Tetris Friends System Requirements

[Impact009]

Changing process priorities didn't really do anything.  Firefox has always been a huge resource whore for me even after tweaking compared to Chrome, and it was perhaps the main reason why I switched.  I'll try just for TF and see.

Edit:  Firefox was about the same even with crash protectoin disabled.  After noticing that, I increased its process priority, and my framerates dropped to 20 FPS.  Uh...that's weird.  Oh well.  My next CPU is going to be at least an i7-870 anyway.  I was just hoping to somehow optimize my gameplay experience for the next few months.

Out of curiosity, does crash protection actually use up resources that much?

[Rosti_LFC]

I still reckon your best bet is compatibility issues with 32-bit flash and a 64-bit OS, combined with most likely poor programming in TF to make it more compatible.

Maybe try installing a 32-bit Ubuntu dual-boot or something as a test and see how it goes?

Also, update your drivers for stuff.

[Dakhath]

Changing process priorities didn't really do anything.  Firefox has always been a huge resource whore for me even after tweaking compared to Chrome, and it was perhaps the main reason why I switched.  I'll try just for TF and see.

Edit:  Firefox was about the same even with crash protectoin disabled.  After noticing that, I increased its process priority, and my framerates dropped to 20 FPS.  Uh...that's weird.  Oh well.  My next CPU is going to be at least an i7-870 anyway.  I was just hoping to somehow optimize my gameplay experience for the next few months.

Out of curiosity, does crash protection actually use up resources that much?

Process affinity, or priority? There's a difference, and mucking with the priority might make things worse.

[Impact009]

Maybe try installing a 32-bit Ubuntu dual-boot or something as a test and see how it goes?

Also, update your drivers for stuff.

Drivers are updated.  Performance in x86 Gentoo is actually worse than Win 7 x86 Ultimate.  I've tried both Konqueror and Chromium on Gentoo, and both were inferior to Chrome on Win 7.  As for Ubuntu 32-bit vs. Win 7 64-bit however, I should try that.  One of my hard drives was meant to be used to dual-boot into Gentoo for other things, but I guess I should just try Ubuntu with GNOME first before spending 2 days to compiling the kernel and KDE for Gentoo.

Drivers for my hardware in Win 7 x64 are all up-to-date as of 3 days ago.  Occasionally, I can hear what sounds like one of my hard drives throttling the instant somebody gets KO'd.  This makes absolutely no sense to me, considering it doesn't throttle like that with any other application that I'd expect to use more resources than TF.

The framerate drops are less frequent without Trillian open, but they still happen regardless even with all of my applications closed.  That's what is leading me to believe that resources are part of the problem.  I might try 64-bit Flash in IE just to test it, but I wouldn't be surprised if other inconsistencies will skew my results.

Process affinity, or priority? There's a difference, and mucking with the priority might make things worse.

Priority.  I know there's a difference, but I just wanted to try it anyway, and it actually did make things worse for Firefox.  I'm on a single core, so there is no affinity for me to change.

I would like to thank everybody again for all of your suggestions.

Edit:  I forgot to ask...

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache, 1066MHz frontside bus, 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 memory, 250GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive.

Any framerate issues?