Annoying problem in all games I run

First my system specs are in this thread
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=670583

doesn't seem to matter what game it is or what the graphics settings are on I keep getting little freezes for maybe a second or two.NOT CONSTANTLY
I DO NOT GET BAD GRAPHICS LAG FOR THE MOST PART

this is really annoying and has become a problem in more than one game.(EDIT AN ANNOYANCE)

I am not trying to do things my system wont handle I have mostly older games than should have no problem running on my computer

I have the newest chipset and gpu drivers from amd my windows 7 is updated

I can't figure out what it is everything I try does nothing to help




World Of Warcraft

Day Of Defeat

Americas Army

Return To Castle Wolfenstein

The Lord Of The Rings Online

Doom 3
short list of some of the games I play that this happens in

thanks in advance to anyone that can help

well, onboard video isn't helping matters. as for why it is stuttering, i couldn't say, but i would look at grabbing a cheap dedicated GPU asap.

That's a laptop he has.

I was being a jerk ignore this one

Umm, I dnt think beatbox was trying to be a jerk about what he said.
Oh and, he speaks the truth

Acidburn said:

if you look into the requirements for all the games in that list you wont find one that needs more than I have to run smooth

I asked for help not preaching on how i should get this or that

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look, he is telling you exactly the way it is... you have a poor video card with a poor cpu in a poor brand laptop. the 4250 is a low end gpu and would require a strong CPU (which you don't have) to help ... i'm very sorry if you don't like the answer but that is just the way it is...

take a look at some of the radeon 4250 reviews. they will tell you the same thing.

none of those games are too much for my gpu or cpu something you all are ignoring and can be proven

it's a fact I have played all of them on less and not had this problem

sorry if you don't like my answer which IS EXACTLY the way it is

Stop any non-Microsoft services and programs to see if it helps. If it does, you have a program that is causing issues. Sounds simple, but I had an issue similar to this where every game stopped rendering for a short time every two seconds. I narrowed it down to a program that polled every two seconds and disabled it.

Acidburn said:

I asked for help not preaching on how i should get this or that

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Just as a heads up. Asking for help and then being rude to the people posting is a quick way to not get assistance. If someone responded to me like that, I'd hit the unsubscribe button and not think twice about the thread. A little kindness and respect goes a long way, even if you don't mean it. If the response was rude, and in this case it certainly wasn't, then report the post to have a moderator handle it.

We don't post here because we get paid. We post here to help others and discuss computer-related topics. Time is taken out of our day to give what we think is good advice, whether it is good/accurate or not.

I appologize for getting out of control BUT

read software requirements and system specs before you blow someone off by telling them it must be their hardware that's all I was trying to point out

The problem lies with the 4200. It uses shared memory unlike a dedicated card that has dedicated memory. You can have 4gig of shared and it wont compete with a graphics card that has 256 MB. This is what causes the stuttering. The time it takes your onboard gpu to process an image, then pull the resources from the memory all before placing it on your screen. The stutter is the result.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Radeon-HD-4200.20493.0.html

Still*older games*like Doom 3 or Quake 4 should be barly*playable.

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Sounds about like what you are describing, yes?

As for the CPU, its nowhere near strong enough to make up the difference.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Turion-X2-Ultra-Notebook-Processor.10129.0.html

Due to the improved memory controller and having double the L2 cache capacity (Ultra) the Turion X2 should perform better than an equally clocked Turion 64 X2. However, it is clearly outperformed by the Core 2 Duo. In terms of performance it is rather comparable with a Core Duo respectively a Pentium Dual-Core processor.

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You may not want to hear it, but it is your hardware.

thideras said:

Stop any non-Microsoft services and programs to see if it helps. If it does, you have a program that is causing issues. Sounds simple, but I had an issue similar to this where every game stopped rendering for a short time every two seconds. I narrowed it down to a program that polled every two seconds and disabled it.
.

Click to expand...

this is what the problem was
you can all stop now with the ITS YOUR HARDWARE lol

and one of the services was from microsoft

once i killed windows experience service it totally stopped

As you see it's not his onboard video card, I had that vid card sometime ago and use it heavily for a month. And it's supposed to work pretty decently in those games he's mentioning.

Acidburn said:

I appologize for getting out of control BUT

read software requirements and system specs before you blow someone off by telling them it must be their hardware that's all I was trying to point out

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First of all, that is a backhanded apology.

Second of all, I don't need to read system requirements, I know first hand what they are, and I don't listen to game publishers, because putting realistic requirements on the box is not in the best interest of their bottom line.

Thirdly, I never, not once, blamed your hardware. If you read carefully you'll see that I said that "onboard video isn't helping matters" which it is not. I followed that up with "as for why it is stuttering, I couldn't say". I said that specifically because I didn't have an answer to your problem. I'm glad Thideras was able to help you, but he is correct in saying that your attitude may put people off of actually helping.

What is the temperatures like? Your CPU or GPU might be beginning to overheat so it's throttling down, which could be causing the pauses.

Do they happen often?? (The pauses)

I'd try playing your games with the most minimal amount of software running and see if that helps.

Also, could be worth doing a disk defrag and even a CClean.

watchthisspace said:

What is the temperatures like? Your CPU or GPU might be beginning to overheat so it's throttling down, which could be causing the pauses.

Do they happen often?? (The pauses)

I'd try playing your games with the most minimal amount of software running and see if that helps.

Also, could be worth doing a disk defrag and even a CClean.

Click to expand...

The temps seemed fine last time I looked they were staying at 47
And by the time you notice the machine getting a little warm the fan is already running and it cools off fairly quickly

I ran cc a defrag and reinstalled all my amd and ati drivers today plus messed with some services last night and it seems better it's just not totally gone

and I don't run anything in the background that I can make not run

starting to question acer giving almost 2 gigs of my system memory to my gpu as shared memory besides the 256 it has of its own(I don't know if that is exactly true but everything i read tells me it has 256 that is dedicated that isnt part of the system ram)
So maybe a ram upgrade to the full 8gb the board will take would help???
Or would that just add more to the shared memory also

and like I said a few times it's not like I am trying to run things that wont work on my computer or have any of the graphics settings cranked to ultra
in fact I have them all pretty low and have always done that no matter what I was using for a computer since I always wanted fps over pretty colors

I don't expect this computer to be some hard core gaming machine but it should run the games I have decently at moderate settings without any trouble

well the problem with a GPU using RAM for its memory(as mentioned before) is that since it does not have its own memory(or a little) it has to put all of its thought processes in another location causing a wait time from where the GPU can display the image and where it has to go get it from another location.
having shared memory is perfectly fine for office solutions and other low intensity GPU functions like watching movies, but for games its the last thing you want, i highly suggest forgetting about the RAM upgrade and trying to save up for a new laptop with dedicated video, or a desktop(which will be much faster and cheaper than a laptop with dedicated memory)

Ok I am just not going to bother with this post anymore since no one can seem to read the part that says it doesn't happen all the time and it is just an annoyance not a major problem

but I would like to make it stop

what makes you think no one is reading your posts? we are doing the best we can, it is a little difficult without having the machine in front of us. if you don't want this FREE help, then I'd suggest calling Acer, or take your computer to a local shop and pay them to have a look at it for you. and if you know more than we do, why are you even asking us?

^ true dat

Is the laptop always plugged in when this happens? If it's not could it be a throttling used to lighten the load on the battery? If yes does the laptop decide to act like the power is connecting/disconnecting frequently possibly causing the previously mentioned throttling?

I see this looks like a fairly recently acquired laptop so the next one shouldn't be an issue but if you plug it in and remove the battery does it alleviate the issue? I have seen strange things come from having a bad laptop battery. Does the laptop bios have options to change what amount of ram your video card is getting? If so experiment with different settings? maybe it will do better with only 1gb allocated to it.