Out of sheer desperation, I'm sat outside, wirelessly networked, on my laptop at 2:50AM. It's freezing. Why the hell am I out here? To once and for all set the seal that it is NOT overheating which is causing bad performance on my laptop. Now, I need help. This is driving me insane to the point that I'm probably about to start foaming at the mouth and chewing the furniture.
First off, the basics.
Specs:
Pentium 4 HT 3.0GHz
1024MB (2x512MB) RAM. 512 added by me after purchase.
ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB
Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.25a (Catalyst 5.4)
80GB HDD
Now that's out of the way, the problem:
Initially, this laptop was outstanding. It worked a charm - this is like 3 weeks ago. All games, 60fpss godlyness. Now, I noticed a large slide in the performance of the laptop (interestingly about the same time I got the RAM upgrade, or sometime after at least). I have tried testing with various RAM chips removed and switching RAM slots etc. No avail. Tried every combination. I thought that perhaps the pre-installed steaming turd OS could be a problem so I formatted and started from scratch. Needless to say, some problems with SP2 resulted in me formatting again. I uninstalled SP2 after kinda stupidly giving it the benefit of the doubt once more but managed to avoid too large a screwup this time. Needless to say, I now avoid it.
Anyhow, the bottom line is that gaming on this laptop is fine for the first 10 or so minutes - hell, you can get a single (and I mean single) round of UT2004 in at about 40 average FPS at 1400x900 resolution and 'Holy ****' settings, but after that - dear god, we're talking single digit FPS. I've just ruled out temperature, I think, so I tried for rebooting and playing straight away - but to no avail. So.. playing in an environment that could cool down molten rock doesn't improve performance yet performance deteriorates over a small length of time - and rebooting doesn't solve it. Now, if ANYONE has any idea what the hell is wrong here, you will earn my eternal gratitude.
At least think of the Furniture.
First off, the basics.
Specs:
Pentium 4 HT 3.0GHz
1024MB (2x512MB) RAM. 512 added by me after purchase.
ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB
Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.25a (Catalyst 5.4)
80GB HDD
Now that's out of the way, the problem:
Initially, this laptop was outstanding. It worked a charm - this is like 3 weeks ago. All games, 60fpss godlyness. Now, I noticed a large slide in the performance of the laptop (interestingly about the same time I got the RAM upgrade, or sometime after at least). I have tried testing with various RAM chips removed and switching RAM slots etc. No avail. Tried every combination. I thought that perhaps the pre-installed steaming turd OS could be a problem so I formatted and started from scratch. Needless to say, some problems with SP2 resulted in me formatting again. I uninstalled SP2 after kinda stupidly giving it the benefit of the doubt once more but managed to avoid too large a screwup this time. Needless to say, I now avoid it.
Anyhow, the bottom line is that gaming on this laptop is fine for the first 10 or so minutes - hell, you can get a single (and I mean single) round of UT2004 in at about 40 average FPS at 1400x900 resolution and 'Holy ****' settings, but after that - dear god, we're talking single digit FPS. I've just ruled out temperature, I think, so I tried for rebooting and playing straight away - but to no avail. So.. playing in an environment that could cool down molten rock doesn't improve performance yet performance deteriorates over a small length of time - and rebooting doesn't solve it. Now, if ANYONE has any idea what the hell is wrong here, you will earn my eternal gratitude.
At least think of the Furniture.
