Performance issues with an HD 3650 (512mb)

I hope this is the right forum to post this..

I'm having some performance issues with my HD 3650, especially at COD 4 / WaW.

My system specs are:
AMD Turion X2 dual core mobile
3GB DDR2
ATI Radeon HD 3650, 512 MB.
Catalist drivers: 8.561-081201a1-072275C-ATI
I am running Windows Vista Business 32bit.

According to several forum sources the videocard should be able to run both the COD games at medium settings atleast.

However, in multiplayer i'm having really bad performance issues (even at the lowest settings - AA off / all settings on low / off). I'm 'stuttering' like hell at multiplayer. Singleplayer seems to run a bit better.. but not by a large margin.

Anyone having the same problems, or has any solutions to the problems?

Thanks in advance guys

 

what resolution are you running the game at and is the 3650 DDR or DDR3?

 

I tried running the game at different settings. I even tried running at 640x480 resolution.. no luck.

According to GPU-Z the vid card has DDR2 memory.

 

Try updating your driver.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=258626

 

Yes, try that.

Also, since you mention that multiplayer performance is worse, your connection might not be that great.

 

I'll try to update my drivers (pretty sure i had the latest version though..). My connection is pretty good, had no ping issues

 

It does sound like a driver problem to me. also download rivatuner to see if your card is running at full clock, also make sure you are on high performance power settings

 

make sure that it is not in power save mode

 

I downloaded the latest ATI drivers and ran them through the mobility modder from Driverheaven.com.

The drivers seem to make little difference.. I'm still experiencing low performace (800x600 -> 20 fps (50 fps in buildings) en stuttering in 'open area's'.

The laptop is on 'High performane' power settings.

 

Other things that can affect performance:

• Background programs running like anti virus, chat, iTunes, schedulers etc... Get rid of anything running in the background.
  
• Is everything up to date? Game patches, Windows updates, drivers etc...
  
• Do you maintain your system with tools like CCleaner and Defrag. Do a thorough cleaning and defrag. It can't hurt.

 

I recently found out that it might be my processor that is causing problems. The laptop uses this processor: amd turion x2 dual-core mobile RM-70.

On sites like 'www.systemrequirementslab.com' it always indicates that my processor is the slowest item in my laptop. In games it doesnt really mather much if I decrease my resolution, etc. Ofcourse it's noticeable, but not as much as I thought.

Any thoughts on this? Is there a way to check if my processor is running at full speed, etc? (I can only change my videomemory in the bios).

Thanks in advance =)

 

First thing I thought when I saw multiplayer and Turion was "CPU limited".

That's about equivalent to a Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz, which just might be a bottleneck.

Multiplayer games almost always tax a CPU more than singleplayer because there are many more physics calculations being done. Counter-intuitive, but try turning your graphics settings up until you find a sweet spot.

 

Check to see if your CPU is being throttled by a third party program (RMClock was throttling my CPU to half speed without me knowing at one point)

 

-try disabling powerplay

-try doing a clean install of the 8.9 catalyst (they worked well for my hd3650) by using driver sweeper or a similar program

-check the actual clock speed of your card while gaming with amd gpu tool

-check the actual clock speed of your cpu while gaming with cpu-z

-make sure temps are good with everest or hw monitor

-exit all background programs and see if it makes any difference

your laptop specs aresimilar to mine (c2d t5750,4gb,3650 ddr2) which runs cod4 maxed at 1280X800 at ~25fps so you should be getting close to that performance

 

yep, check to make sure your videocard is running at full speed and make sure the temps are ok. I still dont think the cpu is bottlenecking. I have a t7100 1.8ghz processor in my laptop with a much waeaker video card. And its performs better than your machines at lowered settings. so cant be a cpu bottleneck

 

i also agree, ive also got the exact same specs as the PW, including the turion, it has no problems with COD4, i have everything at med-high settings and it runs a dream.
of course i dont have any suggestions just wanted to add, i dont think its his CPU.
goodluck

 

I'm trying different suggestions from this thread out atm, but wanted to share this picture with you. It's a screenshot taken from GPU-Z regarding my vidcard. Maybe it will help us to get closer to the problem.

According to this site: http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3650.8839.0.html the memory speed should be 700mhz. According to GPU-Z my vid. card has 500Mhz memory speed. Could this cause the performance problems?

Thanks for the replies so far guys, I really appreciate the help.

 

do this and im sure it will stop the stuttering....ENABLE dual video cards option in the game settings...trust me it will smooth it out

 

heres my results using GPU-Z

nearly identical to yours.....

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/09/02/13/a8y.png

notice my default clock is alot lower than yours and also my bus interface is PCI-E x16@x16

actually not sure what it all means but you should be running most games at med-high settings no problems at all.

 

your cards clocks are fine you have the ddr2 model which has slightly lower clock speeds
is this problem occuring with cod or with all games?
have you tried my previous suggestions?

 

I finaly found the solution to my performance problems. Took me / us quite some time, but eventually we figured it out.

I upgraded my bios to the latest version available for my laptop (Acer site). The only visible change in the bios was the 'video memory'. In the previous version i could select a few different values ('ANY, 512, 1024', etc.) In this version the memory is set on 512mb. This is not changeable anymore.

This seems to have fixed the issues. I have 45-50 fps on medium-high settings in outside areas and 90 fps inside buildings (COD4). Runs like a charm! Other games like 'Race driver: GRID' run great aswell.

Thanks everyone for their help! <3

 

congratulations........now you can finally get into some serious gaming..
enjoy.

 

wierd.... but nice