dv4000 and v4000t gaming issues

I've had my computer for a little over a week. I was happy with it at first. I got 2714 on 3dmark 05 and performance seemed good at first.

However, a few of my games are having stuttering problems with the audio and graphics, mostly HL2 and WoW to a small extent.

HL2 is basically unplayable, any time a new sound is played, the hard drive is accessed and results in a stutter that last anywhere from a half a second to almost 2 seconds. Some areas aren't as bad. The beginning of the game is probably the worst because of all the diologue. I've noticed that throughout the game the hdd is constantly being accessed.

WoW's audio doesnt really stutter, but its framerate isn't totally smooth. When I enter a new area, the graphics will pause for a fraction of a second. This will also happen randomly, mostly when new sounds are played. However, the sound doesnt stutter itself, as in half life 2. It's just a small amount of graphics lag, which means it's more livable than HL2, but still annoying nonetheless. Another issue is that the games fps will randomly take a dive and sit around 20fps for about 5 minutes and then correct itself.

The only games that have worked without problems that I have tested are BF2 and Doom 3.

I have also tried everything I can think of as far as solutions. I've reformated twice, defragmented many times, tried every driver I could get my hands on, as well as trying to use the in-game options to fix it. Nothing has changed anything.

I am becoming rather dissapointed in my computer at this point, and am thinking of returning it since I can't get my favorite games to work. I ended up spending about $500 more than I was going to originally to be able to play these correctly, but it seems like that still isn't going to make it possible.

Anyone have any opinions on this? Should I return it before the time is up? Anyone else having these same problems with their computer? Anyone having a different experience? If I can only narrow it down to my computer than I will return it for sure.

Thanks in advance.

 

Try changing your driver....looks like its a driver issue or maybe software of ATI is not properly set.

 

I've used all of hp's reccomended drivers, as well as ati's. I'm currently using the 6.x drivers that just came out and i'm not having problems with the sudden slowdown in wow anymore.

I'm more just concerned if anyone else is having these problems with HL2 to know if I can rule out if it's my machine in particular or not.

 

Spoke too soon, the game keeps having issues. Don't know what to do.

 

Well...only thing I can think of the go to start->run->dxdiag and see what version of Direct X you have. Then go to the sound tab in the control panel and adjust some of the settings in there, along with the video.

You might also want to try turning down the settings a little bit on the games.

Hope this helps.

 

After playing WoW quite a bit today, i've noticed that the framerate drop problem doesn't occur until after a few hours of play, it eventually gets better after 5-10 minutes, and then repeates itself within 20 minutes. The effect reminds me of the powerplay feature. When I am on battery power my fps goes down by a lot. I think I read this is due to the card underclocking itself to run cooler and use less power.

Could this card be doing this to prevent overheating? Does it have such a feature?

 

Yes - usually all important internal notebook components have a critical temp. where they automatically shut down - overheating can cause components to die prematurely and/or damage them. Usually a card begins underclocking itself as a precaution when it sense it's getting too hot, which could explain your flux in your FPS.

 

I thought I'd mention the obvious:

How much RAM do you have?
You need at least 512 MB to run HL2 smoothly.

Interesting note: Doom 3 is OpenGL, but BF2 and HL2 are both DirectX games. If BF2 runs well, I can't imagine why HL2 would run poorly. Doesn't look like a problem related to DirectX.

Is your problem related to this? "stuttering-bug"
http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/
If so, it looks more like a problem with the game than the laptop.

This guy seems convinced its a bug with the game:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33792006

Another guy in that thread said that disabling the page-file will fix the problem.
If this is the case then its definitely a problem with the game because its using way more
RAM than it should be. WARNING: Disabling the page-file will significantly slow down overall system performance, but the guy in the above thread said it fixed the stuttering.

How much of a framerate drop are we talking about here?

DISCLAIMER: I don't have HL2, just trying to help you problem solve because I'm bored and waiting for my v4000t to arrive.

 

I bought the computer with a gig of ram. I was running everything on high at the highest resolution possible, with 2xaa and 4xAF. Other than the stuttering issue, I was getting around maybe 60fps average (hard to tell, sometimes it would be as high as 100 and others times it would be in the 30's during areas with a lot of detail like the hovercraft part). Lowering settings did NOT help. My problem actually sounds a lot like that link you sent, which I have heard about before. If that is the case it sounds like it could possibly be a compatibility issue with our specific hardware/drivers.

If that is the case then I am not too worried, because it runs other games okay. But if it's an isolated incident with just my computer, I want to return it.

If you wouldn't mind testing it when you get your computer, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for all the help so far.