You HAVE to use a quad core in order to make it smooth, unless maybe you overclock your cpu to outrageous levels. Ran like ass with my 5870 + E6600 @ 3.6ghz. Even at stock clocks with my i7 920 it is smooth.

BeavermanA

Sums up my experience with the game too.

Okay heres some details I have a nivdia 9600 grapic card on a desktop computer and I run half life at mostly high settings without to much slow downs but when I play the game and enter a new area it loads for 50 secs or more so my question is why does it take so long ?

Darksonic666

Slow hard drive, insufficient free ram and/or possibly weak processor.

You've tried all the video card outputs too? Definitely sounds like the problem is there. Either way, if you verified it happens on other monitors and/or cables, you probably need to return that card.

I encountered a similar problem with a card many years ago where there was a problem with the card's outputs. Everything had a red tint AND sometimes de-stabilized the whole system too.

BTW, mixing and matching AMD and Nvidia boards/video cards if perfectly safe in single-card scenarios.

Although I am having tons of trouble with software compatibility.

organic_machine

That definitely does not make it sound like 64-bit is the way to go. :p

You are using the Intel Graphics utility to adjust the display resolution, right? Might help to output to the TV only (no laptop display).

Either should be fine for Batman. GTA IV will play on those PCs too, but requires a lot more CPU power than either of those offer to run smooth (think quad-core). In the end, Laptop 1 is probably the all-around better coice.

The processor speed bump isn't going to amount to much. Keep the proc you have or go quad-core.

Once you're out of the sewer, you are seeing more or less much of what Oblivion has to offer. If you haven't enjoyed it after 6 hours, chances are you probably won't. It happens - even the most highly rated games out there aren't going to please everyone.

Go to Your Games page on Steam. Bottom left says "Add non-Steam game..." Try to add it and see what happens. It might give you limited Steam Functions. I'm not sure though.

hoola

That just creates a glorified shortcut as alluded to earlier. Can't manage the retail version through steam.

I'm considering buying a SSD and throwing Windows XP on it, but I've read user reviews online that indicate SSD technology can be finicky (especially with XP), requiring some hacks and obscure tweaking to get the drive working properly. As well, I've read that SSD performance degrades over time unless you spin around three times and say magic words or something.

Thanks.

attirex

At the business I for, I have have upgraded some smaller laptops with underpowered HDDs to SSD under XP. Its a night and day difference that I wish I could get for my own system.

On the desktop side, be aware that most SATA motherboards have two main operation modes - IDE and AHCI. As long as its in IDE mode, XP shouldn't pose a problem (otherwise you need driver floppies and all that junk.)