Slow performance in games

[gtraymond]

Hi everyone newbie to your forums . Anyway i have a problem and i think it might be related to windows 7 the OS im using. Back when i use to run vista i was able to play most of my games quite smoothly, but since i upgraded to win 7 i notice a performance drop in fps, i used to get about 25-30 fps but now i can hardly get above 20.

My computer is a laptop with a intel intergrated card (i know not the best for gaming)

Dell inspiron 1440
Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit
2048MB
Pentium (R) Dual Core CPU
Mobile Intel 4 series express chipset family

 

[Devux]

Welcome to the forums. Firstly you're correct, your rig isn't really meant for gaming, your GPU is more than likely borrowing some of your RAM for gaming. You can add more RAM and see if that helps (It probably wouldn't hurt). In addition you can see if you have any processes running in the background that are eating up your resources whilst you are gaming. Open up "Run" and type "services.msc" no quotes. In there you can tinker with the services and see if there is anything running that you don't need to be, try to free up some resources for more gaming power.

 

[gtraymond]

Well im no computer genius ( although im studying to become one ) i dont know what processes are essential to my system and which are unnecessary

 

[Devux]

Windows 7 | Black Viper's Website | www.blackviper.com
This guy put together a good guide to make windows 7 zip along. If you read through the guide the last section is service configurations, in there it will tell you "safe" modifications that you can make to your system, plus good explanations of what each service does. Enjoy

 

[TS631]

Just a thought, but when you upgraded your OS did you get the latest driver for your Onboard graphics?

 

[gtraymond]

I dont know i think so, i updated through windows update

 

[TS631]

I dont know i think so, i updated through windows update

Windows update doesn't always install the proper drivers i have found or sometimes they can use generic ones. In your case they probably didn't mess up but if you wanted to be sure you can go to the manufacturer website, download the latest driver for your card. Boot in safe mode and uninstall the current driver and replace with the new one. You probably don't need to use safe mode but I tend to overdo it

 

[gtraymond]

So I just need to uninstall the driver and reinstall it from the manufacture site? Ok are there any other drivers I should look for other than video?

 

[LiquidSnak]

Dell might have W7 drivers available for their hardware on your machine, browse through and take a look

 

[TS631]

So I just need to uninstall the driver and reinstall it from the manufacture site? Ok are there any other drivers I should look for other than video?

What i typically do is for example if the laptop was an HP. I would go to the HP website, and input the model number and browse through the drivers and download them and go through and install most of them, I think this forum had a nice little guide for this something like "driver install order". Your manufacturer will most likely have your driver for your graphics. You can also check in your device manager right now and see if you are missing anything important. it will show up as an unknown device. I would be surprised if any of these drivers don't work with Win 7, but if not you can check the aforementioned place if it comes to that.