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Boot camp games running weirdly

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Eodyr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 2, 2012
2
0
I'm using a 2009 MBP with 2.26GHz, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and bootcamped for 32-bit Windows 7.

This is an issue that I've been encountering with a lot of games, recently including Fallout: New Vegas, Skyrim and Alpha Protocol. The issue is that these games used to run okay on my system, but now whenever I play them, they'll run normally for a few minutes, but then get really choppy. The weird thing is that sometimes, if I just leave it for a while, the graphics will speed up again, and then a little while later slow back down. Even weirder, if I open the game menu and alt-tab out of the game for a few minutes, then back in, it runs fine for a little while before again going choppy. I don't think it's just a matter of me trying to run games that are too much for the system - for example, with New Vegas, I've read plenty of posts on this forum and others that suggest I should be able to run it perfectly well.

Any ideas?
 
Huntn

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,484
26,601
The Misty Mountains
I wish I was an expert enough to tell you how to exactly do this, but I'm not. There should be a way to see how many processes you have running in Windows (in the background). You might also need to run a utility on it to clean up Windows.

Currently I rely on TuneUp Utilities and am very happy with it. Things like cleaning up the registry, freeing up space (is your partition all most full?), turning off unneeded programs running in the background, etc, etc, hey this is Windows, etc. ;)

Optimize Windows 7 For Better Performance.
 
W

Wardenski

macrumors 6502
Jan 22, 2012
464
5
I would guess that your computer is overheating which may be more extreme if there are unwanted processes occuring as Huntn has suggested.
 
B

Beta Particle

macrumors 6502a
Jun 25, 2012
527
5
It certainly sounds like your machine could be overheating when playing the games, causing it to throttle down the performance.

You may also want to check the performance settings for the game though. I forget if there is the option in the standard Nvidia control panel, but if you use Nvidia Inspector, you can change the Power management mode of a game from “Adaptive” to “Maximum Performance”. (note: I recommend doing this on a per-game basis, and not a global one)

I do seem to recall issues with Fallout where I’d spend a minute or two in the menus, which was enough for my GPU to drop into low power mode, and then when I exited the menu the framerate was very bad for a few seconds until it switched back into high performance mode. Switching from adaptive fixed this, but I’m using a gaming PC with a GTX 570, so it may not be the same issue for you.

It could simply be that you have the game settings too high, and the 9400M just can’t cope—it’s not a card suited to high-end gaming at all.
 
E

Eodyr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 2, 2012
2
0
Thanks for the responses; definitely some stuff to think on.

Beta Particle said:
It certainly sounds like your machine could be overheating when playing the games, causing it to throttle down the performance.

You may also want to check the performance settings for the game though. I forget if there is the option in the standard Nvidia control panel, but if you use Nvidia Inspector, you can change the Power management mode of a game from “Adaptive” to “Maximum Performance”. (note: I recommend doing this on a per-game basis, and not a global one)

I do seem to recall issues with Fallout where I’d spend a minute or two in the menus, which was enough for my GPU to drop into low power mode, and then when I exited the menu the framerate was very bad for a few seconds until it switched back into high performance mode. Switching from adaptive fixed this, but I’m using a gaming PC with a GTX 570, so it may not be the same issue for you.

It could simply be that you have the game settings too high, and the 9400M just can’t cope—it’s not a card suited to high-end gaming at all.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've noticed it's been heating up quite a lot in recent months, which I've just taken to be a sign of age - it's lasted more than three years, which isn't too bad I think. I was wondering about getting one of those fan things you can put underneath the laptop to provide additional cooling - do you know if those are any good?

I wondered if I might have the settings too high, but I was getting the same effect in medium settings, low settings, and absolutely-everything-turned-to-bottom settings, and New Vegas is hardly high-end, which is why I'm looking for other ideas.
 
C

colloc

macrumors member
Jul 27, 2012
87
0
Eodyr said:
Thanks for the responses; definitely some stuff to think on.



Yeah, I've noticed it's been heating up quite a lot in recent months, which I've just taken to be a sign of age - it's lasted more than three years, which isn't too bad I think. I was wondering about getting one of those fan things you can put underneath the laptop to provide additional cooling - do you know if those are any good?

I wondered if I might have the settings too high, but I was getting the same effect in medium settings, low settings, and absolutely-everything-turned-to-bottom settings, and New Vegas is hardly high-end, which is why I'm looking for other ideas.
Click to expand...

It's a good thing that your laptop throttled down. I recently used a Dell Vostro that instantly shuts off whenever over-heated, no throttling down, no nothing.

I saw Moshi selling one of those fans designed for MacBooks. Theirs are quite pricey though.
 
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