Oblivion and Bioshock - Performace 5920G Acer Aspire

Hi everyone, im new here but I'm really looking for help concerning two games on my laptop. I appologise in advance if my message does not follow guidlines.

Oblivion and Bioshock - I can play both but framefrates can really drop in times of action to unplayable levels.

Im looking to see if I can optimise performace and frame rates to make the games more playable, witout overclocking. At the moment I tend to avoid playing games which result in poor playability performace which results in me missing out on enjoying a lot of good games.

My laptop:

Vista 32bit Service pack 1
Acer Aspire 5920G - Laptop Video 2 go driver - 7.15.011.6909. (Pretty sure this is upto date) Best performace driver?
Core 2 duo 2,4GHz T7700
Upto 1280MB NVidia Geforce 8600M GT Turbocache
Direct x 10
2GB DDR2
Bios Version: ZD1 v1.3708 3G08 (I know this is out of date - I downloaded the 3811 from Acer and couldnt seem to flash the bios) Help anyone?

Just as an example, I had Oblivion playing with just 2 times anti-anylising at the resolution I tend to play at 1024 by 768 pixels....otherwise lag is even worse and with two enemies on the screen at one point, the game practically grinds to a stop. It still looks good but its a very laggy performace. I had fraps running and it was drastically dropping in times of action to the lowest 10 frames.

In addition, my fan is really running like crazy when playing games. I have to put the laptop onto a solid surface always when gaming otherwise the heat through the laptop is too much. I really think maybe the problem lyes here with the system overheating. I experienced it the other day with Baldurs Gate 2 which is really not that demanding a game on the system...I thought.

In terms of updating the system Bios, I will try again here but maybe that could really help.

All help is greatly appreciated

Richard Russell

 

Are both games patched to the latest patch? also for Oblivion there are some essential mods to help performance without any Visual loss, just tweaking the game for Multicore usage and removing some stutter caused by the game, as for Bioshock, do you mind posting what settings are you playing at?

as for the driver, get the 175.xx driver because they perform best for you.

 

Im gonna try and flash my bios with a previous bios to 3805 and then work my wa up to 3811 bios. Following some reading there are some fan fixes included.

I will patch up and then get back....I have no idea how to tweak Oblivion like this.

I dont currently have my bioshock cd to list settings - I had high textures on, Direct x 10 and I think just one of the extra graphical features like High Detail Post Processing. Same resolution as listed above.

What driver do you mean!?

On the acer site, the best I can find for sercie pack 1 Vista 32 is: 7.14.10.1409

On laptop video to go:169.09

Are you refering to a different driver from elsewhere?

Thanks for your response

 

yes a different driver from laptopvideo2go.com find the 175.19 driver, way better performance than the 169.09 in your case

 

Maybe Im being really stupid here, but where the hell is the driver on the website?

Thanks

 

Try this one here:

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18824

175.80

 

here's a tip, shadows are really processor heavy. so maybe shut them off or turn their detail down. you will notice a huge boost i promise.

also, there is grass quality and visual range in oblivion i believe, and turning those down will help too without loosing much in gfx quality.
if you have all that turned down already then i have no idea, sorry.

 

Cheers Ive got the 175.19 drivers installed now.

And the latest Bios, Oblivion is patched upto date.

Is that the best release from Nvidia for my card? I notice you mentioned the 175.80 too.

I saw in the forum that there are newer versions now.

I will play around with these setting in Oblivion yes, thanks for the tip.

Looking forward to a response.

 

there are other drivers out too. forceware drivers are usually great for video games. they improved my 3d mark scored by a significant amount.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

check that site out and play with some drivers from there.

 

Thanks a lot!

Ive got the 175.80 installed and its really improved performance.

Im playing with 8 times anti-anylising and its keeping to a steady 30 usually when the action kicks off! Im pretty happy with these.

How do you reduce these options like shadows etc in Oblivion?

In terms of reducing such settings as shadow quality

 

in the video options there are 2 sliders for shadows, one for outside (outside the cities) the other is for the inside. so choose the best ammount that suites you.

 

on the forums... of course

 

Thanks again!

 

it's been a while since i played, i forget but i believe there is an option. i played it on a horrible comp but it ran fine when i turned shadows and other effects down.