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White lightning

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System: AMD 3000, Gigabyte GA7NNXP motherboard, 2GB Kingston PC2700 DDR Memory, PNY 6200 GeForce 512MB graphics, 160GB Maxtor 7200 hard drive, Samsung SyncMaster 245B Monitor

Q: I have searched all through the back issues of your magazines to help me find a solution to my current problem, but no joy I’m afraid, so I’m hoping you can help. I recently decided to put together a PC using all the components that I still have from upgrading my own PCs for all the games I have enjoyed over the years, some new and some old. Ranging from Grand Theft Auto and many simulation games to the old NES/SNES games everyone works fine.

That is with the exception of one – there’s always one – an old snooker favourite of mine Jimmy White’s Cueball World (for XP). The game installs OK, but when it’s launched it goes into overdrive, the game runs so fast even Jimmy White himself couldn’t play it. I’ve checked the game settings and adjusted the hardware acceleration, I have all the latest drivers installed for the PC, I’ve also tried the game on my other PCs but still I have no joy.

Forums on the Internet suggest graphic plug-in settings but I do not feel comfortable tampering with these settings unless I know what they are. I have tried Speed Gear which does work but I’m left with two mouse cursors, one working and one stationary. I have had this game running in the past on slightly lower spec PCs with no trouble at all. I’m sure it’s probably something simple that I’ve overlooked, but I can’t think what.

A: Games from a particular era tend to be closely associated with hardware from the time. So transferring them to a newer, faster machine can quite often lead to them running too fast because the system has faster CPU, memory and graphics clocks than the software is expecting.

If you don’t want to mess about with the hardware settings, the easiest way around this is to fool the software by slowing down the PC. There are several programs that you can use to do this. You’ve already tried Speed Gear but there are other alternatives such as CPUKiller this isn’t free but you can download a trial. Alternatively try the open source winThrottle.

Programs like CPUKiller can slow down your PC so that you can run older games

Programs like CPUKiller can slow down your PC so that you can run older games

Originally featured in PCU125


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