Lag Issue

[Jama7301]

Alright, here's the deal. Laptop sucks for some reason. Can play games like NFSU2 on medium settings with no lag, but whenever I load FoF of any flavor, it lags terribly.

Yes I've read the Stickies.
Yes I've updated my graphics drivers.

Computer Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core tk 53. 1.7 Ghz
Installed RAM: 1 GB
Total RAM 893 MB
Virtual Memory: 2 GB

ATI Radeon Xpress 1150
Memory Size: 319 MB

So any suggestions?

[italianstal1ion]

If by any flavor you mean all versions/mods?

Has this started recently or what?

Aside from all the obvious things you can do in FoF (turn off anti-aliasing etc), there are lots of things you can do outside of FoF. I'd recommend defragging your computer and getting CCleaner.

[Jama7301]

It started acting up after I reset my computer. I've tried several stock FoF, FoF with RF, and even FoFix to no avail. I set to one core, and raised priority. I've also turned limited graphical things, but that didn't help either.

[italianstal1ion]

Could be some rogue programs running on your computer ...maybe? Something like utorrent that is set to run once your computer starts up might be a possibility. My computer runs all sorts of stupid crap that seems to do nothing but lag up my system. Check your task manager to see if there are any programs that look unusual or are taking up an unusual amount of ram. Also wouldn't hurt to run a check for spyware or something - I'd use spybot for that.

[Jama7301]

Running 16 fewer processes than before the cleaning at the moment, scans have come up clean as well.

[italianstal1ion]

Really have no idea then. Maybe your hardware got screwed up, video card soldering is too hot, something.

But I have no knowledge of dual cores, and I have no more ideas . Hopefully someone with more experience in this area can help you out.

[Jama7301]

Alright, after testing some things last night, I have a few observations.

CPU usage goes up over 40 % when I start the game.
Memory usage goes up by 100 + MB, which is more than likely normal.

But the memory might be the problem. It says it's cached over 400 MB, and is still using an addiitonal 400 before I even load the game.

Also I've tried defragmenting my harddrive to no avail.

Also increased the Virtual Memory to see if that helped any, but no.

[iamsensay]

Just out of curiosity, what OS are you running jama? If its vista/7 then 400MB usage is pretty normal, if its xp id expect less. Can you see no processes using large amounts of ram in the task manager?

As for CPU and RAM usage by frets itself, that also sounds about right. You have a low clocked dual core so 40 percent usage seems spot on. Same with the RAM.

Either way, if you have ram to spare and your cpu is not maxed when playing the game, i would not really be looking into these areas as the cause.

EDIT: Random thought... Does the lag happen immediately or are you able to play some first? Just curious because my amd used to throttle itself at inoppurtune moments (damn amd cool and quiet)

[Jama7301]

There's some menu lag, and it lags worse once I start a song.

Yes I'm on Vista as well.

As for the processes, there's nothing really taking up RAM. The performance tab shows the RAM is at roughly 600 before I start the program.

[iamsensay]

Hmm. Seems like you have enough resources to run it right.

I struggled with loads of lag problems with fof myself, most all of which were solved by settings changes.

One of the big ones for me was the audio buffer rate. Increasing it made the game a lot smoother for me (im not saying it will help, im just saying it did for me) but it also through my av delay off a lot (like 400MS!)

Worth a try if you havent already i guess.

Menu lag doesnt sound good though, its not something i ever got. You could try benching your graphics card to make sure all features are performing as they should? Thats really the only things i can think of right now.

[Jama7301]

Haven't messed with the audio buffer, I'll try that out later. Otherwise I've lowered the other settings on the game.

Thanks for all the ideas Sensay, stallion.

[iamsensay]

No problem. Its worth mentioning i never saw any performance improvement by changing the 'performance related' settings in fof (aside from *very* specific fofix features). My specs (and yours too) are well enough to play it, in my case it was just that one option that was lagging me out. Hopefully its something as simple as that for you too.

[Jama7301]

Whelp, wasn't that either.

Might just end up taking it apart and cleaning it out altogether.

Might not help, but it's long overdue.

[jstump91]

Check that you have the latest version of the appropriate video driver for your video card.

I am floored that with all of the things that have already been tried in this thread, that was not the very first one.

[Jama7301]

I may have done that. Went to dell.com/support, entered my service code, and went under video.

Downloaded and installed all drivers from chipset, video, and sound.