Why do I lag on my new Envy 14 but not on my 4+ year old dell inspiron?

The specs of the envy 14 are the same as my sig except it has 6GB ram instead of 8GB. This is the one I will be sending back soon since I ordered a better, cheaper version with the 30% BCB. Since I am sending it back I didn't bother doing a clean install or updating drivers so could that be the reason for my lag while playing games on battle.net on warcraft III: frozen throne? It isn't constant lag, just random spikes that give me real bad lag and I even hold up the game for a second or two. I tried using both laptops at the same exact location, with the same wireless connection and played the same game and the envy 14 had terrible lag spikes while the old dell inspiron e1705 ran flawlessly.

So what's the deal? Is it HP's bloatware? Do I need to update drivers? Is there a firewall or something that is effecting the connection to battle.net?

 

You could have any number of issues at play. I'm not too familiar with the game, but I believe the laptop should be able to play it well.

What Antivirus software do you have installed? Does it have a firewall built in? Does your router have a firewall built in? Did you configure any special network settings for your old laptop?

 

Yeah the game is like 8 years old so the envy 14 should definitely be able to handle it.

The antivirus stuff I have would be everything that came with the laptop because I have not gotten rid of anything nor have I added anything besides a few games. So I guess that would just be norton's internet security. The only firewall I can find is windows firewall. I dont believe my router has a firewall built in nor do I believe I configured any special network settings on my old laptop.

 

Which version of Windows do you have on your old Inspiron? Some people have issues with online games like WoW and Warcraft 3 lagging on Win 7 because it has something to do with how Win 7 optimizes network connections. I haven't had any lag playing those games on my Envy 15 and I didn't have to try tweaking anything, but I did have a clean install so maybe it is a software/bloatware issue? If you haven't turned off Norton yet, give that a try, and also look up the battle.net forums and see if people have common issues.

 

I have windows xp on the dell. Yeah I thought I read something about that so I installed this program that is suppose to fix that, it didnt do much. I tried turning off norton and windows firewall it seems to be a bit better. Perhaps I just need a clean install. Roughly how long does a clean install take and does it void the return policy?

 

Install itself takes roughly 20 minutes. Getting all the drivers reinstalled could take another hour or so. And no it doesn't void the return policy. I returned my first Envy 15 with an unactivated copy of Win 7 professional that I used for my fresh install because my factory restore disks didn't work =/, but HP took it without complaints.

 

describe the lag for me.


is it just lagging out or is it more of a stutter stuff/out of sync?


'cause there could be some port forwarding you need to do for battle.net

also if you're over wireless it could be the intel card being annoying (if you haven't update it's browsers by searching for intel 6200 on google)

 

well it will be perfectly fine and then all of a sudden it will start that stuttering crap then it will go back to being flawless and that just repeats all game. i didnt think i would need to do the port forwarding if i just turned off the windows firewall and norton's internet security.

yeah im on a wireless connection. i havent updating any drivers at all im just if you think that might be the problem.

 

yeah people have been having all sorts of connection issues with the stock 6200 drivers.

an update was released oh...a few days after the envy was released.


 Intel® PRO/Wireless and WiFi Link Drivers-Only for Windows 7*

 

Could have something to do with the newer cpu in the envy. I remember going back to playing some older games like knights of the old republic and some others and a dual core cpu made it go haywire. Same with older games like warcraft III.


For that I just had to set processor affinity to one of the cores for that game and it was ok then, but it gave similar random stutters until I did so.


If dual cores are not the issue, it might have something to do with the game not being able to handle hyper threading properly, who knows.


When the game is running, take a look at how your cpu is being taxed.

 

hi

Right now i'm having lag spikes with my current envy 14 also. I lag spike in dota on WC3 and SC2. Its really annoying. Is it the video card drivers? Please help!

edit: it will be fine and then it will lag spike and be fine again.

 

look for any services that might be updating anything in the background. maybe even junk like adobe update could be killing you.

 

I'd recommend trying the game on wired ethernet for a bit to see if you get the same lag spikes. If not, you can at least target the problem as the Wireless Card/software stack.

 

Okay I found out the reason was that my video card settings was set to narrow instead of box. It doesnt lagspike as much, but on CS 1.6 (which should easily be handled by the gpu) I'll still get random fps spikes from 100 to 20 fps. whats going on...

can someone give me their video card settings so I can see if I should have the right settings on .