Identical Computers Running Battlefield 2 Demo Act Differently

Cody02 · #1 May 30th, 2008, 11:04 PM

My brother and I have brand new identical computers. They are Compaq Presarios and both of them have AMD Turion64 dual core processors (2GHz), NVIDIA GeForce 7000M graphics cards, 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard drives, and Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit).

We both installed a Battlefield 2 Demo and set the display graphics (on the game) to medium at 800by600 resolution. We also have the NVIDIA graphics settings (accessible in the control panel) at the option that allows the application to choose how to display itself. The only thing that is different between his and mine is that I installed a few more games than him (so far).

The problem is that when he plays Battlefield 2 on his computer everything loads slightly faster, runs smoother (for instance when he looks around in the game), has a smooth frame rate, and the sound does not get choppy. Mine however has more lag, the sound does get choppy, it is not as smooth, and the frame rate seems slower. I don't know why this is happening. Especially when I consider the fact that both of these laptops have exactly the same hardware!

If you have any advice, I would be much obliged.

-Cody

l337_GuY · #2 May 30th, 2008, 11:24 PM

Hi, Welcome to CTH.

Try running Ccleaner. Could just be more temp files clogging it up.

Do you both have internet access on these laptops? Could be something along the lines of spyware and adware causing the problem too. Or one has more updates installed compared to the other etc.

renegade600 · #3 May 30th, 2008, 11:31 PM

are they exactly the same from all software being the same to same settings to same stuff running in the background. Lets not forget the hardware, all must be exactly the same.

If not then there could be differences in running the game

**smurfy** · #4 May 31st, 2008, 01:14 AM

Quote:

The only thing that is different between his and mine is that I installed a few more games than him (so far).

Possibly they have installed different DirectX9 updates to what is running on your brother's machine?

Other than that, I tend to agree withe the others, you've probably got some unwanted software running that you don't even know about.

Simple test (may not prove much) before you both start BF2, bring up task manager and list all the processes running. I'm pretty sure you'll find your list is different to his.

Cody02 · #5 May 31st, 2008, 05:13 AM

We don't have permanent Internet access but we have connected to our DSL land line and some neigbors wireless network, and we both have had updates since. We also have 2 antivirus programs running (a 60 day trial to Norton, and the Home Edition of Avast!). I have noted that at any given time we will almost always have a different number of processes running (both of the computers average between 60 and 65 processes at a time), though I can't tell if they are good or bad because I don't know which ones should be running and which should not. My brother and I were watching the RAM on both of them today (every application was closed except task manager) and mine was using 30% of the physical memory while his was using 27%. I guess I could look to see what versions of DirectX we are running, but I'm pretty sure they are the same. I'll try doing what you all proposed and report back. Thanks

-Cody

l337_GuY · #6 May 31st, 2008, 05:56 AM

That is Alot of processes to be running. You may want to clean up your startup list.

I average around 30 processes running at a time, And do full system scans for spyware and viruses each week. Also defrag every month my HDD's and run Ccleaner to cleanup unneeded stuff.

Cody02 · #7 June 2nd, 2008, 04:55 AM

Well, I ran CCleaner and dropped my processes from about 60 to 65 down to 40 to 45. Before I did that I compared both our processes and services on our computers and they were all the same, except the memory they used varied. Also I've noticed that most of the time my brother's computer averages more processes than mine yet I still use more RAM, sometimes 8% more. What is also ironic is that my brother decided to try out the high settings on Battlefield 2 at 800 by 600 resolution and it worked just as good as on medium settings. I try to do that on mine and it only got worse. The CCleaner program didn't help much, if at all. I also partly ran the disk defragmenter (though I cut it off because I got impatient). I ran Windows Defender (nothing wrong) and I also ran Avast! antivirus at the highest security settings and it found no infected files on any of my hard disk space. What I also found funny was that yesterday when I started my computer I had around 160 GB of memory free on my hard drive. Later in the day it said I had 152 GB free (though I did not install anything that I know of). Today it said 152 GB free before I ran Avast! but afterward it was back to 160 GB! Also my brother and I have the same graphics drivers and version of DirectX (version 10) which I looked up on dxdiag. I really don't know what is going on, but I don't see why my computer should perform poorer when it is exactly the same as his.

If you have anymore advice, I would really appreciate it.

-Cody