Whats my bottleneck?

[Tommie8811]

Hello,
I'm playing Battlefield Bad Company 2. I have a laptop and a PC with similar specs, and while the PC will outperform the laptop (60-70 fps) when running in open areas with nothing happening, in high-action areas with a lot of people, the PC will bog down to 12 fps, while the laptop will stay at about 25. I've been told by NUMEROUS people that laptop video cards are MUCH inferior to PC cards, but my laptop is outperforming the PC. Here are the specs:

Laptop:
Intel centrino dual-core @ 2.4ghz (64bit)
generic 4GB DDR2 533 mhz RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD4670 GPU (1GB DDR3 - 320 shader cores)

PC:
AMD Athlon 64x2 @ 2.7ghz
2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 @ 800mhz RAM
Galaxy Geforce 240GT (1 gig DDR3 - 96 shader cores)

on 3dmark Vantage, I got P4800 on the PC, but only P2600 on the Laptop, yet the Laptop maintains 25-35 FPS in games and feels smoother, while the PC will go from 65 to 12 FPS and be all-around glitchy and choppy, providing a much LESS smooth experience.

in reading forums, the overwhelming consensus is that the Radeon GPU > Nvidia 240 gt, however that's desktop to desktop comparison, not desktop to Laptop...

My first thought is that I probably need more RAM in the PC, but will that increase my FPS in-game by 20-30 fps?

Why did 3dmark score my Laptop half as good as the PC when it performs better?

Granted, this is Battlefield Bad Company 2 on LOW settings (resolution doesn't change FPS, whether it's 1024x768 [lowest] or 1680x1050 [native monitor res])

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your help!!!!!

 

[Tommie8811]

well I just slapped in an Athlon 64x2 6000 (3 ghz), 2 gigs of DDR533 RAM (yes I know it'll lower my memory performance).

I ran some monitors while playing BC2 and noticed that while playing, my GPU was running at 50-60%, while BOTH cores of my CPU were running at 90-100% the entire time. I take it the CPU is my bottleneck. It's hard to believe because dual core 64 bit @ 3ghz isn't too shabby...

Any thoughts?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

amd athlon 64 series is old and not that fast or efficient per clock. a core 2 duo at 2.4 ghz is faster than the athlon 64 6000.

 

[Tamz_msc]

That old Athon 64 x2 is the bottleneck, as is expected of them.

 

[HostileDonut]

Yes, put in a new CPU.

 

[Tommie8811]

Perfect, thanks guys.

Just sold my old AGP Geforce 6800GT on ebay for $25 (weird, huh) so that's going towards a quad core setup

Thanks again!