Horrible lag issues

[Liosa]

I just put together a new computer for myself which (I'm pretty sure) exceeds the requirements for Tomb Raider, but even on lowest settings, it lags pretty horribly. I updated all of my drivers a few days ago, and I've tried running the game as admin, but that doesn't seem to have helped.

Specs:
AMD 3.5 GHz 8 core processor
Asus Radeon HD video card 2GB dedicated
16GB DDR3 memory

[Pizza cat]

You have the TRESSFX quality for the hair of Lara activated? Some people have troubles with this.

[CosplayerOne]

That's kinda crazy....I don't have too bad of lag on my laptop playing the game. My laptop runs tomb raider pretty smoothly and my processor isn't even 2.0 Ghz and my ram is only 8gb... However I am running windows 8 and Win-8 might be a lighter memory draining Operating System. For instance, Win-Vista Required 4 gb of ram because it used a lot of that memory just to run windows... [The RPM of your hard drive could be the key factor of your problem since the game is run from your hard drive instead of a CD/DVD].

[Liosa]

Hmm, I'll check the rpm of my hard drive then I guess? And I'm running Windows 7.

Also no, I don't have the tressfx activated, all of my graphics are at the lowest settings.

[KE$HA]

yeah sometimes it lags so badly it crashes my bootcamped 2012 macbook pro retina

[Liosa]

Yeah, it's 7200 RPM...

I am so lost on what to do...

[GoBucks76]

Weird - I'm running it on a 2-year old desktop that I built myself and I'm not having any of the issues you're describing (AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, AMD Radeon HD 6870 graphics with 1GB of ram, 16GB of installed DDR3 ram, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, AMD Catalyst 13.9 graphics drivers). I don't run TressFX (not really worth it in my opinion) but I'm running the game with the ULTRA settings (1920x1080) and it doesn't lag a bit...

Have you updated the video drivers for your system and installed ALL of the updates to Windows? Are there any programs you're running in the background that might be interfering with the game? What anti-virus or anti-malware programs are you using? Are you running any keyboard mapping software or graphics utilities like FRAPS? When you run "dxdiag" from the start menu does it show DirectX 11?

You mentioned having a 2GB AMD HD video card - what model is it?

I don't think your harddisk is causing the issue since there's nothing special about the western digital drive in my box. But you might want to make sure you don't have a lot of crap in your system (run CCleaner to clean your system for temp files or issues with your registry...)

[Liosa]

I just finished building my computer about a week ago.

Um, to the best of my knowledge, my video drivers are up to date, and all of the automatic updates windows does are installed.

I don't have any background programs running apart from the steam launcher.

I don't currently have any anti-virus or anti-malware programs.

I don't have any keyboard mapping software or anything like FRAPS.

Yes dxdiag shows DirectX11.

Also I've checked the two other games I have downloaded from steam on this computer, and they both lag a little, but not nearly as much as Tomb Raider.

[GoBucks76]

OK - first of all, you really DO need to be running some kind of anti-virus program on your PC if it ever connects to the internet. Microsoft Security Essentials is a bare-bones program that provides a minimum level of protection and I would advise using that or a free anti-virus program like one from Avast or AVG - go to www.filehippo.com and download a copy of one of these immediately, install it, update it and then run a quick scan of your system. I use Avast! and have had no issue for years...

Consider downloading the free version of SuperAntiSpyware or Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (both of these can also be found at FileHippo) and scan your system for malware. You can install both of these as neither will be memory resident after installation (use them as a "on-demand" scanner - once a month is plenty for most users...)

You still haven't told us what kind of AMD video card you're using or what driver you're using - unless you're using Catalyst 13.4 or 13.9 you don't have the most recent drivers for your card (if you're using the drivers that came with Windows 7, then you have an OLD driver...) When you run dxdiag it should tell you what drivers you have on the 2nd tab...

[CosplayerOne]

Afterall that's been said. I think you do need to install a anitvirus software and check through the programs that are running on your computer by going to the control panel. Any programs you don't recognize, look them up on google and see if they need to be uninstalled or not. Cause unneeded software programs running in the background will give you problems.

[Liosa]

My video card is an AMD Radeon HD 6450,

and my driver from dxdiag says this:

Main driver: aticfx64.dll
version: 13.152.0.0
date: 8/30/2013 6:13:56 PM
WHQL Logo's: Yes
DDI Version: 11
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1

[Bill]

HD 6450 is a $40 gpu meant for HD video and the like. It will struggle with any modern polygonal game, and Tomb Raider is very graphics intensive. I'd be looking at a major upgrade if planning to game.

[Bill]

The AMD Radeon HD7950 can be had for $200 or so right now, as the new R series has just been released. It'll overclock to 7970 speeds and is a great buy - if you have a sufficient power supply.

[GoBucks76]

Ouch - the Radeon HD 6450 is a pretty low end video card. It's the bottom of the HD 6XXX series and was really designed for moderate gaming (what do you expect from a $60 video card?) - it would probably be OK for something like Left 4 Dead 2, but the newer games would really struggle with that card. Most of the reviews I've seen have indicated the video card is really designed for a home theater PC - not for serious gaming...

You might see if you can run the game at a lower resolution (you didn't mention what resolution that you were trying to play the game with). I would also suggest going to the following site and running their "Can You Run It" test for Tomb Raider - it's likely that your system doesn't meet the minimum requirement for the game.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri

Good luck...

[|LW| JB]

Why would you build a PC with a 3.5 GHz 8-core CPU and 16GB RAM, and then put such a low end GPU in that system?
Thats like buying a Porsche and switching the engine with a VW, Volvo or something like that.

[GoBucks76]

Give Lindsay a break about that - I'm sure it wasn't intentional - it was probably a piece of bad advice from the salesman. If you don't know the difference you might think a 2 GB DirectX 11-compatible video card would be up to running DirectX 11 games. I wouldn't recommend buying a $500 video card if a $200 video card would meet your needs. Yes the HD 6450 is woefully inadequate for hardcore gaming (I run the HD 6870 and have thought about upgrading that but right now it meets my needs...)