Excessive Lag in Games--Possibly Due to CPU?

zcbgameshark · 09-16-2007, 02:15 AM

My laptop has a 1.74GHz processor with 1.5gig of 533MHz DDR2 RAM, which I know is not great, but I think it should be able to run games like Age of Empires 3 without much of a problem. However, when I play AoE3 and other games such as World of Warcraft on the lowest graphics settings possible with no sound, my computer lags tremendously: when a map in AoE has a lot of water/units or there is a battle between two ships, it completely locks up, and I have to alt+f4; I get about 5-9 FPS in WoW. When I do ctrl-alt-delete, it shows my CPU usage at a constant 100% for several minutes.

I don't know what the problem is, but I don't think it's my processor speed or RAM. However, I'm wondering if it's possible that there's something with with the actual processor itself; I really know very little about computers though, so it's tough for me to tell. The reason for me thinking this is because whenever I run AoE, a popup says that the game requires a processor with a speed of 1.4GHz and mine does not meet the minimum requirements, usually saying that my processor is 800 or 900MHz (it varies). I just uninstalled World of Warcraft to eliminate the possibility of any corrupted files, and when I went to reinstall it, another popup says that I have "insufficient CPU speed" to run the game, which is impossible.

If anyone has any insight as to what the problem could possibly be, I would REALLY appreciate it, because I don't want to have to buy another computer to be able to play games like this (Bioshock is out of the question ATM

).

Thanks a lot, and sorry for the semi-long post!
zcb

enshei · 09-16-2007, 08:09 AM

I have the same problem, but it's down to having an integrated graphics card. These games won't run with one, and need a dedicated video card. Go on www.systemrequirementslab.com and find AoE3 and see if that thinks you can run it.

Not enough processor speed might (and i stress might) be due to something called speedstep (although i have a feeling this may only be on laptops) where your cpu only processes at the speed it needs to.

09-16-2007, 02:15 AM	#1 (permalink)
zcbgameshark New Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 11	Excessive Lag in Games--Possibly Due to CPU? My laptop has a 1.74GHz processor with 1.5gig of 533MHz DDR2 RAM, which I know is not great, but I think it should be able to run games like Age of Empires 3 without much of a problem. However, when I play AoE3 and other games such as World of Warcraft on the lowest graphics settings possible with no sound, my computer lags tremendously: when a map in AoE has a lot of water/units or there is a battle between two ships, it completely locks up, and I have to alt+f4; I get about 5-9 FPS in WoW. When I do ctrl-alt-delete, it shows my CPU usage at a constant 100% for several minutes. I don't know what the problem is, but I don't think it's my processor speed or RAM. However, I'm wondering if it's possible that there's something with with the actual processor itself; I really know very little about computers though, so it's tough for me to tell. The reason for me thinking this is because whenever I run AoE, a popup says that the game requires a processor with a speed of 1.4GHz and mine does not meet the minimum requirements, usually saying that my processor is 800 or 900MHz (it varies). I just uninstalled World of Warcraft to eliminate the possibility of any corrupted files, and when I went to reinstall it, another popup says that I have "insufficient CPU speed" to run the game, which is impossible. If anyone has any insight as to what the problem could possibly be, I would REALLY appreciate it, because I don't want to have to buy another computer to be able to play games like this (Bioshock is out of the question ATM ). Thanks a lot, and sorry for the semi-long post! zcb Last edited by zcbgameshark; 09-16-2007 at 02:19 AM.

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09-16-2007, 08:09 AM	#2 (permalink)
enshei Bronze Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 57	I have the same problem, but it's down to having an integrated graphics card. These games won't run with one, and need a dedicated video card. Go on www.systemrequirementslab.com and find AoE3 and see if that thinks you can run it. Not enough processor speed might (and i stress might) be due to something called speedstep (although i have a feeling this may only be on laptops) where your cpu only processes at the speed it needs to.