DV9500 Graphics Performance

So I had this laptop for a year and had several problems that HP fixed for free. I just recently bought Team Fortress 2 and damn, so addicted. Something to do after I beat GTA4! So I play it and the avg. fps I am getting is about 10-20? I was like the hell? Nothing is pretty much running in the background, I even closed the gadgets thingy for the hell of it. It's weird how Doom 3 runs really smooth at high settings but TF2 seems to be at a bad fps at low settings...

Well here's what I'm running

HP DV9500
Vista Ultimate 64-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 2.20 GHz 2.20 GHz
2 GB Ram
NVidia 8600GS
2 HD - 100 GB and 200 GB

Question is, is it best to uninstall the nvidia drivers first completely using also DriverCleaner then isntall the lastest one from LapTopVideo2Go.com? Plus also uninstall steam completely then reinstalling it.

 

What settings are you running TF2?

I suggest using drivercleaner or driversweeper to clean out the old drivers before using lv2go.com drivers.

You dont have to re-install steam. Steam is just a gaming client.

 

In TF2 I'm running basically crap settings. 800x600 and low settings on all advance topics. I was planning to reinstall TF2 actually, not steam lolz sorry my bad.

 

Might be the driver.Try updating as suggested above.

 

Ok well here I go. I'll post to see whats up afterwards. Thanks in advance all!

 

Ok good and bad news. I got everything uninstalled and then used driverlcleaner after wards to finish off the rest. I tried to install the latest driver off of LapTopVideo2Go.com and then it goes

"The NVIDIA Setup program could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardward. Setup will now exit."

Any suggestions?

 

Did you download the modded inf file? Also download NTune to adjust your clock speeds. I play Cod4 and Americas Army, it was a dramatic increase in fps to say the least. The clock speeds were so low on the regular drivers, with NTune it ups them considerably. Very easy to use also. I went from 10-20 frames to 80-100.

 

You have to download the modded .inf seperately and slip it into where you unzipped the drivers and overwrite the old .inf

 

I just install the drivers successfully and I get about 25-50 fps but 15-20 during firefights. For NTune, what is the safest clocks I should run because I don't really want to kill this laptop. Sorry I'm kind of new to the overclock scene.

 

The best way to do it is to move the clocks up a little at a time and see what works for your machine. After you move the clocks up a little bit, take some time to test it out. Make sure you write down the settings you are using each time, and never set the program to reload the settings at startup. If you adjust the clocks too high, you'll start to see black squares popping up everywhere on your monitor. If this happens, just restart your computer and try a lower clock setting.

 

I actually used the course tune option (20 min). It uses lower clock speeds for regular apps, and the max settings for gaming.

 

Oh so this is all done during NTune. Is it safe? Like is said I'm a college student with not much money and I don't wanna kill this labby lolz..

 

OC'ing has potential risks, so i suggest you know the ramifications before you do so..

TF2 shouldnt be under performing on your system though, something else is wrong

 

Holy crap that was such a fast ass reply. But yeah I did what you guys said, uninstall the video card driver even using driver cleaner in safe mode. Installed the one from www.laptopvideo2go.com, and plus everything is on low in TF2 not even to mention 800 x 600. What else could be wrong?

 

If you're running vista, you might be in balanced/power saver mode, try changing that. My 8400m GS gets around 30-40 FPS on 1280x800 on low settings, your lappy should be getting higher framerates than mine.