Morrowind FPS low!

I'm getting a reallly low FPS in morrowind. I'm getting about 19-24 inside and about the same outside. Sometimes when inside it'll get higher but not often.

These are my specs:
Toshiba A105-s2101
-Pentium M 1.6 Ghz
-1400 MB Ram(I forget exact #)
-128 MB X200M Express with the latest Catalyst driver (it was a pain getting that installed mind you!)

I was thinking (hoping that the Omega driver would help, what do you guys think? I can also increase my Vid card from 128 to 256 but I think it's best to keep that 128 in my Ram what do you guys think? Is there anything I can do to up this? I've lowered my visibility turned shadows off the pixle shader is still on but when I switched it off didn't help much.)

Thanks.

 

Taking the RAM for the Video Card might actually help performance here. Also, if there is an option to run Morrowind under DX8 or DX7 that would help the card too...but I don't know if Morrowind has that abilty or not.

At best, the Omega drivers will add a few percentage points of performance...but nothing ground breaking. Might I suggest cleaning out all the drivers (uninstall everything ATI), run Driver Cleaner Pro in safe mode, and then reinstall the Catalyst drivers? Sometimes driver updates (especially when they end up being too troublesome) can lead to major performance problems as well.

Unfortunately, the poor performance *might* be caused by the ATI 200m itself. Integrated graphics cards were meant for 2D (lower powered) work, and at least the GMA 9x0 series have trouble with games less than three or so years old (which is why I sold mine). And before someone accuses me of trolling (you know who you are), realize that I'm not dissing the GMA period...it just wasn't designed for gaming. The 200M might be in the same boat.

The real question is: Does anyone have Morrowind and a 200m notebook to test it out on?

 

I'd also increase the available video RAM..the real problem is tha the express is not a "real" video card--so you will never get killer frame rates.

 

Well I'm not wanting anything great I"m just looking for playability and I get this paranoid feeling it's lagging sometimes lol I want that fear gone.

The problem with reinstalling everything is that I just installed the driver today and I had to run a couple programs to do so because ATI doesn't have drivers for the X200M so I had to run the Radeon Desktop Driver for it and it did help alot because at first I was getting rates as low as 9 outside and 12 inside!!!

Another problem I have with the Omega is that when I install and I restart my comp it always reverts back to a lower resolution no matter how many times I set it to my high resolution. I have a widescreen monitor and it always reverts so I have like 1 inch on both sides of blackness. But I didn't have the catalyst driver installed when I installed the Omega drivers so I'm not certain if Omega drivers already needs the catalyst installed or what. Thanks.

 

You are actually getting good FPS for your system specs. Morrowind uses the first generation of the Netimmerse engine, which is horrible. It renders everything, even if you can't see it. So when you are looking at a building, it is rendering that building, everything behind that building, and everything under the the building, even if you can't see it (or it can never be seen, such as the parts of trees and rocks that are underground). This makes Morrowind VERY cpu intensive, and is straining that P4 like you wouldn't believe.

I used to play Morrowind on old desktop (1.6ghz p , 1 gig of DDR ram and a Geforce 4 Ti4600) and I got about the same FPS as you. The only way you will get way better FPS in Morrowind is by getting a new CPU and a new video card.

 

I've gained a new respect for my FPS considering I just heard of someone who plays Morrowind and only gets 5 in town, 8 in wilderness and 10 inside!!!


My only question is how much more strain would it be on my notebook if I added some texture replacers and other Mods? Like Children of Morrowind and Morrowind Alive etc etc.

 

X200 has serious issues in certain games. There is a big thread about it - 50% of people experience no problems, the other 50% experience low fps in games, even older ones. I used to get 30fps with it in some new games like bf2 and then 15fps in ancient games like medal of honor!

A Pentium M 1.6 is more then enough for Morrowind - that is the equivilent of about a 2.2Ghz desktop system. Morrowind only needs 500mhz as a minimum so anything above 1Ghz is plenty.

 

So you think a sempron 34/3500 will fare pretty well?

Actually when I went from an athlon 1800+ to a Sempron 3100+ my performance nearly doubled with the same video card. In fact, the game is so CPU intensive when I upgraded my radeon 8500 to a 9700 it barely made a difference on the 1800+

 

A Sempron 3500+ is about 5x what you need to run Morrowind. Yes the game was a bit of a mess regarding its engine but it's not as demanding as being laid out here. I have played it on a 1Ghz P3 and it worked fine with a decent video card (Geforce 4 Ti). If you noticed a major difference going from a 1800+ to a Sempron 3100+ in a game as old as Morrowind, there was something definately wrong with your 1800+ system I fear....

 

I'm not saying it was unplayable with the 1800, it was about 35-40 fps, just that with the new cpu it jumped to about 60-80

 

...thats quite a jump. maybe something was wrong with ur old cpu.

 

I have heard there are 2 versions, those with dedicated and those without, perhaps that is the difference?

Depends on the desktop system. A Pentium-M 1.6GHz should be about equivalent to a socket 478 Pentium 4 2.8 or Athlon XP 2800+ etc. but not comparable to even a base level Athlon 64 or socket 775 P4.