Any idea why games might be running slow?

[Rexus]

Notebook specs:

Sony Vaio CR series 14.1"
Core 2 Duo 2.2 (T7500)
2 GB RAM
200 GB HDD
Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family
Vista Home Premium

Emulator tested:

Both Project 64 1.6 and 1.7 (for the added wide screen options)

Most if not all games I'm running--from Mario 64 to Body Harvest--are experiencing little to heavy slowdown and plenty of hiccups (the game stutters for some milliseconds).

My desktop PC (Pentium 4 3.2, 1 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, X300, Windows XP SP2) never encountered any problems running the 64 games flawlessly - unless it was the emulator's or game's fault that is.

So my question: Any idea what it falls onto? Is it the notebook's video card? If so, this can't be fixed, right? I'm big on emulation gaming and it was one of the things I was looking forward to for playing on the run (I have a PSP but it doesn't do 64 any justice). I really hope anyone can answer to my help calls, and really, MUCH THANKS for any aid you give out.

THANKS

[JKKDARK]

Did you download better plugins or you are using the ones that came with the emulator?

[Rexus]

I tried the Jabo plugins mostly--what works on the other PC. The occasional game needed a change of plug-ins/emulator (e.g. I ran Space Station Silicon Valley on 1964), but the Jabo plugins ran most of the games--at the least Super Mario 64 shouldn't have slowdown and stuttering like is happening!

[squall_leonhart]

edit ____

[Clements]

What video card/chip does your laptop have? If it is Intel Graphics, that's probably the issue. My laptop runs pretty much every N64 game fine with a Mobility Radeon. If you have a NVIDIA/ATI card, you will probably need to move to the latest drivers rather than the standard OEM drivers (that tend to be outdated).

[p_025]

Notebook specs:

Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family
Vista Home Premium

That'll be your problem. The Intel graphics chipsets suck ass, my laptop has the exact same chipset, it's really pathetic. It gets graphic lag on QUAKE. I ask you!

Are there any DIY ways to upgrade the chipset? If I could do that then I could probably run much more games, faster.

[GamerAeon]

Laptops are pretty picky as far as DIY projects but that's not to say you can't get your hands on some sorta upgrade. Though considering it was built as an integrated system it'd most likely have to stay as such since it is a laptop.

All you can really do though is check and see if it Upgradeable, if it is then there's always somewhere you can get upgraded components. If not....well....The saying you get what you paid for comes to mind :(

[p_025]

Uh, heh. I got it for christmas. I paid nothing.

[Rexus]

Ah man, I figured it might be the video card. Everything else is just perfect. I will see if I can get it upgraded, but I guess it'll be a slim chance. Back to N64ing on my desktop then. THANKS for all the replies guys :)

[spoondiddly]

One last-ditch sort of thing you can try is setting the counter factor higher. This can cause problems though, allowing the emulator to run away with itself.

If you haven't looked at it yet, go through the section on setting emulator speed in the help files. You can probably get most games to run smoothly just by fiddling with the options a bit.

[jdsony]

I have a Toshiba A70

P4 3.0
512MB RAM
ATI 9000 IGP Graphics

It runs most N64 games without much trouble in 1280x800. There are slow downs with complex things like the mask effect in the intro to Majora's Mask but everything else is good enough on it. Can Intel's latest onboard graphics really be worse than ATI's bottom of the line integrated from 5 years ago? It should work better than it sounds like it is.

Ive also tried tried this setup and had more than playable results for most games.

Pentium M 1.6
512MB RAM
Intel GMA 950 Graphics

[squall_leonhart]

disabling hyperthreading if its enabled might achieve some speedup.