Some people expect way too much. You want 60+FPS all the time. No chance. Sorry, but we have nice hardware here. And below 50 and it gets laggy? What have you been eating/smoking? Try upping your refresh rate to 75 so you don't get flickering that makes your eyes go funny (although that doesn't really affect lag as such). 40 FPS is when it starts to smooth for most games. Also, if you try to run 3DMark06 at max settings, there's not much that can run it at 60+ FPS all the time (except maybe an 8 series). Even at 1024x768, it's still not gonna be 60+ all the time.
You should try and be happy to get 45+ FPS all the time, instead of striving for too much. Try changing your drivers to TweaksRUs XG series. These give a substantial boost. Try to abide by your FSB or HTT speed (so 1000Mhz for A64 or opty 939, or 1066Mhz or whatever it is for the Intels) rather than raw clock speed. HTT speed is a lot more important and it provides speed and stability under most circumstances. Make it as fast as possible and you'll get trouble. You can still overclock your CPU and memory, but just set the HTT multi lower, and if required, use a memory divider such as 183 (if your board supports it). You see, my HTT link is 1.17Ghz. That's very unstable and at 1000Mhz, it's a lot more stable and there's an improvement in speed, if not the same, but there's certainly no loss of speed.
Now lets talk memory timings. Memory timings are much more important than memory clock speed. By having memory timings as low or tight as possible, with the highest clock speed you can get and still be stable, you'll find the sweet spot. It's kinda like injecting Nitrous into your system if you get it just right. So for example, i'm currently running 2.5-2-2-5-1T at 175Mhz (i haven't updated my sig yet). Admittedly, my memory can run at 234Mhz with 3-3-3-7-1T and still be stable. But, i've noticed that things are a lot faster with the better timings and worse clock speed. However, you have to have a decent clock speed to be able to get any gain. Again, there's a sweet spot for this as well. You have to get the balance right to be able to get the most from your system. So don't just go all out and set a 100 divider just to get 1.5-2-2-5-1T, there's no gain to be made, you're more likely to make a loss. So experiment with timngs. To test, use 3DMark03, it's usually the first thing to crash (even moreso than 3DMark05 or 06). If it crashes, loosen the timings or lower your clock speed. If it locks up, loosen them a little bit.
Next, drives. Hard drives play a big part if you don't have much ram. For example, they work at ~1million times slower than memory. And whenever something is needed that isn't in memory, the HDD is used to either load it, or add it to the pagefile. If you can't afford more memory, increase your pagefile by 512mb. This is usually the best option to be effective while using as little space as possible. If you have more than one drive, install Windows and everything else on one drive, and then all your games on another. 2 Sets of read/write heads are better than one, even without RAID. Are they all too loud for you? Get Samsung Spinpoint drives. They're the quietest you can get and i guarantee that you won't be able to hear them unless you have it right next to your ear.
Now, cooling. Cooling is one of the cheapest performance boosters you can do. Got fans? Well, you think you have. Invest in some new ones. They don't need to be those £15 quiet ones. No, some £1 e buyer (i didn't want to post it but it is to help other people) fans will do. Too loud? Well let's fix that by modding them down to 7V (google should help you, just search for "7V fan mod"). The placement is also important. You should have one on your CPU Heatsink. One at the front to cool the HDD's (even at 7V, it's good enough - see below). Once on the side taking air in. If it's in the middle of the side panel, even better, it'll cool the memory. And then one at the back near the CPU Heatsink, also at 7V. But you don't need just fans. You should invest in some VGASinks. The Zalman ones are good. You should also consider an aftermarket cooler for your GPU. The Arctic Cooling ones are the best and they are very quiet (inaudible). They're also effective in what they do. Lastly, thermal paste. Don't bother with AS5. Get some Thermalright The Chill Factor. I've found it just as good, if not better, it's cheaper and you get more of it.
Next, optimisation. This is free performance that you might be missing out on. For this task, you need to download a program called Tune-up Utilities 2007. There's a free trial available. Basically, go through all the different sections and run each program. Choose to let it optimise it all. This often gives a substantial boost in both Windows load times, and games. Next thing to do is defrag. I can't state how important this is. If you don't defrag, you're gonna get trouble and increasing load times and possibly slower FPS (see above for HDD info).
Lastly, patching. When patches are released, you are better getting the full patch, as opposed to the incremental patches. Incremental patches add a lot of crap to the games whereas the full patch overwrites the files with new ones without all the gunk. This alone increases FPS.
This concludes the newbie guide to optimisation.
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