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I don't understand why I lag...
recognize
Member Posts: 27
I turn everything to it's lowest settings in the this, and yet when I play the games chugs massive ass, i get 4 fps, and it takes forever to load textures, people, and towns. Here are my computer specs:
Processor: AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology ML-42, ~2.4GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 512mb (Dual with SLI enabled)
Hard-drive: 142gb
OS: Vista-32 bit
Any ideas on how I can improve my performance. I can understand not running on high, or lagging a little bit...but it's getting ridiculous. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
~Recognize
Comments
because vista is a resources hog....you would more than likely have to increase your ram. 32bit only handles 4gbs combined RAM + Video Ram, so you also now are looking into 64 bit os. But vista pretty much uses 2 gigs of ram on its own. You could try adding another 1 gig ram if you can go with an odd number
I wish i could up grade my ram... but sadly my comp is litterally maxed out...see the strange thing is my friend's comp has 2gb of ram as well and Vista-32 bit, but his runs perfect on medium settings.
I see people viewing... but no responses
ok but what kind of vid and proc does he have? also is your HD sata or pata?
theres alot of information your not giving that would make a better comparison
Vista does NOT uses 2 gigs of ram by itself. It uses about 750mb of ram to run.
also whats your internet connection like?
You should definately be able to play the game with decent settings and much higher fps...7900 is only mid range video cards,but should be decent enough.
All I can really suggest is make sure you do the small things like Virus scan/Spyware...Defrag and make sure you have all the important windows updates installed. Remove all the things your running in your background that you don't really need.
Make sure you got as much free hard drive space as possible...if your running low on space your computer is going to be bogged down. Vista is probably doing more harm then good,even with sp1 that was released not that long ago. Make sure you got the latest video drivers installed as well.
Vista does NOT uses 2 gigs of ram by itself. It uses about 750mb of ram to run.
vista loads run from 700-1600megs depending what you have running (vista services). I averaged up.
1. install the service pack 1 for vista 32 bit
2. install the lastest graphics drivers from nvidia.com (they just released them a few days ago)
if you dont know how to do the graphics drivers this is how i usually do it.
uninstall old drivers, reboot comp.
install new driver, reboot comp. fairly simple.
i myself noticed a HUGE difference just from the vista sp1.
All updates are installed.
Internet connection is cable, never had a problem with it before.
As for video card drivers, the latest driver for my video card is 167.xx which is under the recommended for AoC. So i DL'd drivers from laptopvideo2go.com and now have 169.xx, anything higher seems to mess up my comp and or freeze game.
My hard drive is over 1/2 empty.
Also, as for background programs, I have nothing running the back ground.
yeah, unfortunately it doesnt look like the go cards are supported under the new 175.16 drivers. that is a bummer. i dont know, have you tried running ad aware, and a avg virus scan? also, i think that cpu is a little outdated.
Ad aware, Spybot, Norton, Defrag, and cleanup all ran multiple times.
all i can say to that then is.
1. get a new computer.
2. wait a few patches see if performance improves some.
3. play it how it is, and deal with it. (if you can)
4. cancel your sub, and quit playing? ( really not trying to be rude, but its an option)
edit: oh...and also make sure you disable your virus software before playing the game (SHUT THEM OFF) that could be a big problem. (also, norton is the worst av program ever, i would delete it.) get avg anti-virus, it works great, and easy to disable when you want to game.
The "go" part of your geforce 7900 go card is very important. The mobile versions of the cards are pretty weak. That's likely to be your bottleneck atm. Try different drivers and see if any work better than others for your particular system. You may have some luck. If not, well laptops aren't great choices for high-end gaming (and AoC falls into this category) unless you like spending $3k every 6 months for a new one. If so, ditch yours already and get a better one.
Any other suggestions?
You just need better computer. Aoc is demanding game and that weak laptop can't handle it. You have done pretty everything you could do to improve performance. Like previous posters said, your video card is a problem. 79xx are very low end video cards, not to mention it's laptop edition.
You have several strikes against you with Vista, a laptop (always slow) and a lower edition video card and not enough ram for Vista to boot..
But, here are my suggestions to help...
1. Turn off bloom...lower end machine...give up trying to do bloom
2. Also, in the advanced settings tab is the shadows...should be set to medium or low...and 3d occlusion...disable this puppy...it even makes my monster machine run less than adequately..
3. Turn down all view distances...
4. Turn all textures to medium
Now, for the Nividia software
Do not go above 4x AF and totally turn off AA...
Now after all this...if it still runs like crap...
Try here
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/
If none of these drivers work...then you have a deeper issue with your laptop, and it may need to be serviced.
Good luck
I second that laptopvideo2go.com advice. That is a great site for laptop drivers/help. Even if you do know about it, the forums there can help because it's possible someone else with a similar card/setup/laptop is asking about being able to play AoC as well.
I had to use it for my laptop and found some drivers that worked great for games in the past.
Laptop drivers are a bit different, and sometimes the newest drivers out by nvidia don't always work right with your laptop card. For example, my laptop has a 6800 GO in it and I was using the 93.71 drivers for a long time with it and they gave great performance in the games I played on it over the lame and highly outdated Dell drivers.
But there's a huge range of difference, what drivers work for some don't work for others. Laptops are quite weird with drivers from my experience with them. Then again, admittedly, my laptop experience is quite limited, so someone else probably knows a lot more about it.
From your post though it sounds like you know about replacing the INF files to get the drivers to work.
edit: And yes, like the above poster mentioned, if you're still having problems you might want to be careful, lol. My first 6800 GO got fried. Luckily, Dell replaced it for free (even after my warranty was up.) Not to mention I got it back in 3 days, counting sending it in, which surprised me.
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You just need better computer. Aoc is demanding game and that weak laptop can't handle it. You have done pretty everything you could do to improve performance. Like previous posters said, your video card is a problem. 79xx are very low end video cards, not to mention it's laptop edition.
That is by no means a low end card. It's a high-end mid-range, but anyhoo. People in closed beta had massive problems with SLI. The CB tech forums were littered with posts about 4-10 fps with SLI enabled. If you're running SLI disable it.
Try to only use the default light or medium settings without AA or anything else (no bloom). I remember in the closed beta that it worked wonders sometimes.
I experienced a lot chugging the other day and I found out my HD running all the time caused it. I got a 4GB mem stick I'm running readyboost on and I turned off windows search (under services.msc) and I put it to no pagefile! Yeah you read me correct.
I got 3,5GB ram + 4GB readyboost and no pagefile. The HD doesn't run anymore and the game is actualy much quicker. Every time my HD started running the game would lag. Oh yeah I've done two tweaks to the medium setting. Only shadows from chars and squeezed the texture from ram all the way to the right. My GFX card needs to borrow some system ram. Test that and If it works gradually tweak it so it fits your system. If it starts to lag again just default to light/medium again.
Edit to say: I saw it's a 7900 card. How new is it? Does it have to emulate some of the newer features like 3.0 shaders, parallax mapping and so forth? Emulating eats up a lot of cpu-cycles. Try to disable stuff like shadows and other features. Try 2.0 shaders. If you manage to isolate one thing you can work around it.
I'm thinking 2GB RAM is more of the issue. I'm having pretty crappy fps myself and I'm running the GeForce 8500 XT and 2GB RAM. I'm not about to run out and purchase a new video card but can change out RAM to reach 4GB, just sucks to waste my current 2. If/when I change the RAM I'll post if it makes a huge difference in lag/fps.
• OS: Windows XP SP 3
• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-core 5400+ 2.80GHz Processor
• RAM: 2GB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Dual Channel Memory
• Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
• Video memory: 512MB
• DVD-ROM: More than a Quad-speed DVD-ROM drive
• HARD DRIVE SPACE: Way more than 30 GB
If you are getting performance hits that cause 4fps, its not Lag, it's your computer struggling to render all the pixels quickly enough. Lag would be warping, paused models, and other internet related issues.
Turn off all of the fancy visual effects, try lowering your resolution of your monitor, try updating to the latest drivers (for every component, one thing off can cause a problem), and if all else fails, upgrade to 64-bit vista and increase your ram to 4gb, that should make a noticeable difference.
Unfortunately, laptops are never going to be great at gaming, a desktop PC at the same price point will always be nearly twice as good.
I hope you can figure it out