t500 for gaming

I recently got a thinkpad t500 for college and could use some help, i know its not for games but i figured it could play low end ones.

Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo processor T9400 (2.53GHz 1066MHz 6MBL2)
Genuine Windows Vista Business 64
15.4 WXGA TFT, w/ LED Backlight
ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 with 256MB with Intel Advanced Management Technology
4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
250 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm with Disk Encryption




I thought this would be able to run steam games like css or tf2 fine but when i try and play those games it runs fine for the most part but every 15 secs to a minute it drops fps and studders or freezes for a couple seconds, basically making the games annoying as hell to play. I have the settings all low, and tried using my old cfg to increase fps even more, and i updated my drivers, tried turning off the anti-virus etc. does anyone know why it keeps doing this, or is it just because vista sucks? any help would be appreciated.

 

Hmm do you have the ATI enabled? I often forget that the Intel is enabled and game but its not until I'm into something important that I realize it and cant swap to the ATI. The t500 is more then capable to play pretty much any game out there depending on settings and such. I play steam games on my t400 which has a much weaker card at great frame rates and it isn't even a clean install. If you aren't forgetting to enable the ATI card then try to reinstall the driver and we can go from there.

 

^
Yup, good point there. If that's not the case try monitoring your gpu temps.

 

no i have the ati enabled while i play

 

Are you playing on battery or AC power?

 

Dont forget to set your battery plan to performance mode or something similar so your CPU is not bottlenecked

 

Hmm, my system is identically speced and have no problems with Steam games. I play TF2 on High Settings and Details with no stutter at all, I even play Fallout 3 on High Settings and no AA or AF.

I would just make sure that you don't have any intensive background programs running. I know that when Spybot Search and Destroy starts running for me the FPS drops to about 20 or so.

EDIT: I actually have a WSXGA+ screen as you can tell, so your situation perplexes me even more.

 

i am using ac power, and have it set to performance. I think it might be too much stuff running in the background or something, but it came with so much stuff when i got it i dont know what to shut off. cparker09 what do have in the background while u play, i just have the stuff it came with.

 

ur hardware is more than capable of playing those games on low settings; that means something is wrong with your drivers, power profile, OS, etc...

did u do a clean install?

 

I personally did a clean install as soon as I got the machine, but I wouldn't think it would make that big of a difference. Usually all I have running in the background while gaming are possibly Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Ventrilo, and Skype (no call). While all of these are running I use about 1-2% of my CPU and about 2 gigs of RAM. I would recommend a clean install, if for only getting rid of all the useless software.

 

Your symptoms could be network problems rather than the computer hardware, as I see no reason you can't play those games on high settings. What type of internet connection do you have?

 

i think i figured it out, tf2 and css are running fine. I changed something in the ati catalyst control center from performance to quality and havent had the problem since.