Vivek’s Blog

I think my laptop is trying to tell me something. I re-installed Windows a few weeks back because my laptop was running slow and I had too much junk on my HDD. Everything was hunky-dory until I re-installed UT2004. I haven’t played much off late but until say February or so, I used to run the game at 1680×1050 with most effects at High. It would run perfectly fine at around 45fps. Right before the Windows reinstall, I noticed a slowdown in UT. I thought, well, the reinstall will take care of it. Nope.

It was on my external drive and even at 800×600 with everything turned low, it was stuttering. I moved the installation to my internal drive but that didn’t seem to make any difference. So I uninstalled the Omega Drivers I had been using and put in the old Dell drivers. Still nothing significant. Finally, I took out my PCMCIA sound card and played with onboard audio. That did seem to make a difference. I thought all right, maybe I need to update the Audigy drivers. And after updating, I was able to run 1280×800 with most settings at High and all was fine in Deathmatch/Mutant/CTF. But the moment I started an Assault game, the slowdown returned. I realize that the Assault mode has a lot of stuff going on at any given time but it was perfectly all right a few months ago.

What finally got to me is that today I installed Quake 4 and it was lagging even at the lowest quality settings [640x480, Low Quality: Default]. By contrast, the copy of Quake 2 that comes with the Special Edition ran flawlessly at 1024×768 High Quality [as I'd hoped]. It’s strange - at the same time last year, I was running F.E.A.R. at 800×600 with settings at medium or medium-high and it ran without any lag [OK maybe the occasional jerky frame but nothing distracting]. This is the same machine that ran DOOM 3 at 800×600/Medium settings without problems up until June/July ‘05.

Dell has stopped releasing drivers for my card and the last one is from late 2005. I started using the Omega Drivers since they utilize the newest Catalyst releases straight from ATi. And actually, there was a slight performance improvement in FarCry with them - heck even FarCry ran well at 1024×768/Medium-High just a few months ago.

Is my laptop drive nearing the end of it’s life-cycle? Are the processor and graphics card stressed out? I know RAM is not an issue because right now I run games with 750MB+ free memory. I know it’s not the external drive causing problems because there no noticeable difference when I moved the install to the internal drive [Quake 4 is on the internal too; F.E.A.R., FarCry are on the external]. I will probably loose faith in my laptop’s ability to run games if FarCry and F.E.A.R. don’t run as well. With Extraction Point on the way, I hope I can fix whatever is causing a problem here. Also, I’d like to get back to playing UT2004 on the LAN with my friends here and Assault and Onslaught Modes are our favorites.

Computer hardware progresses at a rate far too rapid for the average consumer to keep up. Intense competition fuels growth - even though we don’t really need it. I love video games but they are in a way responsible for pushing hardware to produce higher polygon counts in shorter periods of time. Sure, new games look pretty but should you have to make a $300 upgrade just to be able to play a $50 game? A lot users end up playing old games anyway simply because the latest games won’t run on their year-old hardware. I was a firm believer in PC Gaming but over the past couple of years, I’ve gravitated more towards consoles - the no upgrade idea is extremely attractive. Sure, I still love the keyboard-mouse combo for FPSes but a controller is not too shabby once you get accustomed to it. But it’s far easier to shell out a couple of thousand dollars for a high-end PC than it is to pay $400-600 for a new gaming console. After all, the console can only play games or browse the internet in a limited way. A good idea is to get a good console and cheap computer that you can upgrade maybe once every 4-5 years just for everything other than gaming. But you will miss out on quality PC games that way. And not everyone can afford a high-end gaming system on a yearly upgrade cycle and a new console. It’s just not fair either way.

Well, on the bright side, I get my DS on Tuesday so there’s something that I don’t need to worry about games not working. Maybe if the 360 drops its price, I can get one with my roommate and then I can play the newest games in 720p. Oh well, back to reading.