question for the computer techs out there

[The Fugitive]

Also I have heard this before about laptops not being strong enough to run AH but this is still kind of a vague answer. I though that the main things to look for was a big processor, lots of RAM and a big video card. Once you have those three things there wouldn't be much else to hold up you from running any software. I was kind of wondering which part of having a laptop is the downfall (if there is a specific part or parts that are different from desktops).

ALL 256 meg video cards are not equall, the same with CPUs and ram. In laptops they use "weaker" componetes, slower clock speeds and such to save power. Laptops are made to run off battery power so they have to use stuff that doesn't eat them up so fast.

So even tho your specs read "good" they are not up to the same power as desk top componates. Your laptop might run 4 hours as it is now on batteries, but if it was the same stuff as in a desk top, you might get 30-40 minutes.

FR will jump around depending on what is displayed. In the tower it seems to suck up juice good and frames will drop. Get in the sky with nothing around and they climb, get close to a furball and they go down. The stronger the system, the less they fluctuate.

[dkff49]

I found the framerates increasing more than they should. - The framerate going above 60 is a bad thing?  If you can get a higher framerate running on 50% of one processor and 50% of the memory, you've got a great laptop.  The 100% usage of the network is normal as it is sending and receiving to and from the servers at HTC as fast as it can.  The 100% usage in the disk usage is the hard drive, and that is also normal, for the same reason as the network being maxed.

Usually, warping is caused by the network, not the hardware.
When you notice the warping, are you on your home network, or someone elses?

This is fine:
minimum 16mb
maximum 5371
currently allocated 3881

As to why laptops are not as good, it's a voltage and heat issue.


Sorry about that first post, was having a bad day.

Don't worry Dragon I understand about the bad day. I have those on a regular basis. I just kind of brushed it off anyway because I get that at least 5-6 times when I ask questions about how to make things better.

In response to the questions you asked though.
It happens on both my home network and on others. I currently use 3 different networks (not all at once of course). One of them is my home which I have no problems with on my desktop (XP) but I do get warping on laptop (vista). I did notice though (at least at home) if I connect to network via ethernet port it does seem to warp less but still does warp. I have not been able to test this theory at work yet though.

I also keep the laptop connected to AC power whenever I am playing AH anyway and the laptop is always elevated just because I know I need to keep the airflow as high as possible. Do you think the heat and power may be causing some of my problem or were you just saying that running these high usage applications are just hard on laptops?

Thanks for your assistance.

I do appreciate you writing back to try to help and don't worry about your first post here.
 

[Max]

Prior to switching over to a home built, I used an eMachine laptop for 3+ years and never had an issue. Your specs are are considerable higher than what mine were. Here's a few suggestions you might try though I'm not a guru by any means.  Run a system evaluation on www.pcpitstop.com  I'm curious as to how your hard drive checks out. Consider purchasing a laptop cooling pad. They're constructed with a couple of small fans which will lower internal heat. Do a search for FSAutostart...a program which allows you to turn off non-essential programs/services when booting up AH. If you're still having issues, install XP Pro. Microsoft is compelled to support Pro for a number of years beyond its support of XP Home.

Wish I could zero in on something more specific but that's all I got 

[Dragon]

Check Fugitives post, the hardware is physically smaller and just can't compete with the larger desktop components.

[dkff49]

ALL 256 meg video cards are not equall, the same with CPUs and ram. In laptops they use "weaker" componetes, slower clock speeds and such to save power. Laptops are made to run off battery power so they have to use stuff that doesn't eat them up so fast.

So even tho your specs read "good" they are not up to the same power as desk top componates. Your laptop might run 4 hours as it is now on batteries, but if it was the same stuff as in a desk top, you might get 30-40 minutes.

FR will jump around depending on what is displayed. In the tower it seems to suck up juice good and frames will drop. Get in the sky with nothing around and they climb, get close to a furball and they go down. The stronger the system, the less they fluctuate.

To some extent I get what you are saying. Is there any settings that can be changed to change from a "power conservation" mode to a higher performance mode? The reason I am askin g is because though I am on a laptop, when I get to work there is AC access there for me and I don't need to be so concerned with power usage. Also the framerates jump around even if I am sitting on the runway with engine off and no one around.

on a side note what is the use in buying the upgrades if they are not going to run at full capacity.

thanks for help guys. I guess I will have just use it offline against the AI. Still fun though and I will have lots of time to make missions.

[OOZ662]

Actually, there is, though I'm not sure it'll help much. Physically, the components are made to run softer.

There's one under Right click desktop>Properties>Screen Saver tab>Power... but I'm not sure that's the one that would help at all...I thought there was another one.

[dkff49]

I hope that I am not getting on anybody's nerves too bad but I have another question to ask.

If I can get a hold of XP (since my budget is kind of limited after buying the laptop) would it be possible to put this on my laptop without losing the software that I have on here including the free software that came with the laptop. I was told by the salesman at Dell that I would lose all the free software that came with it if I "upgraded to XP". I keep hearing about some people doing dual boots. I am guessing trying to do this would probably worsen my situation (not that I know and please tell me if I am wrong) because it sounds to me like I would be trying to run 2 OS instead of one. Is this what would happen? Thanks for all your help.

[OOZ662]

Wow, I feel retarded. Everything I said was for XP, forgot you had Vista...

In order to do a dual-boot, you'd most likely have to erase the drive anyway. There are programs that can "scrunch" a partition down so you can fit another on the drive, but they're pretty hit-or-miss and if they miss, the drive corrupts. Last I heard, Vista does it's best to screw up a dual-boot with XP (I'm not sure if I remember that right).

Go to the Dell website and look up the laptop in the downloads section. They may have the utilities you want for download and they might work on XP. If not, you'll have to purchase or simply lose them if you format the drive.

[dkff49]

thanks ooz662. Thought it might be worth a try. I guess for now I will have to just use the laptop for offline, which plays very well and now is lots more fun than it used to be. I can play offline with everything turned way up and FR stay between 55-60. Things don't get messed up until I go online anyway. As an update to those that asked earlier i have gotten the processes down to 32 using the fsautostart. Thanks for all the info guys and sorry if I am such a pain.

[OOZ662]

Not a pain at all; I love working with stuff like this...hoping to persue a career in it (no, not as a tech support monkey ) so it helps to learn. Feel free to click the AIM button next to my posts if you'd like more help; I'm usually online when at the computer and not gaming.

[Strip]

Make sure your power setting is set to "Always On". I used to have similar issues and this cured a lot of it.

Striper

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Make sure your network properties look like this (if you're in domain or sharing folders you should enable the sharing and microsoft networking also).



100% network activity is a sign of some serious problem, even spyware/trojan activity. HD crunching is created by a virus called Vista. You can get rid of it by disabling superfetch and indexing services which are 100% unnecessary resource hogs.

[dkff49]

Make sure your network properties look like this (if you're in domain or sharing folders you should enable the sharing and microsoft networking also).

(Image removed from quote.)

100% network activity is a sign of some serious problem, even spyware/trojan activity. HD crunching is created by a virus called Vista. You can get rid of it by disabling superfetch and indexing services which are 100% unnecessary resource hogs.

thanks for posting this. it did help some now the network doesnot peg out all the time. I also did a scan with yahoo's anti-spy (can't remember which one it is that they use) and also a virus scan with mcafee i gained a little more. however thing are still too messed up to fly anything but i am able to drive gv's though since most of this done while sitting still and does not require the computer to update as often. I did also make sure as was stated by striper that the computer was set to always on (this was already set to that from following one of the sticky's from skuzzy in tech support forum.

thanks all for help

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Are you running AH in any compatibility mode? If you are, which one?

In any case you can try to change the mode and see how it reacts. It's not normal that your second core shows 0% activity when using Vista. If you're using WinXP compatibility mode, try to disable the mode all in all. If you're not using it, try enabling it. The 1 cpu running only seems to point to some problem with the settings.

[dkff49]

Are you running AH in any compatibility mode? If you are, which one?

In any case you can try to change the mode and see how it reacts. It's not normal that your second core shows 0% activity when using Vista. If you're using WinXP compatibility mode, try to disable the mode all in all. If you're not using it, try enabling it. The 1 cpu running only seems to point to some problem with the settings.

After reading this post from one that Fugitive posted earlier inthis thread:
If you are running the game in win98 mode your only going to see one cpu running, because thats what it does, it turns off one cpu.

I checked to see what compatability mode I was running it in because I could not remember and saw that I did have it set to run in windows98. After changing that to XPthe computer started using both processors to run game and my CPU usage only jumps to 100% when computer first starts game the rest of the time it is between 50%-75% of both CPU's. Game is still warpy not sure if disabling the compatability mode will help or not but I will try that (kind of thought of this after I signed off last night. I am also going to try to connect directly to the router using the ethernet port to see if maybe my remaining problems are from a poor wireless connection since I was at work last night and I that isnot a router that I have worked much with and the crew before me had a hard time with it as well. One of them said that he had a hard time connecting with his PS3. Man I have a hard job  .