What causes games to skip/slowdown

[DPK]

I am trying to figuring what causes some of my PC games to skip in certain spots. In sports games especially, sometimes the game will stop for a second and the player ends up in a different position. I have eliminated some possibilities.

It is not the resolution, I get exactly the same performance from 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. So that can't be it.

It's not my video card. I have switched off between a Voodoo 3 and a GeForce 2 MX and the same problem occurs.

I doubt it's my RAM (I have 128MB) or my hard drive space, I have a lot of space left.

So here are the likely culprets.
1. CPU - I have an Athlon 500mhz.
2. Hard Drive access time. Its access time is 5600ms or whatever.
3. Motherboard Bus. I have a MSI 6167.

So what is the most likely problem. Did I leave out any posibilities? If it's the CPU, would overclocking it help. Is the harddrive access time a possibility. Is my motherboard's bus holding things up???? HELP!

 

[DirkBelig]

It would help if you mentioned what games are acting up and at what DETAIL LEVEL you're trying to run at.

1. Your hard drive access CAN'T be 5400 ms. That's five and a hlf seconds. A floppy drive is faster. You're thinking 5400 RPM and that's not slooooow by any means.

2. Are your drivers up to date?

Your system isn't bad, it's not a pimped as mine (P3-927/384 MB/GF2GTS) but it shouldn't be tanking that hard.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

ok whent he game skips are you noticing hard drive beening accessed?

if so you may need to more ram.
128Mb of ram is a lot except if you have heaps of stuff loaded in the background.

run 'msconfig' from the run box (click start then run) without the '

and unclick us much as you don't want to load, everything basically other than your antivirus and system tray, this should free up more system resources.

also make sure wheny uo are playing you don't have other programs in the background...

hope this helps.