One more RAM stick of 2 GB would do wonders.. and it should be like $20..

Can be a bad idea to mix different types of RAM though so if you can't find one matching the original or if it's more expensive it's probably better and perhaps cheaper to buy two new ones or a single 4 GB.

EDIT: Also, install Windows XP.. that PC is older than Vista..

Imo and experience, Windows 10 is slower than Windows 8.1 , if won't have XP better have Windows 8.1 ( with Defender and unnecessary services disabled )

install Windows XP.

Might as well paint a big target on your back and shout "hack me" from the rooftop, giving out your ip address on 4chan...

It should be fine with Windows 10 or 8.1, so long as you have at least 4gb of ram, preferably 6 or 8...

Running an operating system that consumes considerable CPU doing things like live speech recognition and that per se needs 2GB to accomodate itself on a computer with an elderly CPU and 2GB of RAM...

it's surprising that it runs so well!

Being able to play a game like Morrowind (and even more so GTA) at all in these conditions is pretty awesome. Kudos to the developers of Morrowind and GTA.

No it's not, newever os run older hardware just fine in most cases, it's not like it's doing any of those things WHILE morrowind is running.

Might as well paint a big target on your back and shout "hack me" from the rooftop, giving out your ip address on 4chan...

Haha well.. doubtful.

Surely if he uses an old IE to visit dubious sites or download torrents.. (in which case that is probably the major slowdown reason in the first place).

Though I'm sure there are people still looking for XP computers to hack it's not like you just get hacked automatically.. unless you're incredibly careless. Most ISPs block ports that often get hacked if you refer to that type of threats. If you're smart and disable the services you don't need there's pretty much no way to get hacked on XP. Most of the vulnerabilities were in like ActiveX and stuff that aren't even used anymore in anything that you would likely need or want.

Also XP has received security updates until quite recently (and still do for some versions), so there are definitely not any auto-hacks that just work on every XP computer unless you browse with an old IE.

I got a 2001 PC with XP that runs just fine (and that I used to play Morrowind on).

For the slowdown in general, if the HDD hasn't been formatted for a while it is probably a good idea to do that and a clean reinstall (and if the HDD is from 2007 might be good to try to find a cheap upgrade).

(If you expect to actually run a lot of 2015 dated stuff on your computer you can ignore my post, but if you want software that is actually meant to support that hardware work correctly it's probably better to run that software as it was meant to be run).

install Windows XP.

Might as well paint a big target on your back and shout "hack me" from the rooftop, giving out your ip address on 4chan...

I don't think you quite understand how this whole hacking thing works...

Might as well paint a big target on your back and shout "hack me" from the rooftop, giving out your ip address on 4chan...

How would you even reach that computer? Every router that I've had during the last decade was configured to drop incoming traffic by default.

Sure, if you host some Internet Exploder 6 specific exploits on your website, you might succeed, but nobody who can help it is using Exploder anyway (even my father who is an old man, and who by the way uses Windows XP, understands that).

- CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ (2 CPUs), ~2.6GHz
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750
- 2GB RAM
- OS: Windows 10

That is an extremely old CPU (2008), with a very low amount of RAM (2GB) for this era, on a brand new OS that requires at least 4 GB to run well (and that may not run well the older games), paired with an extremely recent GPU.
The GPU is probably not being able to run at its full potential either as it must be running in PCIe 1.6 mode (we're at 3.0 now).

GPU-bottlenecked games will run smoothly (e.g. Crysis games). CPU-bottlenecked games will run like crap (e.g. All Skyrim games, most RTS games). Assassin's Creed I & II should run well on that machine.
Optimized DX12 titles should make a better usage of the CPU which will help, but AFAIK there aren't DX12 games yet; and they will all be aiming to using +4GB of RAM.

Since the system is old, make sure the heat dissipation vents aren't clogged. I wouldn't be surprised if there a thick layer of dust between the heat sink and the fan, thus causing thermal throttling.

One more last thing: That CPU model was affected by the QPC timer bug, which can cause frame stutter and other insane performance inconsistencies in games. The OS must be forced to use the PM Timer to workaround it. In Windows XP you had to edit the boot.ini file and add "/USEPMTIMER". AFAIK on Windows 7 and above, you have to use bcedit.

I also advise to disable Cool 'n Quiet from the BIOS to check if that improves performance.

3. HP doesn't make the best of gaming PCs in general.

The brand has nothing to do, except in terms of the kind of PSUs they use and heat dissipation practices.

Morrowind is bound to run like crap right now. It's not designed to take advantage of current hardware.

I'm really surprised that you're the only one besides myself that came to this conclusion, and quickly.

You can upgrade the graphics card... but your CPU is still the problem.

I was going to disagree, but looking at the system requirements for GTA V, that's actually a major part of his problem for that game specifically. It states that you need a Quad Core eqivalent. The speed of his CPU is enough, but he doesn't have the recommended number of cores. Also, the minimum amount of ram needed is double what he has. I think that would explain it.

I don't believe his CPU is his primary limiting factor for all of his games though. To be fair, I have an old Mac Pro 1,1 from 2006. It's running an Xeon X5130 @ 2Ghz (two separate dies, both with dual cores), 21GB ram, with a GTX 760, and it runs pretty much everything I throw at it with full speed. Can't guarantee it will run GTA V properly (I don't have any interest in that game or anything Rockstar makes except Max Payne). I can upgrade to 2 X5350s for 8 cores at 3Ghz later on, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

The brand has nothing to do, except in terms of the kind of PSUs they use and heat dissipation practices.

My experience tells me otherwise. Back when they were still around, I noticed Compaq computers had significantly worse performance than Dell PCs of similar hardware. My Dell B1000r continues to outperform any Compaq computer I've ever had or used to this day.

Shogun.

For GTA IV, quad core is a must. Pretty sure that if you had a dual core you couldn't run it at acceptable framerate, lurked a lot on GTA IV forums at the time.

Played it on an overclocked Core 2 Duo with a GTX 560 Ti, severely CPU bottlenecked, got around 30 fps. Upgraded to an i5 2500 and bam, framerate skyrocketed.