Hey all! Just have some information to share, hopefully this wont be a double post.

I've seen alot of threads with people having problem with heavy fps lags/drops. My friends have had the same problem, and one of them have solved the problem.
He had an extra external soundcard lying around from his old computer that he installed, he also updated to the latest drivers and the problem was gone.

So for you people out there who still have some hope up for this game and are waiting for the possible last patch for PC.
If your computer uses a internal soundcard and have a external soundcard, or planning to buy one really soon, time to take some action:

1. For XP & XP-64 Users: In windows, uninstall the drivers for your internal soundcard (You can do this in the Device Manager, which can be found by right clicking on "My Computer -> Properties -> Choose Hardware tab -> Device Manager -> Scroll down to Sound, video and game controllers", you should see your soundcard listed there.)

For Vista & Vista-64 Users: In windows, uninstall the drivers for your internal soundcard (You can do this in the Dvice Manager, which can be found by going to Start Menu -> Start -> Right click on My Computer -> Properties -> In your upper left corner "Device Manager" Scroll down to Sound, video and game controllers", you should see your soundcard listed there.)

2. Restart your computer, and enter BIOS, look for a tab that list "On Board Devices", you should se your Soundcard listed there, go down to it and disable it -> Save and Exit.
(Warning! If your not an advanced user you should absolutely NOT do this step without reading up on your BIOS first or having a friend/family member who have the knowledge about this step wih you. Doing something wrong, like a bad change or choice in BIOS can make your computer stop working, with this said, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!).

3. Shutdown your computer (quite obviouse, aint all hotswap PnP), Install the external soundcard.

4. Make sure you get the absolute latest soundcard drivers and install them, restart you computer.

5. Enjoy!

So what about my other friend? well he didnt have an extra soundcard lying around, so the best he could do was to update his drivers and doing another fast temporarely fix, not sure if it works 100% though for all computers.

After updating to your latest drivers (dont forget to restart the computer), go to the startmenu -> run, and type in dxdiag, if your using an 64-bit operation system make sure to press the "Run 64-bit Dxdiag" as the next step, then go to the sound tab, and lower the Hardware sound accelerator to standard, or even further back "lowering" the accelerator, if needed, you need to test the performence your self, bit for bit and if you cant see or feel any difference in doing this, try restarting your computer after changing the settings.

Conclusion:

In some cases this helps out bad fps in games, due that the soundcard is the bad/weaker component, it can't process all the sound normaly or correctly, somewhat making the rest of the computer compensate for it, for example making the processor/memory work alot more then needed, lowering the overall performance.
This is often solved by getting the newest drivers, but sometimes not.

Well have fun and keep on gaming!
Best Regards
Wolf

it clearly doesn't work for me =/
...got geforce 8200 on 2 gb ram vista..the gameplay looks like some slow motion action movie for me..although the game is lagless from the moment it shows up ubisoft at the beginnning till the loading screen just before the gameplay. After it loads, everything so damn slow...makes me wan dump my laptop. tried defrag, system recover, graphic update, lowest setting no change in performance. This game fails for PC users with average PC like mine =/

quote:

Originally posted by sandkiller:
it clearly doesn't work for me =/
...got geforce 8200 on 2 gb ram vista..the gameplay looks like some slow motion action movie for me..although the game is lagless from the moment it shows up ubisoft at the beginnning till the loading screen just before the gameplay. After it loads, everything so damn slow...makes me wan dump my laptop. tried defrag, system recover, graphic update, lowest setting no change in performance. This game fails for PC users with average PC like mine =/

Sorry for the late response, been quite busy lately.

Well, the problem is your laptop. You should be aware that Laptops werent meant for gaming to begin with, aswell as to get a decent gaminglaptop today, you need to pay up alot, even more then a normal stationary computer.

Also, your using Vista on 2Gb Ram... This says alot of your lack of performance, your OS is eating up your RAM before you even enter any game. Not sure if the servicepacks or windows updates have made any difference on this point.

If your using Vista you should have atleast 4Gb ram, since the OS itself takes 2Gb, or atleast it did before any servicepack or update was made.

You'r using the GeForce 8200, which is a intergrated GPU (Graphic card), It has about 256Mb ram of DDR, I'm honestly surprised that it has the Pixelshader that is required to play the game... It's a 1 and a half year old motherboard? Correct me if i'm wrong.

It would be nice if you could give us the full specification of your laptop to see if there is anything else that might take away the performance.
As it looks like now, you might want to add 2Gb more memory, and get a external GPU instead of using the internal inbuilt one.

That should make your laptop abit faster, but again, Laptops werent made for gaming to begin with. You might want to save up for a desktop instead

Best Regards
Wolf