Laptop upgrade? Broadband or Wi Fi?

[chancevought]

I have been playin for a year now...everytime I play, my fps gets worse and worse.  It is usually in the 20's as Im climbin, but soon as i engage, it freezes and freezes.  I am dogfightin w. fps of 4 to 9...sometimes even 2!!  Evrytime I have someone in my crosshairs, it freezes before I even squeeze of a shot....I have all settings at thier possible lowest..(which usually makes it worse).  Host Queue Times looks like a bad lie detector graph!!
    So, now that Im done whinin, i need help...Im using a laptop, w/ wireless connection...I know I know, but I am gonna work on the road, and have little choice.   So is my only option to upgrade my computer?  (32M vid card, 512M RAM)......Can I make this work somehow??  If I cant, what should I look for??  Remember, I have to be wireless and mobile.  Is Broadband wireless better or worse than RoadRunner (Wi-Fi) wireless?

Or should I jus buy Combat Flight Simulator and fight the AI??

[Skuzzy]

Disable skins in the game.  
Make sure to have the "Maximum Texture Size" in the "Video Settings" set to 256.

Then exit the game and remove the "skins' and "cache" folders from the Aces High II installation folder.

Restart the game, then see if it helps.

The Variance shifting around is the CPU being taken away from the game to handle other things.  But it could be from swapping also.  The above settings should have an effect on that.

[DoNKeY]

Whats swapping?

[chancevought]

But it didn't help any...It just gets worse everytime i play.  I get about high teens low 20's in tower, unless the ack is firing, then its 4-9...  In air i get teens and 20's w/ an occasional spike that is high 40's..But once i engage someone it goes right back to under 10, especially if i get close on thier 6.  It seems to know exactly when i will fire and then locks up, lol.  If i get Ho'd, screen freezes at 1000 till they pass...if I'm ded 6 then it freezes everytime they center in my sights.   If we are turnin, it freezes soon as I get good lead.  If i try to engage bombers, same thing, but if the bombers fire, i get fps of 2-3..it looks they are jus flashing around the screen....

When I run pingplotter, I usually have 56 or so..i dunno what it is since it doesnt say, i assume this is pings, or is it packet loss.  My wireless connect is usually 5.5 Mbps, with an occassional 11.Mbps.  I am using FSautostart and am down to 12 processes.  

So...

1) is it likely this is my computer slowly dying, since it gets progressively worse?
2) If I do need to replace it, will Broadband (cell-phone type) Wireless be enough? ( they say 500-700kbps)..or should I stick w/ Wi-Fi wireless?

Thanks again,

Your incessant whiner....

P.S.  I am patiently waiting for CT to renew my subscription. If i get a good computer, will me being wireless still cause problems for me w/ all the bombers and tracers?

[Spatula]

Originally posted by DoNKeY
Whats swapping?

Its a way OS (XP/2000 etc) can provide the illusion of more memory than you actually have by using disk space.
When the OS gets low on physical memory, it uses free diskspace to write out sections of used memory if it hasn't recently been used. The OS will use that newly freed up space for a more immediate process. When something wants the stuff the OS wrote out to disk back again, it will free up some more space in memory by swapping something else out to disk and bringing back the requested stuff. Etc etc etc the process keeps on being repeated.

The more physical RAM you have, the less it will need to keep swapping stuff back and forth from the disk and thus improve performance. More RAM = cheap performance boost.

chancevought: have you tried a program called FSAutostart? It turns off a whole pile of useless crud that normally runs in the background before it kicks off AH2. Very usefull and improves performance too.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/FSAutoStart.shtml

Also - you might want to try defragging your hard drive. I use a free tool from AusLogics.

http://www.auslogics.com/boost-speed/index.shtml

Do this fairly regularly to keep your PC in good shape.
You can also try their PC optimiser tool - but this one is only a trial version:

http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/index.php

[chancevought]

Thank you, I tried your suggestions, already used FSautostart, down to 12 processes...no change.  I used Ad Aware, it cleaned up stuff...no change.  I tried the Auslogics defragmentor and Boost Speed....no change.  Tried skuzzy's suggestion bout the cache...no change.  Start a new career in the next week or so, so i'm hopin to have enough saved for a new computer in 6 months or so....damn things aint cheap, lol.  Still takin more suggestions tho.......Thank you again!