Why the slowdown on facebook games?

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Hi,

I've recently upgraded my son's computer because he was having serious slowdowns while playing games like Farmville on facebook.

The system was upgraded from

P4 (northwood) 1.6GHZ (OC at 2.1GHZ)
1.5 GB ram
Geforce 7600

To

Core 2 E8400 3GHZ
4GB ram
MSI 8800GT - OC with zalman cooler

There has been a large improvement but not what I expected (it is hardly Crysis).

Any idea of where the slowdown may come from?
Consider that I have a Virgin Cable 10 Mbit commection.

[Funlester]

If they are flash games do you have the latest version of flash installed??

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If they are flash games do you have the latest version of flash installed??

Yes, Indeed I have the latest flash installed. Plus I tend to have minimal background tasks running.

[Funlester]

Humm only other thing is are you useing IE, Firefox or Google Chrome??

Might have something to do with that but im just guessing though.

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I use IE. I'm actually considering installing firefox or opera to see if that makes any difference.

[andyn]

My other half plays these a lot, she also has a decent-enough PC and we have the same (10Mb) connection - and the same slowdowns.

I think that a lot of the lag is at the server end, those games have been hugely successful, and I think that the makers are playing catch-up in terms of having the infrastructure in place to support their enormous userbase.

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My other half plays these a lot, she also has a decent-enough PC and we have the same (10Mb) connection - and the same slowdowns.

I think that a lot of the lag is at the server end, those games have been hugely successful, and I think that the makers are playing catch-up in terms of having the infrastructure in place to support their enormous userbase.

Yes that is true, also all the users progress is kept remotely and updated frequently causing often errors and slowdowns.

I just thought that the amount of flash content was putting stress on the CPU or GFX.

BTW My mrs also plays on facebook, it seems that is a common trend nowadays.

[scottmac]

I would change browser for testing purposes, at least you can rule that out then

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I would change browser for testing purposes, at least you can rule that out then

Will do when the computer is available, must not disturb the Farmville sessions.

[callumburns]

im a facebook user and tend to use Mafia Wars and MMA Pro Fighter, and i was using IE which was waaaaay slow , but then again it was so slow everything else on the internet, so i switched to using google chrome and i havent had any problems since , so try using that and see how it works out for you

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im a facebook user and tend to use Mafia Wars and MMA Pro Fighter, and i was using IE which was waaaaay slow , but then again it was so slow everything else on the internet, so i switched to using google chrome and i havent had any problems since , so try using that and see how it works out for you

Yes, I never gave chrome a chance because when it first came out I installed and it crashed like mad. But they probably fixed that now, so I will give it a try as soon as the mrs allows me.

BTW my son plays mafia wars and likes "icing" people.

[scottmac]

+1 for Chrome here, I find it much faster than IE or Firefox for most thing

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+1 for Chrome here, I find it much faster than IE or Firefox for most thing

That's encouraging,thanks.

[Ropster]

an opera user myself, faster than chrome. but as for Farmville, it is even a bit flaky on my pc which has reasonable specs in my opinion I think it is just the huge preassure on the servers, it is also a bit buggy

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an opera user myself, faster than chrome. but as for Farmville, it is even a bit flaky on my pc which has reasonable specs in my opinion I think it is just the huge preassure on the servers, it is also a bit buggy

I will also try Opera as I said before.

The slowdown occurs when the farm size is increased and there are too many animals (each with their own animation). I checked the cpu usage is 60%.

Also (I think) when sowing or reaping each mouse click updates the remote database, the game progress is kept remotely. You can imagine with all the thousands (or millions) of people accessing facebook servers, it is a mammoth task for them.