Easy performance boost
 

So I was helping my wife install POTC on her laptop so we can play together.

(Sail the high seas! Blow stuff up! Fun for the whole family!)

It was having a really hard time running the game. Even with all the options set to "low", she was still getting lots of lag anytime she moved.

I noticed that the hard drive was thrashing around whenever it started lagging, so I figured a memory upgrade would help (she had 512M).

One trip to Fry's later, and she now has 1.2G of memory, should be plenty. But the lag was still there.

Then I saw the "memory conservation" option was set to "Aggressive". I changed that to "Default", and suddenly the lag was much much better.

It's not completely gone, but now it only does it when first entering a town. Now she can fire cannons and have them actually hit what she's aiming at.

I did the same thing on my kid's machine, which still only has 512M, and the lag went away there, too.

A faster CPU and a better graphics card would help more, but this helped a LOT, so I thought I'd pass it on.

Gonna give that a try right now.....I'll let you know how it works for me. The thrashing is driving me nuts!

Edit: Well, the lag is much better, but the thrashing is just as bad. sigh, this problem is making me bonkers. Any computer gurus out there with a thrashing fix?

You can always buy a new Hard Drive somewhere, for example BestBuy or CircuitCity. That usually helps, take in your laptop or have their guys come to your house and set it up for you.

I've got an
Intell Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz 2.99 GHz
1791 MB RAM
32 bit operating system
ATI Radeon Express 1100 Graphics card

OS is Vista Home Basic


I'm sorry if this is way basic, but I'm an old fogey, and this computer stuff is too much for my old brain sometimes.

I"m thinking going to 64 Bit would help, esp with games...am I right here?


Thank you from and old fart

Nah, don't call yourself that.
Anywho, the graphics card should be fine. Vista may be a slight problem but dont go out of your way to find some XP CD's and transfer your computer to that. I have an AMD Turion 64x2, perfect for gaming. Intel is fine anyway though. Remember, every online game has lag. There is no way to get rid of that small or maybe huge bit of lag. Upgrading to 64 Bit would not hurt, depending on how much it will cost. Remember, look into the prices of drives. If you are "old" and you have some money? Buy a good hard drive and upgrade to 64 Bit.

Thanks Caleb, but I'd rather be an old fart than the alternative, LOl

It's not so much the lag as it's the thrashing....maybe I should start a new thread... LOL as it seems I've hijacked this one :)

Posted that a little bit ago - it really works, doesn't it!

Edit: Before finding this trick, my computer starting making a buzzing sound. Turns out, the fan broke, overheating the computer and causing the entire thing to suddenly shut down. THAT is what POTCO does to computers. POTCO staff is going to get a bunch of lawsuits really fast.

Lawsuits? Lmbo. They wont lose, they have the best lawyers EVER.
Think Disney will lose a lawsuit, it's a persons stupid computer. They made they're own foolish choice to play, so they ruined their computer. Hahaha, people should read the system requirements instead of just "Oh I'll play". Rofl.

Not meant to be offensive.

I highly doubt that POTCO caused your fan to break, it was probably just a coincidence.

How did POTCO cause your fan to break?

So does that mean you're not playing anymore because it causes computers to break?

I found that on my laptop changing from full screen to window mode helps ALOT. Try using a "full screen window".

Another note: My desktop system is brand new with a high end graphics card. After about an hour or so the lag starts building up. I went on a marathon piliging trip of about 5 hours and everything slowed to basically unplayable. A quick restart of the game fixed everything. I'm guessing a memory leak in the game? Anyone else have this problem?

FYI it is not possible for a game to break your fan. Disney is gonna sue you for slander and put your pirate in jail. LOL

Setting the memory conservation to "Aggressive" saves all of the memory of the game, which means all the data, including where the NPCs, shops and all that good stuff are, is saved. The "Default" setting saves the most important data from the game, but then takes longer to load the other objects from the loading screen which comes before entering a place. The least important stuff is later deleted when set to "Default".

An update if anyone cares :)

I Stoped the (what I thought was) thrashing! Thanks to the poster who said their fan broke....I opened the tower and watched the fans as the computer started going haywire, and realized there was an inch of crud all over the fan and the little grid thingy behind it (how's that for technical?!?! :) ) Took the fan out, cleaned the heck out of everything, and now the computer is quiet as a mouse.

SO, sorry you broke your fan, but thanks for the idea to check mine!