Playing COD4 on ASUS G1, help!

ok, i have an ASUS G1 notebook

This is the first generation of the notebook.

T7200 2.0GHZ CPU
2x2GB DDR2 RAM (upgraded myself. Computer only sees ~3GB. This is a mainboard problem, not X86/X64!)
GeForceGo 7700 512MB
160GB 7200.2 Seagate HDD (upgraded myself)
1680x1050 15.4" screen
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (preinstalled)

everything else is as per the website.

now, it can play most games fine, even if i have to turn down the settings.
but i can't get COD4 to play smoothly...even @ 800x600 res and all settings on the lowest they will go.

The HDD light seems to be pretty constant while playing, could it be trying to read from the HDD while playing and this makes it jerk?

i've even downloaded the 180.48 WHQL drivers with a modified inf file from laptopvideo2go.com but that didn't make any difference.

any suggestions???

 

give 180.70 a try

 

this isn't a specific problem with the 180.48 driver. i mentioned that to show that i had the latest (or close to it) drivers and not drivers from 3 years ago

this has been a problem since i first tried COD4 on my machine.

but i can try them to be 100% sure

 

Hey Panther,

Your hard drive is more than fast enough to keep up with no issues. When you do play, what is your average fps? Are you getting 30 fps but with a bunch of stutter/glitch? Also, have you tried with all of the latest patches or running the game in XP compatibility mode? You can run the disk monitor from Vista's admin control panel to see what is going on as well. Good luck.

 

Make sure to turn off AAx.

 

Perhaps try defragmenting your laptop harddrive. (Maybe your drive is pretty full, and because of this when you installed the game, it went all over the place on your drive?)

I have the asus a8js with the 7700m, 5400rpm hard drive, and the game plays suprisingly well (although yes, sometimes when the harddrive is used and there is a little lag when that happens, but it is certainly not constantly loading from my harddrive).

As for the 4gb of ram (only using 3gb)...its actually not the motherboard, but the 32bit operating system.
Using 32 bits, means you can only "address" (2 to the power 32) memory locations (i.e. 4GB), however, that "address space" is used for everything. Access to other resources (BIOS, PCI express cards, network cards, I/O cards, bridges etc etc...) is reserved by the OS, and start at the "highest" address, and go down. So if you have a 512MB video card, the (approx)3.5GB to 4GB address space is reserved just for that alone.

...sorry for rambling on about "RAM"

Anyhow, if you still think game performance is related to the harddrive, perhaps go to seagate's website and download their diagnostic software. (seatools i think is the name).

Oh yeah...I should also point out that (especially with the nvidia 7700m), games perform noticibly better on XP then vista with older gen video cards. (I have a triple boot system with Vista, linux for work, and XP for fun)

 

i think its at version ~1.04...i don't play online at all, so don't keep up with most of the updates

the game is completly unplayable, not the occasional stutter.

i would estimate its running ~15fps...how do i check the actual framerate?

i'll give the compatibility mode a try

@ daljeet, all graphics/detail settings are as low as they can possibly go! i wouldn't set it to 800x600 and leave AA/AF on

 

ACTUALLY, it is the motherboard...thats why i said "This is a mainboard problem, not X86/X64"
i have even installed X64 Vista to be 100% sure and it still shows the EXACT same amount of RAM. ASUS have told me the motherboard does not support more then 2GB of RAM. I have been hung up on by ASUS because i wouldn't take that for an answer.
The BIOS only shows 2987MB of RAM (from memory). Since Vista SP1, Windows sees 4GB, but it still only uses the 3GB.
The First gen G2 does the same thing, i have a friend with one.

Seatools would only show if the HDD was faulty/bad sectors...since im not getting BSOD/Freezes, i doubt its the HDD. classic HDD problem is the "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" BSOD

I still have the original 5400RPM HDD, i can reinstall Vista (or XP) on that and see how well a fresh install goes on it, but i can't format my main HDD at the moment, my roommate would kill me!


BTW, thx for the replies...so much help...one person replies when i am replying to someone else

 

im not sure if this is what you meant, but i went into the performance monitor and had a look at what was reading/writing to the HDD while COD4 was running.

It was the "SYSTEM" process that was doing it. I looked at the pathname.

OMFG!

about a year ago (before i increase the RAM) i purchased a 8GB SD Card and set that up as a readyboot drive. and it honestly did help with the performance.
Then in Jan i upgraded the RAM.

When i first got COD4 i do remember playing fine on my notebook.

The path the "system" process was reading/writing was my readyboost drive!

i turned off readyboost on that drive and disconnected it...

now everything just seems to be running better

weird thing is, it really did speed up the computer when i got it...so, maybe since i increased the RAM, the readyboost was holding it back.

well, problem solved!

Thankyou to all of you for your help! i had Cod4 running @ 1680x1050

 

I second the defrag idea. Try something like Defraggler to get it done. Fraps will allow you to see your in-game fps as a numerical overlay. Also (HWMointor+GPUZ )or RivaTuner to monitor your temperatures and card clocks. You can find most of these programs at filehippo.com or the one and only Google. GL

 

lol, thx for the suggestions again, but its all sorted

 

Thats too bad about the ram. Still hard to believe that the G1 wouldn't support 4GB. like I said...I have the lowly a8js (I believe that is an asus laptop around the same generation then the G1?), and Linux (Open SUSE 11 x64, the only 64bit OS I have installed...the x64 version, not an ia64 version written for the itanium) sees all my ram.

Anyhow...congrats on figuring out your issue!. I am suprised that inserting an 8GB SD card actually sped things up for you. When ever I use the memory card reader, (I don't know if it was after some patch, or always this way?) my computer is "jerky"...mouse jumps around, instead of moving smothly etc...and I can't find (other then the ones posted at asus) updated Ricoh card reader drivers...

 

yea, i don't see why it can't support 4GB...even if they need to release a BIOS update for it.

There are many people on the ASUS forums with the same problem, they see the exact same amount of RAM as i do.

meh, 3GB is enough...and Windows 7 should use less resources

 

hmmm, this doesn't sound good.

i've completed the singleplayer cod4 and play multiplayer a bit on my G1 just fine. plus my drive (original 5400rpm seagate momentus 160Gb) is pretty full, (20Gb free)

try a defrag, a spyware scan, a virus scan, a temp file clearout, get rid of anything you don't need... usual stuff... i don't like the sound of your drive light being on constantly. that could be windows defender butchering your frame rates by doing a scan in the background.

i know this doesn't help, but i've upgraded to vista home premium 64bit, plus got 4Gb ram in there.

unfortunatly, vista 64bit still only shows 2978Mb ram or whatever, seems this is a limitation of the 945m chipset, not the bios. even though the bois shows 2x2048mb installed. i'm not sure but think the 965m chipset doesn't have this problem, and that is what the later G1s/G2s laptops were based on?

not sure. anyway. my G1 has just gone and blown the GFX chip. funny. i thought only 8x00 and 9x00 series chips were effected, not 7x00... Asus have said they can't sell me a new board as they don't have any, and i'm two weeks out of my two year warrenty. tempted to say "eff it" and buy an alienware m51x. wasn't going to buy a new laptop till the core i7 made it into mobile form. just gotta figure what i need to do to claim on the house insurance in the meantime i'm scoping out ebay for a G1 with a busted screen, or being parted out...

 

umm, according to the Intel website the 945PM chipset supports 4GB RAM...so i would say its the BIOS.

and if u read the posts, the problem is sorted, it was a slow readyboost SD card that was slowing it down

 

He is correct on the 3GB official limit as the asus C90 also released at same time has same hardware limitation. Still with a bios update you can now run 4GB(2.87 gb seen) dual like with the C90; just a thought