS.

And I bet you'd have better results w/ FAT32 on that 40GB drive than NTFS.

If it were me, I'd partition a small 2-4GB partition for 98SE (2GB) or XP Home (4GB) and then run all your APPS from a different partition.

[Kruzin]

When Windows 2003 Server is installed, by default video hardware acceleration is not at full. This is done for stability reasons, as Server is not intended for gaming. You need to go to your system properties and adjust the video acceleration setting.

As others have said, you'd be better off running XP rather than Server.

[Duxdude]

By the way, Server 2003 is configured as a workstation via the guide at microsoft.org. Just to let you know, acceleration is all the way up.