Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Laptop acts sluggish even after all attempts are made to increase speed...

(1/3) > >>

wreckedcarzz:
This one has me puzzled...badly.
For the people that know (or can help) what might be causing "lag" (LOW FPS) here are the specs:
HP Compaq nc6000 Business Laptop
1.6GHz Intel Pentium M processor
512 MB of RAM
One 37 GB HD (2 partitions, 1 for normal use and one for gaming- the only difference from my old and new setup)
An ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics card
Genuine Windows XP Home Edition SP1 on the Gaming partition- no updates excluding Direct X 9c and drivers.
Genuine Windows XP Home Edition SP2 on the Normal partition- all updates.
(The Normal partition also uses Windows Live OneCare for security www.windowsonecare.com)

The game that is having low FPS problems (my main graphics testing game):
Need for Speed Underground 2 (no patches)
Runs in 640x480 res or something similar
Basic graphics demands: no texture filtering, no anti-analysing, world detail 100%, car detail high, road reflection 33%, car reflection update rate: 50%, basics (NO vsync).

The rundown on what happened and how can I fix it:
The computer- or more precisely the programs on the computer weren't acting like I wanted them too, and as usual, with tons of time to burn, I simply reformatted my hard drive (yep, lets lay on my bed and reformat and dual-partition my hard drive so I can re-install everything onto 2 partitions and blow away 3 hours or so. yep, GREAT IDEA!). So everything installs great. I setup my gaming and my normal/casual partitions like they were separate computers (only on the same hard drive). So, being all happy about boosting my FPS on my gaming and my overall performance on my normal, I boot up the gaming and give Need for Speed Underground 2 a whirl.
Whenever I get near a car with any high-detail items on it...I GET THE WORST FPS I HAVE EVER SEEN ON A COMPUTER!!! 1 FPS SLOW ENOUGH FOR YA? So I'm sitting here, waiting for the lag to go away, and I keep wondering why it is still not catching up. I think about my dual-partition hard drive. The hard drive light isn't on, so it isn't working, and that isn't my problem; OK, so I am, basically, screwed (to put it nicely). And after about 45 seconds, the FPS comes back to about 30-35 or so, like normal. But it repeats itself. The gaming partition never touches sites other then www.there.com and vlb.there.com, two perfectly safe & tested sites. So I know its not viruses, spyware, malware, adware...
The disk has 1 fragmented file. 1. So it isn't fragmented. It is just that I need to install SP2 on that hard drive partition too? If so, that basicly just defeats the purpose of re-formatting in the 1st place. But, is there ANY way to accelerate the FPS on this thing?

If you reply:
THANK YOU FOR READING THROUGH THIS AND TRYING TO HELP!
-Wreckedcarzz

mouser:
if its just the FPS for a game, i would guess it could be your graphics card driver.

i'm not a big game player but occasionally i see posts about how a game has impossibly slow framerates due to incompatibility or old graphics driver.  an update of game or driver fixes it eventually.

lanux128:
yes, mouser's right. if you installed the graphics driver from the oem cd, then it's probably outdated. you have to visit the website of the GPU chipmakers (nVidia, ATI, etc) and get the latest drivers..

wreckedcarzz:
Ok, updating drivers now.
Thanks for the help!  :)

f0dder:
Have the game every run okay on your laptop? It *is* a relatively demanding game for a 9600 card when details are set to highest. Also, does the video chip have dedicated memory, or do your system use a unified memory model?

And... why two installations of XP? Does SP2 give any measurable speed impact anywhere? (apart for possibly a bit longer bootup time).

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page