First off, my specs:
Dell Latitude D620
4gb crucial RAM (2gb x 2)
Dual core @ 1.83 Ghz (T2400)
* Nvidia Quadro 110m (using forceware driver 168.28, overclocked from 300 core/600 memory to (436/708)
7200 rpm harddrive
Win XP Professional SP 2 (32 bit - yes, I know I'm not able to utilize all of my RAM)
* - I know it only has 64 mb of onboard memory, but it's effectively 256, as it pulls the rest from the system. How turbocache stacks up against dedicated graphics memory is a debate I lack the knowledge to have, but I've heard it's close.
My sins graphic settings:
Resolution 1024/768 (low as it will go)
EVERYTHING under "effects" set to low, exhaust trails down as far as they will go, and a few options turned off (forget which, but I mean the settings where you can turn asteroids and the like off).
My problem:
I play sins almost exclusively with my brother, and the main map we play is less than 40 planets.
For the most part, the game runs fine, can't complain.
However, whenever we're in a large battle, the lag becomes so bad that it has a serious impact on gameplay. I can't scroll nearly as well, issue orders of any kind as well, etc.
It's especially problematic from a gameplay perspective because he experiences no lag at all.
I know a lot of people might zero in on my videocard and assume that it's the problem, but I'm pretty sure it's not.
I say that for a few reasons:
One, overclocking it from 300/600 to 436/708 hasn't made a perceptible difference -
And two, to the best of my limited knowledge about video cards, they care about what they're rendering onscreen at the moment, and what they're about to, and not much else.
If my videocard was the bottleneck here, I'd expect zooming all the way out of a big battle so that you're only seeing planets and waiting a few seconds to kill the lag. But the lag persists.
So I'm thinking that my cpu is the problem.
Also, about the only thing of note I have running in the background when I play sins is comodo firewall - and I should note that it's JUST the firewall, with defense plus disabled. I have very few other applications running (nvidia control panel, comodo firewall, I8kfangui, sandboxie) when I play, most non-essential Windows services disabled, and no malware.
Considering that there isn't much more I can kill in terms of applications/services, and that I have basically all the pretty turned off in sins already...Is there anything, anything at all more I can do here?
I should note that I've already tried setting the processor affinity for sins to a single core and giving it realtime priority.
Also, overclocking my cpu isn't an option because my BIOS is locked down all to hell since it's a laptop, and it couldn't take the heat anyway.
So if anyone has any helpful ideas on how I could get it to perform better...I'm all ears. Or eyes, rather.
Thank you.
