Poor Gaming Performance on HP Pavilion p7-1003w Desktop

I had just today set up a desktop (HP Pavilion p7-1003w Desktop) and I was pretty happy with it. I had uninstalled most of the default shit it comes with and installed Google Chrome and Steam. I am a very avid gamer and I was excited to play games on my desktop. The PC is not new, (six years old) but was not used very much and has 0 problems with hardware. The specs, from what it seems, are more than enough to play the types of games I play, except they ran worse than my old laptop. The games I tried on it are Team Fortress 2 (ran alright, except not like it should), Unturned (early access, I know), and Terraria. If there is anything I am missing, please tell me. Please reply with a fix soon, I am sort of in a hurry to get gaming. Thanks!
(Note: I had installed the latest drivers)

HP Pavilion p7-1003w Desktop Specs:
3.20 GHz AMD Athlon II X4 650 Proccessor (4 core)
8.00 GB of RAM (7.75 GB usable)
Windows 7 64 bit, Home Premium
ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics (not sure if integrated), 256 MB Dedicated Video RAM
HP 2311 Series Wide LCD Monitor

There goes your answer. ATi Radeon HD 4200 is an onboard graphics accelerator and will not play any games on higher resolution. You can play Terraria at lowest resolution possible with that.

Roaster is right in assuming a poorer performance in general but some people say the otherwise. And, I doubt Terraria needs that much of a card to run. Please read:

I have an integrated 4200 HD chip and this chip plays ALL modern made for PC games very well. Most games I don't play on all high settings settings but many games can do high settings too. I mostly use medium or a combination of high medium and low settings. It all depends on what you are running in the background and how much dedicated plus shared ram your laptop has. It also depends on which settings you choose to max out and which you choose to set lower. I can max out textures and set shadows to low or medium with no performance drop or noticeable loss of video graphics quality or loss of frame rate. Some games use HDR and Bloom better than others so depending on the game you may have to turn these off - but not always. My ATI 4200HD has 336 MB of dedicated ram, plus uses up to 1.2 gig's of shared system ram for additional video memory - for a total of 1.5 gigabytes of video memory. I only have a single core 2.1 ghz Sempron processor in my laptop and it has 4 gigs of ram, so taking away 1.2 gigs for shared memory out of my 4 gigs. doesn't hurt the system. You name it, I can play it.. nicely, smoothly, with optimal frame rate. Crysis 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Borderlands, Rage, this list goes on, I play them all very well. As long as the game is made for and optimized for PC this chip is great - some console clones are not optimized for PC and therefore will not play as well. I play all my games at a high resolution - 1336x768

My laptop cost me 350 from Wal-mart and had 2 gigs of system ram. I added another 2 gigs of ram for 50 bucks. For the price and performance, the laptop The OP was looking at would have served him very well.

This graphics chip is still being sold. I hate it when people like jaguarskx talk out ignorant crap and not from a position of experience. jaguarskx obviously does not have this integrated chip. best advise you can get is not listen to anyone who doesn't know the truth from first hand experience - hence - ask someone who actually has this chip, not some guy on a forum who doesn't know from beans.

Also keep in mind.. ATI had a 4200 years ago that was not the same as the 4200 HD series. The HD series is much newer and is way more powerful than the old 4200. Some of you may be getting the two confused.. looks like it from some of the other posts.

Then you should be able to play BF3 providing you have enough shared memory. You need a tool like GPUZ or SIW to tell you how much shared (video) memory you have. My box said I have dedicated 128 But all the tools i used to check it with says it has 336 megabytes and the box/specs do say it can use up to 1.2 gigs of system ram for video ram - I don't see where your specs tell you how much you have, but if it's at least 1.2 gigs of shared, it should work. I do sometimes tweak my MsConfig.exe start up items and disable some processes to be sure I run a lean system for gaming. If your not comfortable with disabling services I suggest you use an app like Game Booster from IOBIT to help eek a little more performance for gaming. with 8 gigs of ram, however, you may not need to do this. In game settings, I'd try them all.. from low to high and with HDR or Bloom enabled and try with them disabled.. you should find a combo that works for you. Hope this helps.

So, try these please:

- Disable all unnecessary Services and Startup items Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup, keep the Antivirus and other security software/services running.
- Increase GPU shared memory to 1.5 or max it can be set GB in BIOS (the poster above was saying 1.2GB is max, you have to try). Check with GPU-Z later.
- Switch to a High Performance power plan in Control Panel - Power Options
- If you still get a poor performance, do as Roaster advice and try a lower resolution.

Let us know how that goes. My PC is 5 years old and 3.2Ghz base with 3.6Ghz turbo, so yours is enough. Also, 8GB RAM is plenty for gaming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gpBJK69H4Q Crysis 2 800x600

The resolution part did help. The average FPS on Left 4 Dead 2 on my native resolution, was 5-10 fps, but when I put it down to 1020 x 720, it jumped up to 22-60 fps. I have been reading some articles about upgrading my gpu, because what I have read, it has a slot that allows me to do so. But until I actually get a dedicated video card, would it be possible to overclock the ATI Radeon HD 4200 to squeeze out a little more performance? Thanks!

Also, how do I change the shared memory in BIOS?

The menu is possibly called onboard devices or integrated peripherals. You can take a photo and post here, if you can't spot it.

Alright, I will go try it, thanks for the help.

I can't find it, would the menu be in the BIOS setup (f10)?

Ok, thank you all for the information. I am looking into new graphics cards that I can play most games on medium settings, no problems, could someone recommend a cheap gaming graphics card?