m1530 poor performance in gaming

I have the m1530 and recently got team fortress 2. Have updated BIOS A012, somewhat updated graphics driver 185.85, can't seem to download the 186.06, links are down for Windows XP Pro 32 Bit version. I am running the game at 800*600 and it still lags.

My screen becomes extremely choppy when more than 3 players are on screen at the same time. From what I've gather on other threads, this should not be happening. What could be wrong and how could I diagnose it. Thanks. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

your GPU maybe faulty.... use HWMonitor and report on the max temps of your GPU/CPU/memory/etc...

did you set your power settings to high performance?

 

Thanks for the quick reply. How do i set power setting to high performance, is it inside the NVIDIA Control Panel? I set that to performance. Is that what you mean? After i got the hwmonitor, the ACPI 92
CPU#1 89
CPU#2 81
GPU 88
HDD 35

*edit, original temperatures were incorrect because I did not let the thing run for a few minutes.

 

power settings as in the one on the toolbar, bottom right corner... where the power adpater/battery icon is

this is for the CPU, which does affect game performance

 

In the Power Options, there is no button for High Performance, I am unsure of what you mean. I almost never have the battery attached, it is plugged into the wall. Perhaps that's a Vista feature you are talking about? I'm running Windows XP Pro. I changed the Performance Options under Visual Effects tab that can be found by right clicking My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced. Is that the equivalent in XP?

 

Any other possible solutions?

 

So do you not have GPU driver at all?

Try dell's driver site, those drivers may not be up-to-date, but they are stable at least.

 

What's a GPU driver? Where could I find such a thing for m1530 win xp 32 bit? First time I have heard that term.

 

the GPU driver is the same as concept of the audio driver, wireless driver, mouse driver, etc. its the program that "manages" the piece of hradware, and is designed only for a range of hardware, such as the GPU, which in this case would be a driver provided by nvidia, or dell, which is the manufacturer of your computer FYI

since you have xp installed i would suppose you failed to install the driver, and windows update did this for you. However, the drivers that come with windows update are no always that good...

here is the nvidia driver for your computer provided by laptopvideo2go: http://files.laptopvideo2go.com/Dox/XP/XP_185.68.exe

uninstall your current driver from the device manager, selecting the geforce 8600gt, and then run the installer

i seriously recommend running vista on the m1530, it wasnt designed to run xp in the first place...

 

I think I misreported the temperatures initially. I had not let it run Team Fortress 2 for more than a few seconds because I was dismay that it was still laggy. However, I let it run for around 5 minutes, here's what the temperatures were.
ACPI 92
CPU#1 89
CPU#2 81
GPU 88
HDD 35

Are these temperatures too hot? Does it mean it's a defective graphics card? I still have it under warranty, if it is, would contacting Dell for a fix be the best solution? Thanks for all your help guys.

 

Given those temps it's your cpu that is overheating.
Which is what's causing the lagging.

Definitely contact Dell and get them to sort it out.

 

yep, definately! possibly your heatsink, but dell should replace the motherboard, heatsink, and cpu.

best of luck with dell support

 

Problem solved, heatsink replaced and it runs beautifully. I feel like I just bought a new laptop.

 

So after searching around trying to fix the performance of my m1530, I've bumped into this thread. Here are my max temps:

ACPI - 83C
CPU 0 - 78C
CPU 1 - 78C
GPU - 99C
HDD - 44C

I'm using DOX drivers, and apparently this heats up the GPU? Doesn't seem like a good idea to heat it up that much. :x

Anyway, is this a heat issue? I'm out of warranty so I don't think I have the option of replacing anything on the hardware side.