whats wrong with my system?

[ndsbass]

i am really confused. i have two computers,

one i built, it has:
1 gig of ram (512 added today that i got for xmas)
geforce FX5500 (256mb ram)
amd processor 3000+ oced to 3500+
120 GB ide hdd

a dell, downstairs
1 gig of ram
geforce FX5200 128MB (same clock speeds as my geforce FX5500)
intel 3.0 ghz
120 GB sata hdd

at first i was running halo on the dell. it worked well, not the best, a little slow at times but not bad. then i built my new computer and decided to play it on that. WOW. slow on intense parts and was really choppy (slow framerates?) anways at that time i only had 512MB ram on my system and i figured that the not having enough ram was causing my problem. So today i get another 512MB, pop it in, boot up halo, its still the same. so then i think to myself, it must be my videocard. i run downstairs to see whats in the dell, and low and behold its worse than what i have upstairs. i was under the impression that although amd clock speeds are lower than intels, the 2500+ or 3000+ part meant it was the equivalent of an intel 2.5 ghz or 3.0 ghz processor. also amds are built for gaming, correct. so narrowing down the problem, the only large difference i can find is the hdd. my dell has sata while im still stuck in the past with an ide. is this my bottleneck? whats holding my system back?

 

[Windwaker222]

Thats weird, it's definitly not the video card because I managed to play fine with a Radeon 7000 PCI. I've never tried playing it with my AMD but it shouldn't have any problems.

If you just built this system try downloading all the latest video and motherboard drivers and see if there is any difference.

 

[Jamxx]

I have the same problems. With my system (listed below) Halo is perhaps my worst performing game I own. And, I own Half-Life 2. Halo should definitely be working a lot better than Half-Life 2.

I haven't tried it with the new 81.xx drivers, though. That may help a bunch. It seems that Halo hates AMD processors.

 

[BigLu]

It could also be the settings, if you have aa and af on it will really slow it down. Try to see if they are on the same settings. Also, Halo runs off of the hard drive right? If so it could be struggling to keep up. Also, the Halo code is very intensive, tons and tons of little effects like self refractive lighting, pixel shaded bump mapping, and other stuff like each snowflake being a 3-d model that moves independently and makes it's own noise when it hits the ground. Little stuff like this really takes up loading speeds, and decoding. The P4 is much better at sound processing and layering, which there is a ton of in Halo. Games like HL2 are much better coded. So the hard drive of the P4 could be causing this, also, the drivers could be doing it. Or I could be completely wrong all together =)

 

[Windwaker222]

The system specs I ran it on :

Dell Optiplex
Pentium 1.8Ghz
512mb no name sdram
radeon 7000 pci
20gb ide hard drive

it was all low settings and ran decent

maybe its just the amd processors that has problems with halo

 

[ndsbass]

after ocing to 300 gpu/466 ram, changing antialiasing from app controlled to off, and turning all the settings in halo to either medium or low, i am playing a much better game. thanks for all your help.

if anyone else has anymore suggestions please dont hesitate to post. thanks again

-ndsbass