Choppy gameplay - framerate up & down- gaming notebook- please advise

[justinj]

Hi

I have a 2 year old gaming notebook-

Pentium M 2.13 Ghz

2GB RAM

Nvdia Geforce Go 7800 GTX

Windows XP Pro SP2

It was made by 'Vicious PC' -a since 'gone out of business' company who offered this for a good deal at the time.

From the get go this (yet unresolved) problem has arisen periodically (not all the time) during gameplay- in eg. Battlefield 2 (a game moderately older than the notebook), (with maxed out graphics settings) the frame rates drop down to choppy play for approx 5-6 seconds then go back to normal framerates for 30-40secs and then back down again repeating this cycle infinitely- even when I drastically lower the graphics settings (even though this game should play with maxd out settings with my specs), the same up & down frame rate occurs. I imagine the fact that it does play smoothly for more time than not though indicates the hardware is up to the job. I have noticed this is more so if gaming once the laptop has been powered on for some time and perhaps indicates this is perhaps a overheating issue. I have a notebook cooler which it sits on but doesn't seem to make much of a difference. That said over the last 2 years in the past on many occasions my games (call of Duty 2, Half Life 2, Red Orchestra & Battlefield 2) have run smoothly with maxed out settings for hours without choppiness- I only ask as it is back again. Other than freeing some space on my main hard drive for the OS to operate more smoothly in general I'm not sure what else to do

Having an Nvidia Geforce Go card, the drivers are quite specific- ie. the most recent driver on the Nvidia site was released back on July 5th 2006 (Forceware Release 80 version 84.63- I cannot find anything more recent there- when I contacted Nvidia they said contact my laptop manufacturer for specific drivers but as I say I can't as Vicious PC no longer exists- Nviida also suggested coming to this forum though I'm a bit wary of installing an incorrect driver- any suggestion for my configuration would be warmly welcomed-

Any advice for further cooling, monitoring temps (what are 'healthy CPU & GPU temps?) and anything I haven't thought of would be gratefully appreciated-

with gratitude,

j

[Morris Lee]

yes, your laptop is very powerful one, I would recommend reinstalling windows if you are still using the same installation of windows ever since you brought it, opening the laptop and clean out the dust will help more of the air flow issues, since laptop fans clog on dust easier then desktops' fans, simply addming more wind will not help the air to get though the internal fan and the heatsink better.

as for the driver part, I would suggest http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index....showtopic=16545

[justinj]

yes, your laptop is very powerful one, I would recommend reinstalling windows if you are still using the same installation of windows ever since you brought it, opening the laptop and clean out the dust will help more of the air flow issues, since laptop fans clog on dust easier then desktops' fans, simply addming more wind will not help the air to get though the internal fan and the heatsink better.

as for the driver part, I would suggest http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index....showtopic=16545

Thanks for your reply Morris- regarding the driver link you suggested- it appears that one is for Windows Vista- I'm running WIndows XP SP2- it also doesn't appear to have the Geforce Go 7 series listed- would this still work and if not is there another driver that you think will run more effectively than my current (July 5th 2006 Forceware Release 80 version 84.63) driver?

with gratitude,

Justin