deadhairdresser

Okay, so i've been playing MW2 for the past few months on my macbook pro, which has a Core 2 Duo with 2,53 ghz processor, 4 GB of RAM and a geforce 9600M GT with 512 mb of ram.

It doesn't run MW2 too bad. I play it on relatively low settings but on full resolution.

So today I get my laptop in from work, a Dell Studio XPS 16.

This thing has a Core i7 at 1,6 ghz, 4 GB of RAM, Radeon mobility HD4670 with 1GB.

So naturally, I try to harness the power of this system by installing MW2 on it. However, there's a catch.

I'm a developer, and since one of our programs doesn't build yet on 64-bit, I had to install windows 7 32-bit.

When I started up MW2, I put it to high settings - HD resolution, everything on, textures on high. This plays well until after 10 seconds, when it glitches and the framerate drops. Then it goes smooth again for 2 seconds, and the framerate drops again...

I thought well maybe my settings are too high, so I lowered them. But even when I turn off most of the fx and stuff, it still has this problem. The glitches also affect the sound (it sounds like Neo going out of the matrix the first time).

So I'm wondering what the problem might be. I have installed all drivers as far as I know, so I'm thinking it might be the RAM.

Has anyone encountered this before?

deadhairdresser

Okay, just tried to play GTA IV and it crashed, saying "out of video memory".

Is this directly due to the 32-bit OS?

oneinchwunda

I doubt it. It is most likely hardware-related. Maybe GPU overheating?

GTA IV is a pretty demanding game. Much more so than MW2 and I'm not surprised it won't work on a "mobile" version of a pretty lack-lustre card.

The reason I doubt it is the OS is because many people play MW2 on only 32-bit with 1Gb dedicated GPUs and have no issues. MW2 only recommends 2Gb and a 512Mb GPU, so I doubt it will be using up all of it.

Maybe someone a bit more laptop familiar can help you out.

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deadhairdresser

I don't think it's overheating, since the system itself keeps working like a charm. It also has no time to warm up, it happens pretty soon in the game.

Plus again, I could at least play GTA IV on my macbook pro...

abc

GPUs warm up and indeed cool down very quickly ("very quickly" = seconds, not minutes) so it's worth checking but rather unlikely.

Initial thought is that for some reason the OS/GPU isn't allocating enough/any system RAM as "texture memory" aka turbocache aka sideport aka whatever-the-latest-marketing-gimick-phrase-is.

I do not have a clue how you'd beging to trouble shoot that though, best thing to do is to go through the obvious stuff first:

Update driver
Check temps whilst gaming

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This is getting repetitive.

deadhairdresser

I downloaded the latest ATI driver a couple of times already to double check. I'm positively running the latest 32-bit one.

About temperature... I could sit outside for a moment and see if it gets any better