The graphics card is a few days old and the RAM is only a week old,
Surely they don't need replacing!

Your best bet for this system may be to downgrade to Windows XP.
With only 2GB of RAM, and an older Athlon X2 processor, Vista is going to chew up resources.

You may also want to try installing the AMD Dual Core Optimizer
AMD Dual-Core Optimizer Version 1.1.4 http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dynamicDetails.aspx?ListID=c5cd2c08-1432-4756-aafa-4d9dc646342f&ItemID=153&lang=us

Daoc also has issues on some multi-core systems that are corrected by opening Task Manager (taskmgr.exe), then right click on game.dll, Click Set Affinity, then set it to only one core. This has to be done every time you load into the game. There are posts out there to help script this, but I haven't looked for them in years.

Good Luck

except the graphics card is the bottom of the line, cheap card, that has less power then my 6 year old geforce 7950

when you buy low end budget parts, you get low end budget results

 

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Did you blow out the video card heat sink?

Also, do you have the games video settings at their lowest setting?


That video card (the NVIDIA geforce gt 520) is a low end card. It should perform similar to the following cards: 6600 GT, 6800LE, 6800 XT, 7300 GT (DDR2), 8500 GT, 9800 XT, X700 PRO, X800 GT, (which are all in a similar class of performance).

The above listed cards (and the NVIDIA geforce gt 520) should be able to run DAoC somewhat ok on the lower video settings for all of the games PvE and also in most of the BGs. If you get into larger zergs in the Frontiers then you will be looking at a slide show. Also, there are some areas of the game that just have rendering challenges.


In general and in many areas of the game your card should render the game well enough on the lower settings so that you do not have a constant red indicator for frame rates on the performance meter.

 

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The system isn't cutting edge, but it's not an old 486 either. Even if his stuff is 5 years old the last update to this game was what, 5 years ago? When you are in DAOC, what level do you have your graphics set at? Maybe you just need to switch it to low settings and run the game that way.

You said your cpu was at 100%.. which process is taking all the cpu? (Don't tell me it's the System Idle Process)

 

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ok, it seems i have misjudged my system from being good to not so good.

im going to now start from scratch,

motherboard - asus P8H67-M
Processor - intel core i5
ram - 8GB DDR3
graphics card - any options i should be looking at? (not to expensive please)

any opinions please?

if you want a good upper midrange card... go for a GForce 560 GTX (no TI) with 1 gig...

Gainward Phantom if you want a silent one... if noise doesn't bother you you can get an KFA GF560GTX (not overclocked)...

That card should last a few years...

If it's too expensive, try a GF 460 GTX with one gig. that is the previous version.

 

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