Games are really sluggish

[ironman1478]

and i have no idea how to fix it so i was wondering if you guys could help me out.

i have the aluminum macbook 2.4gHz with 2 gigs of ram and i am running 32bit xp. for some reason whenever i play a game i have to turn down all my settings. i mainly play games like tf2, l4d, css and i recently got dawn of war 2. i ran that program "can you run it" and i apparently exceed the recommended system requirements for dawn of war 2, but i have to put down all my settings to get a semi-decent frame rate. i was wondering if there is something wrong with my hardware or if the drivers are just out of date. i downloaded the 179.48 driver from nvidia but it did absolutely nothing so i was wondering if you guys could help.

thanx in advance

 

[Consultant]

- Get more RAM. Yes XP 32bit can only use 3gb of ram but it helps.
- Babysit windows. Windows require constant babysitting to make it run ok, for example
you need to defrag windows frequently, you also need to defrag tf2 within steam.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

- Get more RAM. Yes XP 32bit can only use 3gb of ram but it helps.
- Babysit windows. Windows require constant babysitting to make it run ok, for example
you need to defrag windows frequently, you also need to defrag tf2 within steam.

More RAM won't help here. I'd be surprised if you saw even a 5% increase in FPS. The same goes for defragging. Looking at the minimum specs, DoW2 wants an X1600 and I'm pretty sure the GeForce 9400M is only slightly better than the X1600. That's why you can only play at lower settings. Left 4 Dead would probably struggle too seeing as it's a new game (albeit based on a pretty old engine).

 

[aznguyen316]

More RAM won't help here. I'd be surprised if you saw even a 5% increase in FPS. The same goes for defragging. Looking at the minimum specs, DoW2 wants an X1600 and I'm pretty sure the GeForce 9400M is only slightly better than the X1600. That's why you can only play at lower settings. Left 4 Dead would probably struggle too seeing as it's a new game (albeit based on a pretty old engine).

After several different OS installs, I found TinyXP to be best for gaming even w/ my 4GB ram. I tried a TinyVista 64 bit too. L4D on the TinyXP 32bit runs at a solid avg 35+ frames native resolution, shaders/shadows I believe low but all else on high. Looks and plays great.