10 fps on laptop... why? Halp!

[Lexa]

I run FFXI on a brand new laptop. But it's running at 10fps or lower, and it's impossible to get anything done like that. >.< I don't know why this is. During zones, it spikes up to 30 fps, but soon as something actually appears onscreen, it's back down to between 3 and 10. I am not at all computer savvy, so any help on the matter would be appreciated.

I've tried: Running without windower, running without any plugins, updating the graphics card drivers (and no, the new drivers posted in the advanced section didn't match this card), disabling the built-in webcam through the device manager. There's also no USB devices connected to the laptop, and I don't run a firewall. Results have been exactly the same every time.

This is some info about my laptop:

HP Pavillion dv9500 Notebook PC
32-bit Windows Vista OS
1983 Mbit RAM
AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile technology TL-58 1.90 GHz
Nivida MCP67M graphics card

Also, I have no clue what I'm talking about, this info was just copied from the computer properties info and the device manager info. XD

PS. Spare me the Vista jokes.

[Elesirdur]

Could be your nVidia drivers. There's a thread over in the Advanced Section discussing new nVidia drivers so upgrading to suggested versions may help.

Edit: Here's the thread I was talking about viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27179

[Cephius]

Was it running fine when you got the laptop or is this just something that's happened recently? Could it be a virus or spyware slowing you down, since you're not running a firewall (bad idea by the way)?

If not, Nvidia chipsets are notoriously pretty crappy in notebooks unless you get the best of the best. I'd look to make sure you have the latest drivers, especially since you're running Vista. Also a dumb question maybe, but you have the Vista version of POL installed yes?

[Lexa]

Could be your nVidia drivers. There's a thread over in the Advanced Section discussing new nVidia drivers so upgrading to suggested versions may help.

Edit: Here's the thread I was talking about viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27179

(and no, the new drivers posted in the advanced section didn't match this card)

If not, Nvidia chipsets are notoriously pretty crappy in notebooks unless you get the best of the best. I'd look to make sure you have the latest drivers, especially since you're running Vista. Also a dumb question maybe, but you have the Vista version of POL installed yes?

I've tried: Running without windower, running without any plugins, updating the graphics card drivers

And yeah, I should have mentioned, it'd been like this since I bought it, and at first I thought it was the firewall, but it's not. I disabled the firewall because that fixed lag issues on my desktop. And yeah, it's the Vista version of POL.

[Cephius]

Dunno what else you could try other than installing XP. I'd bank on it being a problem with your graphics card, which is why everyone is suggesting you look into it even though you said you did already The card you have is not popular and is likely customized by HP so downloading new drivers won't work anyway. Where did you get the drivers from, windows update or the HP website? Try downloading them again from the HP website if possible... sorry if this doesn't help

[Kriz]

Mayhaps the laptop bios is set up to throttle down your processor and it throttles you down in those instances? I have no faith in such technologies. Mostly because I don't trust Windows- I can imagine Vista's power settings and/or the BIOS itself might half-clock you or somesuch for no reason.

[Lexa]

Where did you get the drivers from, windows update or the HP website? Try downloading them again from the HP website if possible... sorry if this doesn't help

I just did it through Windows, I'll try manually looking up some. It's worth a shot. :D As for installing XP, hey, I wouldn't be adverse to it, I'm just a complete PC noob and not sure how to. Plus, I have baaad baaaaad baaaaaaaad experience with cracked OSs and legal copies are pricey (not to mention people laugh at me ^^; Heh). I'm definitely keeping it as a backup plan though. :D

Mayhaps the laptop bios is set up to throttle down your processor and it throttles you down in those instances? I have no faith in such technologies. Mostly because I don't trust Windows- I can imagine Vista's power settings and/or the BIOS itself might half-clock you or somesuch for no reason.

...huh?

Don't take my PC skillz for - I'm a nub. ; ;

[Tajin]

Have you tried adjusting the power saving settings? Both laptops I have (Dell and Gateway) run crappy while on Maximum Battery life set. And run a little faster on Maximum Performance set.

Or lower the shadows detail in FFXI, disable some effects maybe.

[Lexa]

Have you tried adjusting the power saving settings? Both laptops I have (Dell and Gateway) run crappy while on Maximum Battery life set. And run a little faster on Maximum Performance set.

Or lower the shadows detail in FFXI, disable some effects maybe.

The lag issues start already on the first opening screen (where you see Gustaberg or Jugner or whatever, etc). I also never play with shadows/weather effects, etc, out of habit. However, I just discovered setting the power plan to Maximum performance bumped the framerate up to 18 fps. Good enough to level my lowbie character and crafting mules - not so much with the actual play, but hey, it's something.

I just went to HP's website, and downloaded all the patches for my particular notebook, as well as swing by the Nvidia site and downloaded the Vista hotfixes. Nothing seems to help, so I'm starting to assume that this graphics card just simply doesn't like FFXI, period. x.x Thanks so much for all the suggestions so far, though!

[Vyvian]

Well I see 2 things, 1 is that actually a video card, with its own dedicated video memory, or is it shared memory? And how much video memory does it say you have? All I could see about it online is that it has 64mb but nothing about whether its shared, although, 2046-64 = 1982 mb, which is 1 less than the reported amount of ram in your system, 1983, so it seems to be shared. That may be the whole of your problem right there.

Secondly, you are running at the minimum amount of RAM to keep Vista in a usable state, anything less than 2gb tends to fail. On top of the fact that you are using an HP computer, notorious for worthless bloat HP software, like icons in the taskbar that light up if caps num or scroll lock is on.

Try to get the computer cleaned out of worthless software, then clean your boot sequence, so stuff at bootup doesn't waste your power if you don't always use it.

The turion is a dual core, so run taskmgr before launching ffxi (in windowed mode), and see if your CPU % increases to 50% on pol.exe when you're lagging.

[Lexa]

Well I see 2 things, 1 is that actually a video card, with its own dedicated video memory, or is it shared memory? And how much video memory does it say you have? All I could see about it online is that it has 64mb but nothing about whether its shared, although, 2046-64 = 1982 mb, which is 1 less than the reported amount of ram in your system, 1983, so it seems to be shared. That may be the whole of your problem right there.

Secondly, you are running at the minimum amount of RAM to keep Vista in a usable state, anything less than 2gb tends to fail. On top of the fact that you are using an HP computer, notorious for worthless bloat HP software, like icons in the taskbar that light up if caps num or scroll lock is on.

Try to get the computer cleaned out of worthless software, then clean your boot sequence, so stuff at bootup doesn't waste your power if you don't always use it.

The turion is a dual core, so run taskmgr before launching ffxi (in windowed mode), and see if your CPU % increases to 50% on pol.exe when you're lagging.

I got a HP computer, since I've never owned anything else, and all my PCs for the past 10 years have been good to me. I got rid of a lot of useless software from the machine long before I installed FFXI though.

Also, I found out it's not a dv9500, but a dv9268nr, if that matters. It says it's got 559MBs shared video memory. Though I have no clue what that means, or if that's a problem, what to do about it.

[Vyvian]

Well good, thats half the battle, cleaning up the junk that preloads on mass-manufacturer machines, particularly on notebooks the worst 3 tend to be HP, Toshiba and Sony for bundling pointless software, if you cleaned it out thats fine.

The problem with shared memory is that means your sacrificing some of the system's ability to think, so that it will think about rendering video. Your graphics card appears to have a dedicated video processor, but shares its memory with your normal RAM, it will end up slower than having a video card with dedicated ram, on a notebook there isn't much you can do about it, except to play at really low settings.

If you didn't have a dedicated processor either, you'd be lucky to get 10 fps. Vista will decide to share a large amount of extra ram to the video card, because of aero and other visual features. If you right click on your desktop, go to Personalize, then go to Display Settings, and click advanced you'll get a screen that lays out your RAM amounts for video.

For example on mine it says (Geforce 8800 GTS 640mb):

Total Available Graphics Memory: 2175 MB
Dedicated Video Memory: 640 MB
System Video Memory: 0 MB
Shared System Memory: 1535 MB

So Vista will potentially consume a max of 1.5GB of ram for video rendering in addition to the 640mb thats built into the card. The more of that "Shared" memory the computer is forced to use, the slower a 3d application may run, especially if it draws heavily on the processor for data (like FFXI does).

[Lexa]

Thanks for explaining it out to me. ^^ I'll try disabling the Aero theme and do what I can to make the game more playable. :D

[Ryalena]

I bought the exact same laptop as you and I have been having the same problems. I disabled that stupid aero theme and managed to get my fps back up to about 12-17, Its not what I wanted but it is ok.

I'm just curious about downgrading to XP, would it be worthwhile performance wise? And would I have to reformat my computer?

[Lexa]

What I did:

- Disabled all unnecessary software.
- Turned the power performance up to Max performance, Minimal life.
- Disabled Aero.

My fps is currently sitting at 22-23. I've been considering downgrading to XP, because honestly, I don't much care. I bought that laptop to play FFXI on (I shoulda brought a computer savvy friend with me, to confirm that the specs were ok first, haha), and to a minor degree to do schoolwork in Word on, so I don't really care about what OS it runs.

My desktop remains fine with Vista, however.

[levish]

I tinkered with vista32/64 and ffxi pretty extensively and can say honestly its just not worth the hassle considering it doesn't take much to get xp32 running and humming along nicely.

You can get nearly anything to hum along at 29fps in xp even at fairly high resolutions, xp64 takes a bit of a hit (in my experience) and vista is just a mess (again in my experience).

[Lexa]

Yeah, I'll be downgrading my laptop for sure. It's driving me nuts.

My desktop with Vista 32-bit has still no problems, though, so I'll keep it on this machine. :D