Dual Core Superlag

I have just installed a modern, graphically advanced game called Test Drive: Unlimited. My current lappy Acer Aspire 5100 has no proper video card - it has ATi X1150 XPress graphical core. I was not expecting much performance in that game but what I got is terrible lag. Even with everything on low and 640 x 480.

Lag remains everywhere except 2D manus. When any sort of 3D rendering occours game starts to lag very badly (I can hardy position cursor and click buttons).

I really don't think it is game's engine witch causes lag because even in simple indoor scenes lag remains. I think the cause of problem is my AMD Turion TL-50 dual core processor. Some games don't recognise dual cores properly - they are unable to take correct time measurements because of additional CPU core. For example: my CPU is 1,6 Ghz but game somehow recognises it as 20 or 50 Ghz and add unacceptable time delays to keep gameplay in "real time".

Maybe I am wrong and this particular game engine simply is not optimised for low power graphical solutions. Anyway it is very wier. Lag seems to be too hard. Too bad.

Another thing that makes me think about dual core and incorrect frequency measurements is this part in games readme file:


With the release of dual-core processors, such as the AMD Athlon X2 or the Intel Core Duo, some titles that were designed for single-core processors are having issues. These issues can manifest as the following:

- Choppy and/or stuttering performance, sometimes manifesting as random pausing, during gameplay

- Gameplay performing at hyper speeds making it impossible to play.

These issues are being caused due to the timestamp counter not always being read correctly (more specifically, different timestamp counters in the system may contain different values) by the game. As time goes on these issues will disappear however here are some solutions should you run into these issues:"

Is there any way to make sure CPU is recognised correctly? Anyone has any similar experances with gaming and dual cores?

 

You probably need to install good graphics drivers. Do other games run alright? It could be that the game is just bad, too. Single-processor games shouldn't have any issue running on a dual-core system unless they try to do some "tricky" stuff. The CPU is pretty much sure to be recognized correctly, but I do recall that there are some dual-core enabling hacks that you should do for Windows to deal with multiple CPU's better. Search the archives of the forums here (probably the Hardware & Accessories forum, specifically). Those gameplay issues you're seeing are actually remnants of old games using incorrect ways of timing, rather than using system ticks, they use CPU frequency or loop timing. Which is bad, and causes the hyper-speed playing you see. There are also some utilities out that are made to "slow down" your CPU for those specific games, you might check Google for that.

 

Test Drive Unlimited is a pretty enhanced graphics game.

I would be careful, im not sure if your ATI X1150 can handle it, all your other specs are fine.

And about your dual core theory....I highly doubt thats it. The problem is your GPU, it is not really made for gaming.

And as for all the games I have played that were designed for one CPU core I have had 0 issues with those games on my dual core.

 

all recent games that had problems with dual cores have since been patched. make sure you have the latest patch for the game. as said before, your video card is pretty low end. but if your worried about it, then try the xp dual core hot fix. small chance that will fix it if its a CPU problem.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60416

 

Unless the game has multi CPU support, it won't utilize both cores of the processor. If you're using Windows XP, you can try this hotfix:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60416

The problem is most likely your graphics card as people are saying.

 

No. Something is ****ing wrong. Because I can play STALKER at very low settings but can't (get 1 fps maximum) x-plane which requires 16 MB video accelerator.

 

System requirements:
Operating System: Windows® 2000/XP and above
Processor: Intel P4 @ 2.4Ghz or AMD Athlon 2800+
Memory: 512 MB RAM (1 GB RAM recommended)
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB free
DVD-ROM Drive: 8x Speed
Video: ATI Radeon 9800 256MB VRAM or Nvidia 6600 GT with 256
MB of VRAM (Video Cards with vertex/pixel shaders 2.x and
above are recommended)
Sound: DirectX® 9.0 compatible sound card
DirectX®: DirectX® 9.0c included

source*

Even though the GPU requirements are pretty much mid-range, I'm not sure your laptop's GPU can handle it still...

P.S. Stalker at 1fps is not playing it. Running it yes. Playing? Not a snowball in hell's chance

 

Did you check Speedstep settings and power saving settings? I had some trouble with that sometimes before and couldnt figure out what it was. Basically there was som settings in that coused my CPU to run at half speed to save power. Check those settings... maybe it will help.

 

Speedstep is Intel. Cool 'n Quiet is AMD I believe. Anyway, RealArt, do you have the latest AMD dual core drivers installed?