I've been trying to get the game FarCry working better on my laptop. When I'm playing it, on some levels it will freeze and be really slow for only a short time. Sometimes it may be only for a few seconds or sometimes more like 5 minutes. It only happens once in a while, and when the game is working good, everything runs smoothly on it. I am wondering if this has something to do with the video or what. My system is a 2.4 Ghz Celeron, 512 meg ram, 40 gig hard drive, Ati Radeon 64MB video. Thanks for any help.

Also, I want to add that I have set all the game video settings to the lowest quality it can go, and I still get the same problem.

Make sure to shut down all unnecessary programs running in the background, especially an antivirus program.

If that does not help, then do a clean boot before playing.
If a clean boot helps, then you can find the cause by process of elimination.

If no luck with a clean boot, then try different video card drivers.

If no help, then reduce the video card's acceleration.

If nothing works, then heat build up may be the cause, and you may either have to live with it, or try a different video card.

ok. I'll try those suggestions. Thanks

Hey ski! Sorry, I went out of town...it was High School baseball, nothing major! :)

I think we're discussing a laptop...would it be easy to try a different video card? I don't know much about upgrading laptops...

Yes it's a laptop, no it wouldn't be easy to swap video cards. Some laptops take 2 hours just to disassemble enough to see the video card, and few are replaceable. A couple of Dells I've seen had removable cards, most don't.

The game's video settings are already bottomed out, if lowering the video acceleration is no help you're probably out of luck. Ski's suggestion to shut down as many running programs as possible may help a lot.

Un-frickin-believable!! :eek: I can't believe you even got FarCry to run on a laptop, much less play it!

Heat build-up is certainly a concern, but if the game runs fine mostly but only freezes occasionally, then heat may not be the killer here. I would look into network activity and system scheduled tasks as the downers here, and any other background app that runs intermitently (like AV).

Also, it could be that it freezes when the game's activity is at its height. For instance, maybe it runs fine when you're looking at a tree, but freezes when you turn to look down a mountainside through your sniper scope. :D Sudden increased demands may be chewing through your RAM like a beaver through that tree. :p

Yes, a laptop is a computer if you didn't know. lol. It can run programs just as good as a desktop. The only thing is more heat, and things like that. Anyways, I'll try those suggestions when I get a chance, like shutting down background programs.

I was merely referring to the fact that laptops are proprietary by necessity, and I've seen many laptops that can't run certain games despite being more than powerful enough for the job. Laptops are just generally flaky for gaming, but I guess they're getting better everyday.