My computer has a processor speed of 2.8 GHz, 1 GB RAM, DirectX 9, and some decent nvidia graphics card (I can't remember which one though).

Can anybody help me?

You'll need to tell us what videocard you have. Download GPU-Z and run it, it should say.

you could also check the settings tab in the display properties... it says there.

NO! GPU-Z TELLS ALL!!!!

It's an NVIDIA GeForce 6200.

Oh and also I've reduced all the video settings to as low as they go, and put the resolution at 800 X 600 and it's still pretty darn slow.

That's your problem right there. 6200 is the lowest of the 6XXX family, which is itself 3 or 4 generations old depending on how you count. 6600GT can handle HL2 with moderate settings, 6800 should kill it, but as long as you have a PCI-E board, don't even waste money on those, get a 9XXX Nvidia or 4XXX ATI, ie, 9600 or 4850.

Oh. Would this be fine?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Detai...20-1921239

That card should handle HL2 just fine.

And out of curiousity would it help F.E.A.R. run faster, as I have that as well - also lagging at really low settings.

Oh and also how high would I be able to keep the settings for both HL2 and FEAR?

To be honest it's not a good card but it will run HL2 and FEAR easily enough. It will make all games run better.

FEAR does a lot of paging to the hard drive if you only have 1GB of RAM... the frame rate will be fine but it will studder as it pulls data from the page file. you should upgrade to 2GB of RAM along with your video card.

2GB would help for sure, but 1GB should be adequate for FEAR.

is "playable" with 1GB but highly annoying...

I think as long as he turns the Texture quality down it should be ok. I could not go back to even 2GB though

Here's a trick...


Go to the advanced options of Half Life 2 in Steam and go to Launch options, type this:


-dxlevel 70


It will increase the performance a lot, it might not look as great as DX9 mode but it works.

I had recently installed hl2 and it was also laggy. The game doesnt buffer enough of the map level at one time, thus it it constantly stalling while loading. I had googled about the problem a few months back and found a work around, though i dont remember what it was. I wsa using the pc specs below but with my old 8800 gts 320.Steam was of corse up to date. i couldnt play the game if it wasnt. I assume a patch of mod is needed.

I didnt have any sound looping etc, just short stalls.

A quick google of hl2 stutter found this.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=834735
http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/
"the stuttering happens whenever the game has to load a new sound, the engine for some reason do not pre cache the sounds when it loads a new area."