Just switched my laptops card from ATI 9600/9700 mobile to Nvidia GeForce Go5700 128mb, and I'm puzzled sonce the card is supposed to be somewhat faster. With my previous card, the tower frame rate was close to the same as what I'd get flying (20s to 30s), with some drop at understandable times.
Now when I start up in tower, I'll see FR's in the 60s -- but shortly after taking off they drop into the twenties or even lower. They'll then stay that low until I relog, when they'll start in the 60s again. Sometimes offline they'll stay in the 50s for about a minute, but by the time I'm shooting at drones they droop down for good. AH Settings are the same for both cards.
I am not seeing memory leak, just frame rate drops. I have transitions off, preload textures, skins off, horizon on, view distance 3mi, and onject sliders all the way to performance. Hardware acceleration is set to full in XP Pro.
Dxdiag shows no problems, and I have DX 9.0c. The Nvidia drivers are the most current.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.