[nightfire]

SOOOO, heres my sad story:

So 2 years ago I built a custom computer, here are the Main specs:

Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4
AMD Athlon 64 x2-5600
EVGA 8800 GTS 320MB
3.5 GB Ram
2 hds -- 1tb/500gb
Windows XP Pro, non 64 bit edition

So, I recently got Fallout 3, awesome game, and when i first played it, it was like great and ran well with the settings about half way up with good resolution. After that, every time i played it, it got slower and slower, so i had to lower the settings again and again, until today im playing it with all extra settings off, 800 by 600 res, looks like hell, and it lags worse than the first time i played it!

My system meets the requirements, except i only have 320 video memory instead of 512, can this be a major factor?

I updated my system, driver for video card, and even updated the game, no luck.

Also, when playing it for like the second time, my computer got too hot and quit the game, so is overheating causing bad problems?

Any help is super appreciated!

Thank you

[nightfire]

update*

So, I tried something completely opposite, and turned the nvidia controls in the driver from best look to best performance, mild change really, then i turned the game back to its high default settings, and now it worked really well, no lag. I played for about 20 minutes, when i heard the cards fan start to spin up, then it started lagging slightly....So it must be heat?

Im going to install a pci slot cyclone fan below and see if it improves at all...

Any advice is great, thanks