Need help with my Geforce FX 5500

Hey, I have a GeForce FX 5500 PCI 256mb graphics card but my game still lags a lot when I put the details to high. I also have a 647mb RAM, 7200rpm 40gb hard drive and a 1.7 celeron processor. I have tried a lot of things, such as increasing my page file usage space to 4gb, closing a lot of services in task manager, using optimization programs but they havn't increased the performance much. Could someone help me with this? Thanks.

Could it be RAM? Or HD space? Or I have no clue?

Could it be because my graphic card is a PCI? My friend has a 1.4 processor, 256mb ram, 40gb hard drive and a 64mb ATI AGP graphic card and it runs really smooth on high detal.

it's likely you're processor, unless you have two different types of ram, or your hard drive is full. It's not about if your card is PCI, PCI-E, or AGP

hmm..so if i took out my really old 128mb ram and just left the 512mb ram in..would it maybe improve my speed?

yes, as it is likely that they arent the same type of ram and therefor incompatible and it slows down you're system.

Its possible that the different ram types slow down you system like silasdc said. Having a PCI video card is pretty much stone age, and a celeron processor isn't helpin that much.

But a 5500 PCI 256 mb card isnt stone age as far as nba live 06 goes. I'm betting its a combo of incompatible ram and a poor processor.

But a 5500 PCI 256 mb card isnt stone age as far as nba live 06 goes. I'm betting its a combo of incompatible ram and a poor processor.

I'll have to disagree with you there. The FX 5500 is not only a low end card, but is quite notorious for being a slow-ass-bitch. Not only that, this is the PCI version, which makes the case even worse. In this case 256mb of PCI is probably equivalent to oh, say an AGP card with 64 mb.

PCI Bw
132 MB/sec

AGP Bw
1056 MB/sec

The ram probably isn't the main factor, and although the processor is shit, I'm fully capable of playing Live 06 on my Celeron 1.4

The card sucks, yes, but i'm not sure it sucks so bad for nba live 06, which is one of the least demanding games that was released this year....

We'll have to see if taking the ram out fixes his problem....

kobe4mvp01, you also might want to check your video card driver settings, make sure anti-aliasing(AA) is off, you can also turn off anisotropic filtering(AF) as nba live doesn't really need that. You can also play at a lower resolution to improve performance.
You could turn the bench players to low or off, since the bench doesn't do shit but sit still like catatonics. If you play with reflections on low or medium you shouldn't notice much of a difference after a while, and you will get some extra performance out of it, rather than playing on high.
Texture filter should be on bilinear, you shouldn't notice a difference in image quality, and you may get an extra frame here or there. If you do notice worse image quality, put it at trilinear. Anisotropic is the highest setting but the level of anisotropic filtering in your gfx card D3D settings will determine how much it lowers your framerate.

Here's a thread at the guru3d forums where someone asks what the best driver is for the fx 5500 pci, they go through a few drivers and post the benchmark results - http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=166693
You can also try "modified" drivers, which attempt to increase performance and image quality in games.

Omega Nvidia Drivers
Modded Nvidia Video Card Drivers at guru3d.com
Official Nvidia Drivers

Alright, thanks for your time guys. I really appreciate your help. Hopefully I can resolve this problem because I don't wanna waste money on another graphic card, as I bought the GeForce FX 5500 like 2 months ago. Alright, thanks again.