Laggy McLagerton from Lagville

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Trench
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Laggy McLagerton from Lagville

Post by Trench »

Ashamed to say I finally figured out why my Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 installations all seemed so laggy for Battlefield 1942. Meaning it would play fine, except as soon as you got into a crowd or had explosions going on around you, it started lagging real bad until the action subsided.

For me it was simply the CPU speed management, and the fact that apparently my Windows 7 installation either manages it better (or doesn't manage it at all, and simply runs full speed all the time). But when installing Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 the CPU speed gets reduced. On Windows 8.1 it seems to get reduced and just stays reduced; on Windows 10 it managed it better but was still slowing down the CPU at inopportune times.

Didn't figure it out on my game machine; I had actually upgraded my laptop and realized it was running really slow too. Finally threw the Intel Power Gadget on there and saw my 3.0Ghz CPUs were running at 1.6 Ghz most of the time on Windows 8.1, and bouncing between 1.6 and 3.0 (as Intel intended) on Windows 10. After disabling Intel SpeedStep in the BIOS on the laptop, everything ran with the expected performance consistently.

My game machine was the same deal, but not quite as obvious. The Intel gadget didn't work, but CPU-Z worked in its place and identified my 3.0 Ghz Xeons were running at 1.8 Ghz. This was on an older HP machine with older Xeons and BIOS, and the setting ended up being "Power management" from "Enhanced" to "Normal" is what disabled the slowing down of the CPU.

Note I did try first to manage this in the Windows power control panel's advanced section, where you're able to specify what percentage Windows is allowed to ask the processor to slow down to manage power savings. But changing that setting didn't seem to have a positive effect for me; only disabling it in the BIOS.

So rather straight forward, and "duh, I should have thought of that before now." But for what it's worth. Ended up doing a clean install on Windows 8.1 and played tonight without any of the lag Windows 8.1 had been giving me when I tried previously.

-Trench
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pistol
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Re: Laggy McLagerton from Lagville

Post by pistol »

I just upgraded to 7 from vista 10 months ago. 7 is great. It's like my 2007 CPU has a new life.
I found 8 to be absolutely maddening. One of those "what were they thinking?". never going beyond 7. never.
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