Tech question

[flak4321]

Hello all. I would like to request help from our more tech savvy members, if I could. My problem is I have some in game lag that coincides with or may be because my frames per second drops from a 25-35 range all the way to 0 while in game. Frequency increases as computer gets hot, but starts about once every 5 minutes. At worst strikes every 15-20 seconds. Any suggestions on how I can stop this?

Tech specs of my machine:

HP Pavilion dv4-1225dx Entertainment Notebook PC
AMD Turion dual core processor 2.13 GHz, 4GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics card w/ up to 1918 MB DDR2 video memory
Windows Vista 64MB
Drivers all up to date as of 12/22/10, redone once a month

Other notes worth mentioning:

Playing on wireless network on a linksys 1000E wireless N router
Comcast is ISP
Running game booster 2.1 to shut down most unnecessary background programs

Secondary question: The booster recommends I download 4 programs:

Ventrilo
Steam
Xfire
Teamspeak

I've heard of the first 3, but not the fourth, but don't know much about any of them. What do they do and are they safe? And will my machine handle the newest versions?

[Hammy]

I have a similar problem which makes the game completely unplayable most of the time.

From what I've been able to read, many people have this problem, and all of these people have ATI radeon graphics cards. Couldn't find a fix... for me this problem started after patch. I'm still hoping the next patch will fix it. There's a thread on Bnet forums, I'll find it when I get back home.
Of course my catalyst is up to date etc...

Vent and Teamspeak are similar softwares. They let you voice-chat on servers and channels.
Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation (wiki says it best).
XFire is a messaging client which has plenty of other cool functionalities.

They are all safe, but completely irrelevant in this case. I can't imagine how installing this stuff would help your fps...

[flak4321]

Apologies for a slight mislead/mistatement Hammy. The booster program recommends them as a part of the gaming experience, not as a fix for the frame rate issue. I'd rather not download them if they aren't integral to the game. Thanks.

Edit: did a search on ATI Radeon graphics cards to see what I could find and on the pertinent wiki page there is a table that says my hd 3200 series supports up to Open GL 2.0 and DirectX 10.1. If I am correct in my thinking that SC2 uses directX 11, this may be the problem right there, or at least part of it...

Edit2: I've also found a newer catalyst version, 10.12, released 12/13/10. We'll see if that helps.

Edit3: Just reread your post. The problems first started for me after patch 1.1.2, but were then very minimal, and crescendoed after the patch containing the PTR.

[Hammy]

Still having the framerate issue Flak?

[dustinbrowder]

Well your processor and especially GPU pretty much suck, in fact most laptops bellow $1000 suck for gaming.

You can always improve performance with tweaks and various stuff, but not by too much.

I would suggest you install Ccleaner, run it and clean up your OS from junk and temp files.
Next would be defragmenting your drive/s. You can use the OS build-in one or download a commercial or freeware defragmenter.
Closing background programs like Skype, MSN, xfire, etc... before you open a game.
Setting your laptop setting to "performance" and not "battery saving".
Your video card uses your ram memory for additional ram, just like an integrated GPU, so set a max limit that it can use of about 1000mb, anything more you don't need anyways.

Final thing would be to lower the game resolution and set some settings to low or medium.

[EvilGenius]

Well your processor and especially GPU pretty much suck, in fact most laptops bellow $1000 suck for gaming.

You can always improve performance with tweaks and various stuff, but not by too much.

Ignore that foolishness - I've run sc2 on a machine 10x worse that that. Your CPU and GPU aren't designed for high-end gaming, but they're CERTAINLY capable of gaming - as evidenced by the fact that you're getting

25-35 FPS normally. This sounds like a heat issue. If your CPU or GPU gets too hot while gaming, it will begin throttling. That would be one possible cause. (HP laptops are notorious for overheating nowadays)

I recommend you download HW monitor - and keep an eye on your temps:
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

anything above 60*C would be worth worrying about.

Don't worry about directx - SC2 scales backwards to Direct X 9 (because that's all microsoft will allow in Windows XP)

[dustinbrowder]

Ignore that foolishness - I've run sc2 on a machine 10x worse that that. Your CPU and GPU aren't designed for high-end gaming, but they're CERTAINLY capable of gaming - as evidenced by the fact that you're getting

25-35 FPS normally. This sounds like a heat issue. If your CPU or GPU gets too hot while gaming, it will begin throttling. That would be one possible cause. (HP laptops are notorious for overheating nowadays)

I recommend you download HW monitor - and keep an eye on your temps:
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

anything above 60*C would be worth worrying about.

Don't worry about directx - SC2 scales backwards to Direct X 9 (because that's all microsoft will allow in Windows XP)

Sure, I can run SC2 on one of my 5 years old PC, but everything is on low settings and framerate still drops to 5fps in huge battles.

Heck I could probably play SC2 on an athlon 2600 and FX5200 for that matter, doesn't mean I'd get a good experience.

[EvilGenius]

Sure, I can run SC2 on one of my 5 years old PC, but everything is on low settings and framerate still drops to 5fps in huge battles.

Heck I could probably play SC2 on an athlon 2600 and FX5200 for that matter, doesn't mean I'd get a good experience.

I just think it's a bad thing to under-estimate hardware. If it's capable of starting on a single-core atom, his Turion is more than up to the task.

either way - it's beside the point. He's obviously satisfied with the graphics settings since he's been playing this long - we just need to fix the frame-rate.

I think you're on to something with the RAM though. Allocating less to the video card would give the game a little more wiggle room.

*Flak - is there any chance you could post a screenshot of your desktop with task manager open and on the processes panel? It'd give us a little more information about exactly what's going on with your machine...

[TheEconomist]

Sometimes I leave 'Power Saver' on which limits my i5 750 to 1.2Ghz. I can run StarCraft 2 flawlessly for most games (sometimes I don't even know it's on until late game) until there's a lot going on on screen.

I'd be surprised if TC's PC couldn't atleast run the game on Medium considering mine is on Extreme.