Tech help

[nadriel]

Okay, I've been poking at this on and off for a while now, and it's got to the point where I'm stumped.

Several of my games are unplayable (examples include Neverwinter Nights 2 and The Witcher (although I don't care so much about the latter, as it wasn't that good).

Whilst the sound is fine, the animation is jerky, and the response to mouse clicks slow. And cut-scenes are a nightmare.

As far as I'm able to tell, all drivers, particularly sound and graphics are up to date, and my DirectX is the latest version I can run on XP.

So, any suggestions/solutions?

Comments

Also...

[seidhepriest.livejournal.com]

Are there any driverless/"broken" device links in the Device Manager? Those will usually interfere with I/O, as they're being run in "compatibility" slow clocking mode.

Re: Also...

[lokean.livejournal.com]

Adding my little chunk o' experience, multiple core systems seem to have a problem with the task switcher under XP. Switching out of a task running in user space appears to occasionally result in problems with the task when switching back. I know for a fact that you tab in and out of programs willy-nilly, so this might be a possibility. Do they *always* run choppy from the very moment you load them, or only after you've switched out of them?

I have my suspicion that, since the alt-tab function is implemented by CSRSS, which also handles threading, the problem lies in CSRSS trying to reassign threads on a core (just my guess, not in any way diagnostic). If that were actually the case I'd expect setting the affinity of the game to a single core to remedy the situation.

Re: Also...

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Sadly, they always run choppily.