Right now i have an Acer Aspire 9410Z laptop running windows vista. I have recently installed a game called Civilization 4. It does not run that well, its pretty choppy during the gameplay. I ahve installed the latest drivers for my video. Is there anything i can do to fix this problem?
Most laptops aren't designed for gaming. Since you don't really have an option to replace the video card, your only option is to see if the game has an option for you to change the settings. If it does, you'll want to lower the resolution to something that your video card can handle. This should help increase your frame rates, but the quality won't look as nice. Also, make sure you don't have any programs running in the background while you're playing.
ive also found when choosing res in games on lower end cards to pick 16 bit color as opposed to 32 and it makes a big difference
For Vista, right click on your desktop and choose Personalize. From here you will select Display Settings. Then you will change the value under colors from 32 bit to 16 bit. This is also where you would change your Windows resolution settings. However, certain games may override these settings, so you should see if the game has a place to change the display resolution first.
what i meant is most games when choosing resolution are like 1024/768/16 1024/768/32... i found im able to play hl2 800/600/16 nicely when 800/600/32 was pretty jittery. on my ati 9250 (very poor card) just something to try.
