Intel 946 on a laptop

[bozon]

What prevents me from returning to the game is my laptop. It has an excellent CPU, but Intel 965 graphic card. I didn't buy this one, I got it from my employer. It serves all my needs (even some gaming) except that I can't run AH on it. I don't mind spending money on AH. Heck, I played this game for almost 6+ years starting when it was still 25$ a month and pay-per-hour to my phone company. However, buying a desktop for the sole purpose of playing AH is a little too much.

Recently I've been tweaking performance as much as I can - managed to squeeze 31 fps on the runway in offline mode. I need to see how it will hold up online. Will start with heavy offline missions and if that works I will try it online. If offline missions are playable, I hope HTC does not mind if I use the trial period for this test - I promise to make it a paying account if it works.

If anyone has any tips on how to improve performance on this thing I will be happy to hear.

Dell Latitude D630,
Core2 Duo T8300 2.4 GHz,
2 GB RAM
Mobile Intel 965 Express
WinXP Pro SP3

[BaldEagl]

Not much you can do with a laptop unfortunately.  Have you trimmed all the background processes?

[bozon]

so far:
- minimized background processes
- shut down anti-virus and other software during testing.
- installed latest intel drivers I could find (later than what Dell website gives)

If you have any suggestions as to the windows and game settings, here they are below:

3D setting (in adapter options):
------------------------------
Asynchronous Flip = off
Triple Buffering = Default
Flipping policy = Flip
Depth buffer bit depth = Default
Force S3TC texture compression = off
Force FXT1 texture compression = off
Driver memory footprint = normal
Texture color depth = desktop color depth (I use 32)
Anisotropic filtering = Application Control


Game settings:
--------------------------
Texture size = 128
Hardware Vertex Processing = on (seems to do better this way)
Optimize Objects = on
Optimize Terrain = on
Object detail = Full right ("faster" side)
Ground detail range = 2/3 left (much shorter I don't consider playable)
Disable other plane skins = off
Horizon = off
Terrain Mipmapping = on
Disable weapon effects = on (otherwise FPS drop when firing guns)
Disable vehicle effects = on (didn't test but I assume as the above)
Transitions = off
Optimize Objects = on
Optimize terrain = on

[humble]

Hopefully you can talk them into a newer laptop sometime soon:). I use a toshiba (tablet convertible) for work but its pushing 5 yrs old now. I've been contemplating a new laptop (mainly for battery life) and I'm amazed at hoe many options with discrete VC's are out there for reasonable $$$'s. I've found a couple with 4-6G and the 9800M for under $1000....

[bozon]

Did another run in the game offline. It seems that the greatest hit on FPS are trees or some other ground feature when flying low. FPS drops to 18-19. This is still playable, but I wonder what will happen with more planes around, especially bomber formations. Over the water I break the 40 FPS even near a CV (except 23-24 fps on the flight deck).

I am now trying different terrains as I remember some of them gave a serious hit to FPS.

[BaldEagl]

Unless you just have to have all the skins turn disable other skins on.  Less to have to load. 

Have you run disc cleanup and defragged?

[SKJohn]

IIRC, Shift + F3 will make the viewing distance short - I think I've read about people switching to this in dogfights to increase FPS.

[Skuzzy]

Disable skins and skins downloads while online.  Turn off terrain optimizations and see what it does.  Turn off object optimizations and see what it does.

Keep the video resolution as low as you can stand.