[kaihou]

I have a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M graphics card on my HP Pavillion dv2000 - Windows Vista Home Premium. The problem is that it doesn't work so great.

Whenever I watch DVDs, or HD videos, or play games such as MapleStory and Sims 2, they lag so much. The only thing about them that plays fine is the sound.

I know there was a similar question like this on Yahoo! Answers, but even after updating drivers and putting the lowest settings on games and on the NVIDIA driver, everything still runs slow. (Well, my computer in general isn't that slow thanks to 2.5GB of RAM).

But anyway, is it just my computer that's bad or my graphics card? If it's my graphics card, what can I do to make it better or at least what's a better graphics card at a good price that works well? 'Cause right now my Windows Experience Index is giving me a 2.3 on 3D graphics.

[gatewaypc700]

Well... i have a GO6100 and that plays modern games so my answer would be no. Change to XP and then you will probably notice a difference. But dude... The Sims 2 is a low requirement game, so there should be no lag at all. GO6100 plays full detail with no lag. Maybe your graphics card isnt in its slot properly?

Hope this helps
James

[Compiler]

Go XXXXm video products are on-board GPUs built for notebooks. They are not upgradable, much less a graphics card available.

7150M is the chipset code, its not a dedicated graphics chip. Its better than intel's on-board graphics - they are are still bottom of the line.

While adding more memory (especially vista) can improve performance in some areas, it doesn't actually make your CPU/system run faster. It allows the PC to load more info into memory, rather than spooling off the Hard drive.

Reload the chipset drivers. Disable and remove the junk programs included with HP. Use the free program glary utilties (www.download.com) to help remove bad code. uninstall or turn off things like IM and other non-important stuff that runs in the back ground.

[gatewaypc700]

......
Mine has shader model 3.0 and 512mb of memory, 256 dedicated 256 shared. The only problem is that its clocked at 450mhz. Way to low!

[Mosquito555]

As stated on the above posts, the 7150M is a basic card designed for everyday tasks and not for games. However I could play Sims 2 on a crappy GeForce 4 MX 440 a few years ago...

Maybe your problem lies elsewhere, I'd bet that your RAM is the No1 suspect. I don't remember the actual graphic settings of Sims 2 but try lowering everything related to textures especially if you're running expansions or mods. Play around with the settings until you reach acceptable performance levels, this card can definitely run Sims 2.

Maple Story is an online game. I suspect that the lag you get is probably related to your connection or router settings since it's not a hardware demanding game (I guess it doesn't even use a 3D engine). Keep in mind that your computer may be just fine, server side lag is quite common on free MMORPGs like Maple Story. Can you select a different server? Is your firewall configured correctly?

[gatewaypc700]

rofl mmorpg's should exclude the names maple and runescape. But yes, ssl is very common, specially in games where ALL the data is on thier server, like runescape.
James

[kaihou]

Oh wow, I almost forgot that Maple runs faster when I connect my laptop directly to my router.

And the only way I can make Sims run faster even on the lowest graphic settings is by playing right after I restart my computer. Then after a while it starts lagging again. Any explanation for this?

[Mosquito555]

Your laptop could be overheating and thus the performance is reduced. But hopefully the situation can be simpler:

When your computer starts it only loads the basic stuff (drivers, services, startup programs etc). As time goes by, background programs may trigger other services and files to load, so your memory starts filling slowly. Since your card is integrated to the motherboard it may be using a portion of system RAM to store graphics data. If your card allocates RAM dynamically (meaning it allocates RAM depending on the usage scenario) letting other programs occupy RAM will give your card less space etc.

Usually you can alter the RAM amount used by your card from within your system's BIOS. It wouldn't hurt raising it up a bit. Make sure your card uses no less than 256MBs.

[kaihou]

So do I go to the NVIDIA program and change it like that? Or go to my RAM thing and change how much RAM can be used? @.@

[Mosquito555]

Sorry for not answering earlier...

In order to change that you have to get into your BIOS. When you power on your machine you will notice some screens with various info just before the windows loading screen. There you will be prompted to press a key (usually it's the delete key but on HP laptops it could be the F10 key) to enter setup (or BIOS).

The steps below can help you out. They are directly copied from the HP website. Focus on steps 1, 2 and 4. I guess that step 4 is about saving any changes you made or not so I can't tell if answering yes is what you need. Simple as that: If you locate the setting for your video memory and change the size select yes, if you don't press no.


1. Press the power button to turn on the PC.

2. When the HP or Compaq logo appears, press F10 to enter the BIOS Setup.

3. When the Main menu is displayed, make note of the BIOS version. You will need this information to determine if a newer revision is available.

4. To exit the BIOS setup, press F10 , select Yes , and then press Enter .

I can't help you much on locating the needed setting however. Search for anything related to your graphics memory and if you are sure make the changes. If you have any questions or need further clarification please post back.

[kaihou]

Okay well I restarted my laptop and everything and now I'm just hoping I did the right thing.

I went to BIOS and there was a selection that said "Dedicated video memory up to:" and the number next to it was "68MB". You could change the answer to 32MB, 68MB (selected), or 128MB. Remembering "128MB" from somewhere, I chose that and started up my computer.

What the heck did I just do? o_o If I increased the dedicated video memory, what ups and downs does it have to go with it?

[Mosquito555]

You did the right thing, don't worry about that.

You can check if the change was correctly applied by running dxdiag. Open the start menu and on the search field type dxdiag. Run the program and navigate to the video tab. There you can find more info regarding your graphics card.

The only "problem" is that you couldn't raise the memory more. 256MBs would be ideal but even 128 will be enough for Sims 2...

Now you should try testing your game and see if the performance improved. I' ll search around the web for more info tomorrow (I suspect that DirectX may have something to do with your problems - You can try downloading DirectX 9c for Vista and see if that helps), it's quite late here.

Cheers!

EDIT: You can find DirectX 9c here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[kaihou]

Thanks so much! Night

[gatewaypc700]

jees, only 128mb shared!?!?!
Is my card a special card made specificly for asus or something. Most asus boards seem to have the 6100 inbuilt and it performs better then the 7150...

[adamelm123]

u should buy a new notebook video card, all onboard cards suck really bad, so i recommen that u buy a decent card so u will be able to run things way better.