Poor Performance With Video Games - PC Hardware Questions & Answers

Sameer writes in with a hardware question

Question:In my PC (p4, 2.6 GHz, 256 MB of RAM), the graphics driver stops responding in while playing graphic intense games. What are possible causes of this problem and how do I solve it?

Answer: There can be several reasons why a game freezes up during game play. Your video card may not have enough onboard memory to play the particular game or to play it at the resolution you are using. You can try to reduce the resolution or detail settings in the game to see if that makes a difference. Another thing you may want to try is to update your video card driver in case there is one that may be more up to date and work better with your game. If your video card is onboard the motherboard then its most likely using system RAM for its memory and taking away from your 256 MB of RAM. You may want to try a separate AGP or PCI video card instead.
 
Since your computer only has 256 MB of RAM that may be another problem. I find that Windows XP needs at least 512 MB of RAM to run properly. If you are playing graphic intense video games then you may want to go even higher.

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