video and games not playing well(out of sync+laggy)

dottsie · Mar 18, 2014

Hi all!
My girlfriends laptop hasn't been running video's smoothly for a while now and when she tries to play games; they seem to lag a bit. Just jumpy and out of sync. I checked drivers, flash player, I installed k-lite codec and changed video settings including resolution to see if it had any effect but sadly none so I reinstalled windows to give the machine a fresh lease of health but it didn't help.
I've noticed the laptop get's pretty hot and have decided that's likely the fault but I just want to see if there's anything else I can try before changing hardware. Any thoughts?
Thanks very much, David.

Intel Celeron · Mar 22, 2014

can you elaborate like what games she play, what videos she watch, the complete specs of the laptop and how old it is? that would help alot.

dottsie · Mar 23, 2014

It's an acer aspire, can't remember the exact model number at the moment. It's got 3gb ram, radeon 3200m and not too sure of the rest of the spec. She's trying to play south park the stick of truth at the moment but it's all video's(streaming online to mp4, mkv,avi etc) and games that are laggy and out of sync. She was playing c+c red alert 2 and that was laggy too. The laptop is probably around 4 years old I think. Any idea@s. Thanks and sorry about the delay replying.

Intel Celeron · Mar 25, 2014

did it suddenly become laggy? or was it laggy before?

dottsie · Mar 25, 2014

It went laggy pretty suddenly. It happened a while ago but I'm only getting around to fixing it now. I opened it up to see if the fan was burnt out but it seems to be in decent enough shape.

Intel Celeron · Mar 25, 2014

could you post the complete specs so we could narrow down the problems?

dottsie · Mar 25, 2014

It's an acer aspire 5536
resolution 1366 x 768 ( HD )
667 MHz- 3 GB Ram
320gb HDD
Graphics Processor ATI Radeon HD 3200 - 256 MB
CPU AMD Athlon X2 QL-64 / 2.1 GHz

Thank you!

Intel Celeron · Mar 28, 2014

well, according to research and my friend's info... The aspire has two video cards. A built in integrated graphics which is much weaker but consumes less energy and a decent one which is much more powerful but is power hungry. The display automatically switches to integrated when fed with low power. So to figure out if this is not the problem does this happen when on battery only or when plugged in too? But then again I'm not sure if this specific aspire also has 2 video cards. So give it a try.

dottsie · Mar 28, 2014

It happens all of the time plugged in or on battery. Doesn't seem to make a difference.

Intel Celeron · Mar 28, 2014

well... if you bought it right from the manufacturer.. I think it is not under warranty. So if you could check the air inlets and possibly open the case, Clean up the inside and check the CPU heatsink if dust has collected and check all fans if they work. and can you check the CPU core temp. in the bios or find a program to do it idle and under load.

dottsie · Mar 28, 2014

I probably should have said I've done all that, opened it up, cleaned, checked components and temps. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. The only thing I can think of is there was ubuntu installed on the computer and that's when the trouble began. I tried fixing it but couldn't seem to so I installed win 7. Think it could possibly have something to do with any drivers or anything ubuntu might have changed when it was installed?

Intel Celeron · Mar 28, 2014

what did you try to fix exactly? the same problem? if so... did it start lagging the first time it booted to windows 7 or was it running fine with win7 until now.

dottsie · Mar 28, 2014

Yeah I tried to fix the same problem. Appearantly it only started to go laggy after ubuntu was installed so I couldn't fix it in Ubuntu; thinking it was a driver or something I reverted to Windows hoping that would fix the problem but no luck. It's been like this since going to win 7 too.

Intel Celeron · Mar 28, 2014

how long have you had ubuntu?

dottsie · Mar 28, 2014

She's had it installed about a year and a half-two years I think.
Thanks for helping

Intel Celeron · Mar 28, 2014

no prob. So since you have windows now... try booting into safe mode. run some games (if your safe mode loads up the ati catalyst drivers) and see if it runs fine. If not it's probably a video card driver error.

dottsie · Mar 30, 2014

Will do later tonight when I finish work. Thanks!

video and games not playing well(out of sync+laggy)

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