More Awesome Than You!

Seeing as search has been fruitless for me, I decided to face the firing squad, to ask a question. I'm having some issues with my game studdering, and such. Exspecially if my download folder gets a bit bloated. Which then I am forced to remove stuff I would love to keep. Anyways onwards. Here is part of the issue, this I understand. I am running on 4Gigs of Ram, and a 3ghz dule core. Follow will post system info..Issue is I still have XP because I can't afford a new OS. I was told by someone with more knowledge then I that XP will not reconizes 4gigs. OK get it, what I want to know is. Is there a way I can change something in the game itself..(I have the 2 EPs and 1 SP so far) that would help with the studdering problems. Now please I ask you be gentle, and explain in laymens terms. I'm not stupid, but also not the brightest lightbulb in the pack. Thank you for your time.

OS Name   Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version   5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer   Microsoft Corporation
System Model   System Product Name
System Type   X86-based PC
Processor   x86 Family 16 Model 6 Stepping 2 AuthenticAMD ~3000 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date   Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS M3N72-D ACPI BIOS Revision 0801, 4/15/2009
SMBIOS Version   2.5
Windows Directory   H:\WINDOWS
System Directory   H:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device   \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale   United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer   Version = "5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2111)"
Total Physical Memory   4,096.00 MB
Available Physical Memory   2.67 GB
Total Virtual Memory   2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory   1.96 GB
Page File Space   5.34 GB
Page File   H:\pagefile.sys

What video card are you using?

The card is a Nvidia GeForce GTS 250.

Someone more tech savvy than me can confirm this:

I thought it was Vista that didn't recognize anything over 4 GIGs of RAM? I seem to remember my XP PC realizing I had 4 GIGs of RAM, if it's not, you might have had a stick go out.

Win32, regardless of whether it is XP, Vista, or Win7 cannot effectively address more than 4 GBs of RAM, including video RAMs, but there are ways around this, like giant RAMdisks. Win64, whether XP64, Vista 64, or Win7 64, can handle moar RAMz, but most programs remain 32bit and therefore cannot benefit from these RAMz anyway. Ultimately at this point in time you are better off staying with Win32 to avoid compatibility headaches and just using the rest of your RAMz as a huge RAMdisk. This allows you to perform what amounts to brute-force memory management.

As I am carrying only 4gigs of ram anyways, the question still remains is there a way to tweak the game that helps it to run more efficiently?

How much stuff are you running in the background when the game runs?  Try bringing up the task manager and shutting down as many of the user processes that you can.  Some of these, especially virus scanners can cause a slow down. 

With my old underperforming system, I would disconnect from the internet and shut everything down that I could, it made a huge difference to game performance.

You can also try running that program that shrinks package files, I think it's a jfade program? The name escapes me at the moment but back in the day I remember getting a performance boost, at least at startup, after running it.

jesslla probably refers to the Compressorizer (http://forum.jfade.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=170)

Possibly.  But she would have used proper capitalization and punctuation in her sentence.

I always turn off all unnecessary programs running in the background. Compressing the files might work as far as the mods folder goes. If I recall correctly there was also a way to combine package files so there wasn't so many in the folder as well. Though I have not as yet found the tutorial again. Still I'm wondering if there is a way to make the game run more smoothly. Even without mods, if there is a lot of stuff in a large house, or large areas like when you go on vacation. Sometimes the game will even stutter then. Anyways, I appreciate all the help.