BF2 lags despite having plenty of power in my laptop!!

I just reformatted my dell inspiron 9100 and set it up and everythin, but when i play the BF2 demo the ingame graphics are good in parts of the map but elsewhere it gets laggy and choppy. This happens more often as the laptop heats up. I have the newest omega drivers for the graphics card. I've tweaked the settings on the desktop and in the game and i find that the default settings on each work best (i.e give the least amount of lag). Prince of Persia 2 works totally fine, no lag, nothin. But first person shooters r a bit dodgy, i dont know why. I have Norton 2004 and Microsoft antispyware installed but i disable them b4 i play (at least i think i do )

Open GL Settings :

Anti-Aliasing: application Preference
Anisotropic Filtering : 2X
Anisotropic Filtering Method : Performance
Texture Preference : Quality
Mipmap Detail : Quality
V-Sync : Always Off
TRUFORM(tm) : Always Off

I have:
P4 3.4ghz
1gb ram
256mb ATI Radeon Mobility 9800
100gb HD
XP Pro
Max Res 1900*1200 @ 60hz

The following was copied n pasted from some Dell utillity thing, im not sure what it was exactly, but hope it helps.

Processors

Central Processor
Manufacturer Intel
Voltage 3.3 V
External Clock Speed 200 MHz
Maximum Clock Speed 3400 MHz
Current Clock Speed 3400 MHz


Memory

System memory
DIMM: 512 Mb
DIMM: 512 Mb

Windows Memory/Resources
Total Memory 1047764 Kb
Available Memory 713344 Kb
Page File Size 2519588 Kb
Available Page File 2205120 Kb
Virtual Memory 2097024 Kb
Available Virtual Memory 1965272 Kb

disk drives FUJITSU MHU2100AT (Standard disk drives)
display adapters ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9800 (Omega 2.6.42) ATI Technologies Inc. (Omega 2.6.42)



The game gives least lag at 800x600 at 60hz with medium setting. I havent tried changing the refresh rate because i read somewhere that this screen doesnt support anythin above 60hz. BF2 runs ok when i dont move the mouse too much, like flipping 180 and back really quickly, but even as time passes even moving the crosshair a little lags in some places. I've sent the laptop back to dell before because the gfx card got fried. Yup, this laptop gets very hot. Don't think the fans can handle it

Any ideas on what i should do??!

Bare with me if i havent given the right info, i dont do forum stuff much and im not a pc person either =P

Thanks for readin this!!

Nakata^UK

 

Get external cooling. It sounds like your laptop is overheating. Try getting a chillpad or something like that to put under your laptop when you play. A fan might help as well. Basically anything to lower your laptops temperature when you are doing heavy gaming.

 

Thanks for the quick reply! Any ideas where i can get these from? Reckon it will cool the laptop enough? After allowing the laptop to cool for a couple hours the game plays pretty well, but just after a mere 20 minutes it gets laggy. At that point it doesnt even feel as hot as it usually gets. So im thinking that this cooling system may not cool it enough. Have you had any experience with cooling on laptops?

Thanks

Nakata^UK

 

There's basically 2 ways to get your laptop cooler. One is conduction where you put it on something like an aluminum plate that will take away some of the heat. This makes the bottom of the laptop cooler, but may not make the insides much cooler. The second is to increase the airflow inside by having a fan blow air into an intake on the laptop. Many laptops have an intake on the bottom, but I'm not sure about your particular laptop. However just search around for a cooling solution, and you should be able to find one. Depending on how serious you want to get and how much room you have to work with you may even be able to replace the fan with something bigger and faster, or water cooling though these solutions are mainly for desktop cooling since there is a lot of space to work with.
Finally you can try undervolting your system to get a little bit cooler since your games aren't really going to rely on your cpu as much as your gpu. You may even be able to underclock to see if sacrificing speed for less heat fixes some of the slow downs.

 

I have a 9800pro and I can't run BF2 that great on medium settings so maybe you might want to drop down some of the settings. Like someone else said, the gpu is going to be the limiting factor and the 9800 isn't the newest of cards, and BF2 is quite a powerful game.

 

I am using a 256MB DDR2 ATI RADEON 9800XT and I have no problem with BF2. I run it at the highest settings at 1280x960 and I have no problems. Turn off the AA and AF and you will be fine.

I run Far Cry on my 9800XT at Ultra settings, 1280x1024, w/ 4XAA and 8XAF and it runs very smooth, and I also run DOOM3 at 1280x1024 with High quality and 8XAF with no problems.

The 9800 has plenty of power!

 

Your "9800XT", and the Mobile 9800 cards are two completely different beasts. No point in comparing the two.

I could carry on about how my 6800GT blows the doors off my mobile 6800 Ultra.....but there is no point. Desktop cards and mobile cards were not created equally.

As for all of that heat.....that P4 shoulders a bunch of the blame. For me, while gaming on the lappy, I prop the back edge up about 3/4 of an inch. Made a big difference on fan cycle time, keyboard temp, etc.

Cheers

Jason

 

why dont you try ati's new mobility drivers http://www.ati.com/products/catalys...lity/index.html