youthedog4

I just got Call of Duty 5 and installed it, when I actually play its like 5-15 fps which is very odd because in all my other online military games its usually 31-32 fps. I checked for Shader 3.0 (which is a requirement) to download but I can't find one, I'm on a Dell Dimension E521 desktop, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 3800+ 2.0 GHz, All of that is above the requirements and I have updated all my system software that I can but it won't make a single difference, so basically what I'm looking for is a Shader download to see if that will make a difference and if it doesn't, I don't know a single thing to do.

All help appreciated, Thanks.

emosun

Welcome to tsf.

Shader 3.0 support is a hardware requirement not software. If your pc can physically start and run the game then it has it already. Could you please post the exact geforce card your useing? Is it the stock 7300le that the pc comes with? You can use Gpu-z to find out.

youthedog4

I went to Nvidias website to find out and its part of the GeForce 200 series. Oh, and I also got my computer about 3-4 years ago but it runs fine.. and could you please tell me what Gpu-z is? Just in case what I stated was wrong.

youthedog4

It is part of the 7300 LE series.

emosun

Ok thats what I thought. The low fps your experienceing is just the hardware limit of the computer. The 7300 "LE" stands for low energy. Which means the card uses very low ammounts of power , but in turn suffers in performance greatly. The 7300 le would be half decent with older war games , but with games like COD5 it's really not going to be fantastic. The best I could say is lower the graphics options in the game to the lowest settings and make sure you have all the latest patches to get more fps.

youthedog4

Ok, thanks emo. I was talking with a dell tech person and I'm soon going to be upgrading my ram to 2gb or 3gb, raising internal memory to 320gb and getting NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 512Mb. My parents are buying all but the video card :), I'm definitely buying the video card. Getting $120 check for my job, i might just get the 1gb version...

emosun

Get the 512mb version. The 8600's gpu is the same on both the 512mb and 1gb versions. The only real cards that have the gpu power to drive 1 gb of vram are the high end cards like 4870's , 9800's , gtx's , and so on. So by getting the 512mb version you save a little money and get the same speed.

emosun

You'll also want the ddr2 version unless you upgrade your powersupply (400w or more) at which you can get a ddr3 version which will show better performance.