Video card and gaming confusion! Help me understand!

I’m more of a troubleshooting guy but I have trying to understand graphics, video cards, rendering, and stuff like that a bit better. So basically I’m a little confused on what’s going on and I’d like to know what is wrong in the future. Here is the setup:

I’m running on a Acer AMD turion with 64x2, 4gbs of ram, geforce 8400M G(fully overclocked – ha I think), running on Vista 32, this laptop sits on a NZXT ACC-NT-CRYO-S 120MM Aluminum Notebook Cooler, running NHC and speedfan in the background. Ok now that information is out of the way. Here come the questions.

1. Let’s talk examples. Currently I have the games Command and Conquer all stars and Empire Total war. Both great games. I did an experiment recently. I ran both of them on lowest settings and played for about 20 minutes. Now the game will play overall will slow and putter at times. Almost like some sort of graphics lag. At the lowest settings! Wait! Then I’ll go back and crank up the settings to the max in every category. I mean the highest in everything. I’ll run them both for about 20 minutes. Same thing, game runs great and looks great but every say five minutes or so it will slow and sputter and then suddenly speed up again. What causes this and is there anyway to stop it? Is it possible there is something not on or enabled in the nvidia 3d settings causing this?

2. I use speedfan and NHC for heat monitoring. Speedfan seems to watch my gpu pretty good and my nhc is good at looking at the CPU. Is there a proven better of the two not just preferences? What is considered too hot for a video card and CPU?

Ugh I’m sure I have more questions but this is all I can think of right now.

 

Well, how about you take out the overclock from your GPU? Then go again and test at the low settings. If the problem is gone then it meant the overclocking was making unstable your card (assuming it is not damaged).

By the way, what do you mean by "fully overcloked'?

 

There's a lot of units to be rendered by the GPU in RTS, so your 8400M is probably choking on everything going on. Could be the number of units, smoke effects, explosions, etc. It's also going to be a serious strain on your CPU, so that's a factor which combines with low grade cards to create the stuttering when the action picks up.

 

Im thinking he means as far as you can go?

Here is a post that might help
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=25449

 

Maybe fully overclocked was a bad term to use. It has been overclocked but not to where I am seeing noticable overheating or artifacts. Actually, I've noticed the same thing as described before the overclock. The difference is that before it was overclocked when I put everything at max settings it was moving so slow it was not playable.

Kevin_Jack2.0,

Wouldn't that show true on the low settings though?

 

Thanks for the informative link. Although it doesn't really answer my questions put on this post.

 

Well, I was asking seriously. As far as you can go does not tells me anything since I can overclock my GPU and have artifacts every few seconds (using the AtiTool function for scanning artifacts). Then, is that "fully overclocked"?, or is it until it fills my needs?

 

After more thought, it definitely seems like your CPU is bottlenecking.

 

The only time Ive ever exprienced something like youre talking about is when Im playing a game online, where it slows or stops and then catches back up fast. Im assuming ur not playing online though correct?

Does it happen as soon as you start playing it?

Or after a 20 minutes?

 

Snowm0bile
-It's pretty much random.

 

Most likely a CPU and RAM bottleneck, but it might be a VRAM and graphics issue too. Steadily increasing number of on screen units means steadily decreasing framerate.

 

the 8400M just isn't intended for gaming, so probably it is the graphical effects in the games that slow it down - just like stated above by the others I think it's the explosiong, smokes ect.

 

I would have to assume its with the CPU. Since empire total war is a cpu intensive game, it doesnt matter if the graphics are on high or not.

Also, since the turion x64 ultra(Im assuming you have the ultra, I dont know what the clock rates on the one released in 07 has) has clock rates from 2.0-2.4ghz and TDP from 32-35watts and Empire Total War has system req of 2.4ghz.
You could try to OC your cpu and see if it helps. And I just found another post to OC ur turion..if its the 1.8ghz. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235507

Heres also another good post that might help a little. (This was the post I was looking for first)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=122013