Slow Mass Effect Performance

[agentbilly]

I've got an Asus F8SN-B1
Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.1Ghz
Nvidia 9500m GS
4 gb RAM (upgraded myself)
Vista Business x64 (fully updated)
Nvidia driver 167.64

With this setup I thought I would get decent performance out of Mass Effect, but that has not been the case. Running at 1360x768 with every thing on low, I only manage 15-20 fps, in the citadel. This is with no action going on, just walking around. I've checked my gpu clocks with Rivatuner, and they seem fine. I also checked the cpu with cpu-z and it was running at full speed. I think it might be a driver problem, but I have no idea which one I would try. The one I'm using is the one that came with the laptop.

 

[drevl182]

Well, by the numbers you posted you should be able to play with little to no problem. I was able to play on my secondary PC that has a E2180, 2gig, and a HD3850. If you upgraded from XP to Vista without a format, that could likely be your problem and you just need to reformat and reinstall Vista. You can run into some major problem performance wise by upgrading. If your notebook manufacturer has updated drivers they willl have them on their website. Just go to the site and under support they usually have a link to a download section. There, they usually ask for either the model# or the serial#, this helps ensure that you download the correct drivers. If that isn't the case, I would try finding updated drivers on the Nvidia website. If that also fails, you can try www.laptopvideo2go.com. And worst case, the game doesnt do well in a 64bit OS, I've had it happen a few time to me with certain games. Ran fine in 32bit Vista U (4Gig RAM), but ran like crud in 64bit Vista U (8Gig RAM). And this was the same system, just with 4 extra Gigs of ram. So I hope this helps a bit.

 

[agentbilly]

I did a complete reformat when I installed Vista, so that can't be it.
The problem with laptop graphics is that Nvidia doesn't support them officially, and Asus only supports 32-bit on this model. I'll try laptopvideo2go, but I'm not sure which driver version would be best. I guess I'll just try the newest ones.