Slight Lag Problems...

[Moondog83uk]

Hey all,

I'm having a bit of a problem with the lag on two games in particular, Goldeneye and Shadow Man. While I don't understand FPS or anything like that too well, I do notice that it fluctuates from about 60 to anywhere down to 20. The game normally starts fine and buggers up some 10-15 seconds into it. On Shadow Man, the talking goes fine but it leaves the picture and subtitles behind. All of the other games I play are fine. Specs are as follows:

Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz
Windows XP Home Ed.
nVidia G-Force FX Go5100
512 MB RAM

If there's anything else needed just tell me and I'll get it. I'm not sure if that's a crap video card or anything either, so any info would be really handy. Cheers guys.



Moondog

[the master 123]

Your computer in theory is capable, It might be you graphic card however it support(to my research) shader 2(virtal and pixel shader 2 or direct 9a support not 9c which uses 3) which mean it has the features of that the emulator needs. What plugin and setting of you graphic plugin are you using. Also are you using much filtering. I post what I mean as a can't spell them in a few minute, this card isn't powerful enough for high level of filtering. I got there name Anisotropic filtering and antialasing.
You card isn't very powerful goldeneye may cause the game to slow if the filtering is to high. does you processor support hyperthreading(HT) I heard some program and games have proformance issue with this namely reduce performance. If so maybe going in to task manger goto the project 64 process and setting an affinity to one processor(you only have one but the ht make it like 2), might help if not disabling ht might work(this in you bios). If you don't know how to change affinity post for more help. I don't know about Shadow Man however it sound like a plugin issue so try a different plugin.

[Moondog83uk]

Okay, bit peculiar here. I've turned my laptop on this morning and Shadow Man is running perfectly. There's no jumpiness and no audio leaving the video behind. The FPS is very stable, fluctuating between 59 and 60, which seems to be what this game is supposed to run on.

I'm thinking maybe the heat of my laptop has impaired the performance of the emulator? Is that possible and is that a likely cause? Just so others in my situation can at least get a handle on things.

Cheers!

[Clements]

Yes, that would be a likely explanation. Too much heat can cause a mobile CPU (esp. a Pentium 4-M) to throttle down after a short period whilst under heavy load, resulting in a slowdown.

[Moondog83uk]

Cheers for the replies fellas. At least that's a resolution of sorts. While my laptop has never overheated and shut down it can get a fair bit warm.

Perhaps a little off topic - but utlimately to do with attaining and maintaning optimum performance - but is there any decent ways of keeping a laptop as cool as possible? Are there any little tricks anyone uses, or perhaps ones that you've heard of? I know you can get those little cooler pads that you rest your laptop on and they've got fans in that, in theory, cool your laptop. But I dunno if they work.

Any info is helpful, so cheers!

Moondog

[the master 123]

does you processor support speedstep maybe you could reduce the clock by this(in power management) and reduce the processor clock to 2 ghz reducing the heat and allowing it to remove this problem.

[Moondog83uk]

Haha, I really wish I could tell you, but I'm afraid I don't have a clue. I'm not all that up to scratch with this sort of thing, but if you tell me how to find out I'll certainly check, and I'll be all the wiser in the future

Cheers

[the master 123]

there is a program call everest home that can tell you(it in motherboard\cpuid) it call speedstep or similar to it. I program call cpu-z can tell you if it active and if not you current clock. I other option is to manuel underclock you processor by reduce the cpu mulptier in the bios(rememeber what this is though). It will reduce your performance(shouldn't be a problem though) but it will have increase battery life and more important to this reduce temperature.

[Moondog83uk]

Hey,

Well I can't say what's been happening but strangely enough my laptop has sorted itself out - there's no more lag whatsoever. I don't have a clue what could have been causing it, but it's resolved itself whatever it was. Thanks for all the help and all and I hope it comes in handy for someone else experiencing the problems that I was.

Cheers gang,

Moondog