Need Help With Performance flash and 2D - 3D applications

So I have this problem, hopefully someone will help me out.This may sound weird, but my PC plays 3D games surprisingly fast (for an old P4 2.4GHz PC). And I mean games like call of duty 4, SC: double agent, rainbow six vegas, world of warcraft, etc etc. Of course I have 1 GB of RAM, win XP Pro, geforce 7600gs agp card (great v-card btw). I play COD4 like at medium settings for video, even some things in high settings, except for shadows which are off, and I get a pretty good amount of frames per second, really smooth gameplay.The problem is that when I run flash applications it kinda runs slow, slow FPS and stuff. Same thing happens with a lot of 2D applications, like OLD GAMES.. i mean really old games, DOS games to be precise. I don't know why this is happening, it should be the other way around...Anyway, I think maybe it has to do with the DX installation, directdraw? There's this game, Football Manager which is a football (soccer) simulation game which runs in 2D graphics, just texts and images and still I get low FPS...I have a laptop, same processor, ATI integrated video card, 512 RAM (32 shared), and flash applications run smoothly here. So the problem has to be my PC. It can't be the video card, since this one is new, and with the old one it happened the same. I'm guessing it has to do with drivers, not the video ones but another kind of drivers which are causing this performance drop.Why I say drivers? easy, because I also have an ubuntu installation and over there flash applications run smoothly like they should... so it's not the hardware, it's not the windows since it's the same one on laptop and this one have been formatted not long ago, so it has to do with drivers.The only thing different between laptop and desktop (other than video card) is the motherboard of couse, but both have integrated sound. My guess is that the sound driver is causing this, but my question is.. does anyone knows if sound has to do with 2D applications? Why can I run 3D applications so smoothly but 2D applications with such low FPS?While someone helps me in here, I'm gonna try to update my sound card drivers, or in case these are the latest ones, then I'll try installing old version on the same driver, hopefully that'll do it.Any other suggestion are deeply welcomed. Thanks a lot.

Here are just a couple fo thoughts from the top of head after reading your post.

I am not actually surprised that you can achieve better results in a 3D application than 2D. Consider that in your games they are taking much of the work off the CPU and passing it to the GPU. 2D does not do this.

Flash apps. Assuming you are running your flash apps through a browser, do you get the same poor performance on different browsers or do you just use 1 browser so do not know? Consider clearing your cache as this may help. Also consider trying in another browser if you have not. Myself, I like stupid flash games like those on addicting games. I use Firefox with Flashblock installed. I only activate the the flash frame containing the game as there are SO many ads and the like if flashblock is off the game is nearly unplayable sometimes. (In fairness to addictinggames.com they are better than other sites when it comes to advertisment glut.)

Older games running slow does seem a bit odd but, is not horrifically uncommon due to XP's poor DOS emulation. Try setting up a compatibility mode shortcut for the game. Additonaly there is software such as DosBox that should allow you to run those games better.

Darasen

Try reinstalling DirectX 9 and your graphics card driver. That, or get a new system? That system is getting old, a 2.4GHz P4? That thing is around the same age as my old P4 which I ditched for an AMD Athlon 64 X2 (going to get a Phenom X4 in the near future).xboxrulz

Try reinstalling DirectX 9 and your graphics card driver. That, or get a new system? That system is getting old, a 2.4GHz P4? That thing is around the same age as my old P4 which I ditched for an AMD Athlon 64 X2 (going to get a Phenom X4 in the near future).
xboxrulz

yup, I know it's old, but it should be considered "fast pc" when it comes to flash animations and 2D applications... Here in Venezuela it's impossible to buy a new system, I just got my american visa application approved so in a few months I'll be going to the US to buy my new PC, then of course the problem would be gone.

Darasen, you may have something there. I didn't know my video card didn't handle 2D graphics, is there a way to force 2D graphics (probably that's directdraw) to use the GPU instead of the CPU? I know that would definitely improve the FPS. And I guess it works different for ubuntu, since while using that OS I don't feel a performance drop.

I said before maybe it was because of the sound card, now it makes more sense, since it's integrated so the CPU takes the load, and maybe processing audio+2D video can create that bottleneck issue (or something else), though I'm not sure it should be like that. Maybe it's just my processor getting old, but most likely there's a problem with the motherboard or the sound drivers, or the sound card itself.

I just wanted to fix that issue, but soon I'll have my new PC, I even got the "22 WS monitor for it, just need to buy the case with all the stuff inside =)

Thanks anyway for helping me.

Make sure that you have DirectDraw to full acceleration.Right-click on your desktop --> Properties --> Display --> Advanced --> Troubleshoot, pull the slider to the fullest.xboxrulz