Curse

megaz · May 09, 2009, 02:52 PM // 14:52

First and foremost, hi everyone (this is my first post, after all)

I have a certain problem with my laptop. Basically, whenever I start my game up, it starts off fine, going between 20-30 FPS. Then it drops a couple, to around 10-15. Which is fine by me, since my desktop's busted, I'm just happy to play the game. And I didn't buy this laptop for gaming anyway.

But recently... my laptop has been dropping the FPS rate to 1-4... which makes the game un-playable. It never did this before. I hadn't made any major changes. I've tried everything, running the game in XP compatibility (I have Vista), updating my laptop through HP Update (there were a few outdated drivers, but none of them seemed to have anything to do with the video card), scanning for trojans, etc. I even went into BIOS and changed the VRAM settings to 128... and it still didn't help.

Now, the laptop itself isn't old. I got it in late July last year, making it just under a year old. I haven't overclocked or anything either, and I don't see any other changes anywhere in performance (the only other game I play on works fine, but it's not too taxing).

Does anyone know what's wrong with my system? I haven't tried re-downloading the game, but I don't think that'll help? Here are my laptop's specs, if it helps any:

Model: HP Pavilion dv2700
CPU: AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 (duo-core), 2.00 GHz
RAM: 4GB
VRAM: NVIDIA MCP67M (GeForce 7150M/nForce 630M), 1851MB Approx. memory, says dxdiag

Any help is appreciated

moriz · May 09, 2009, 04:09 PM // 16:09

this is usually caused by overheating, and the drop in FPS is caused by your computer throttling itself to avoid burning up.

try something like this: elevate the back of your laptop with a book or some other object, and see if the problem persists, or take longer to manifest itself.

megaz · May 09, 2009, 06:18 PM // 18:18

Thanks, it's actually staying consistently 'moderate' now. I tinkered with the power settings, to make sure it won't burn up as fast, and elevated it as you said.

I feel silly now. Such an easy fix xD