[PC] Call of Duty: Black Ops performance question

[SideStepSociety]

A buddy of mine just purchased a new Acer laptop... I know, I wasn't all that impressed either. Anyway, it's not anything fancy, just something for the average user I'd say.

He hadn't initially intended to use it for gaming, but then he started getting into Black Ops. So he bought it for his computer, and it runs... well, it runs better than I thought it would.

His specs are as follows:

Pentium P6100 @ 2.0GHz
3GB RAM
Intel integrated whatever HD graphics.

I'm fairly certain the "lag" is due to the integrated graphics, but at the same time, it's got me kind of confused.

Regardless of what settings, low or high, it seems to be more or less the same. I'd say it's just as playable in high as it is in low. It's very quick when in buildings, but when out in the open, it starts to drop frames, again, not to the point of absurdity, but enough for you to notice, but not enough to really make you want to quit playing. He keeps using it as an excuse for why he sucks.

Anyways, I was wondering if more RAM would help the situation at all?

As I recall, CoD requires 2GB of RAM at the minimum. Is 3GB just not making the cut because of it being shared with the graphics + all the necessary Windows services running?

Thanks in advance,

-Chris.

 

[Killery96]

A buddy of mine just purchased a new Acer laptop... I know, I wasn't all that impressed either. Anyway, it's not anything fancy, just something for the average user I'd say.

He hadn't initially intended to use it for gaming, but then he started getting into Black Ops. So he bought it for his computer, and it runs... well, it runs better than I thought it would.

His specs are as follows:



I'm fairly certain the "lag" is due to the integrated graphics, but at the same time, it's got me kind of confused.

Regardless of what settings, low or high, it seems to be more or less the same. I'd say it's just as playable in high as it is in low. It's very quick when in buildings, but when out in the open, it starts to drop frames, again, not to the point of absurdity, but enough for you to notice, but not enough to really make you want to quit playing. He keeps using it as an excuse for why he sucks.

Anyways, I was wondering if more RAM would help the situation at all?

As I recall, CoD requires 2GB of RAM at the minimum. Is 3GB just not making the cut because of it being shared with the graphics + all the necessary Windows services running?

Thanks in advance,

-Chris.

If the lag is due to the integrated Graphics processor, I don't think it would be a problem with RAM, unless he's got tons of other apps open. I'm not a windows user but people use the macbook air (2g RAM) for CoD4 max settings, and the biggest affect on graphics and gaming performance, as you probably know, is the video card, or GPU. Integrated Graphics plus a Pentium 2.0 probably isn't a gaming layout. I understand your thinking with the main RAM being shared with the Integrated Graphics however I think, since people get away with using 1G for basic computer uses, and 2G for CoD4 gaming, that 3G should be adequate for the situation. Personally, I think that if he wanted to game, he should have picked a computer with better hardware, and if that was not his initial purpose, tough luck.

 

[SideStepSociety]

Thanks for the reply! And that's what I was thinking. It's not like he can't play it or it's completely painful to play either. Even after playing it for a bit, he said he doesn't really notice it too much. I guess when you go from from playing it on a PS3 to this, you notice it more at first.

We were mostly just curious if adding RAM would help the situation at least a little bit. RAM is dirt cheap these days so it's not really a big loss regardless. I told him I was fairly certain it was the GPU, but I'd find some more information to see if RAM could help.

I mostly just found it odd that the computer came with 3GB RAM instead of 4. Don't see that all that often. At least, I haven't.

 

[CylonGlitch]

It's really just the graphics card. What happens, when inside, the engine is designed to remove everything that you cannot see. Thus anything outside of the walls gets removed. But when outside, it has to render just about everything, and thus the outdoor scenes are much more complex. This is where going from High to Low may make a difference because often engines will change the clipping distance; when on high, it is further away, meaning the GPU has to render more information then when set to low.

RAM will NOT help this situation; and if he is still on XP or Win7 32bit, the system won't support more then 3GB anyway. If he has Win7/Vista 64 then it can use more; and seriously, 4GB is about the minimum you should have (yes 2 is normally good enough, but 4 is the sweet spot right now).

 

[SideStepSociety]

Awesome post, thanks for the info!

And he is on 64 bit, which again, seems strange to not have at least 4GB.

I'm sure he'll just learn to live with it anyways, I'll tell him to save his money, at least for now.

Thanks again guys!