Guild Wars Graphics Issue

Hi!

I've got an XPS Gen1, which I hope makes this a valid question for this board; if I've posted to the wrong place, I apologize (and please let me know where I should post instead, thanks!).

I have a graphics issue with the game Guild Wars; I've tried to do searches on this problem on the web, but haven't found this incident described so far, so I'm hoping someone here might be able to suggest a solution.

When playing, every few seconds, at no precise interval (various intervals under 20 seconds I think), my screen will freeze up for a split second. Nothing that makes playing unbearable, but it happens frequently enough that it is annoying. There doesn't appear to be any reason for the freeze up, it'll happen at different times, whether my character is just moving, or in a fight, or any other action for that matter (I haven't noticed if this happens when I'm not moving/doing something, but I'm not sure I would notice a freeze if not action is occuring in the first place). There is also a similar problem when the game is playing it's cinematics. It will freeze up in a cinematic for a split second and then keep playing again until the next short freeze up. It's like it's having to think and catch up (just my non-technical impression).

I have the latest Omega graphics driver for a 256mb 9800 ati card and have 2GB of RAM. I have a fan utility and keep 2 of my fans at high, so I don't think it's a heat issue. I'm on BIOS 06. I've run the game at lower quality settings and the problem persists.

At first I thought this was just an internet lag issue (so I'm not sure when the problem really started; I know the game wasn't having any trouble back when I first started playing it when it came out), but it happens all the time when I play and on the same network with some LAN friends I notice their desktops have no problem with playing the game smoothly (I think their graphics cards are even a step lower than mine), so I don't think it has anything to do with lag anymore.

Does this problem sound familiar to anyone (even in another game)? Any advice or suggestions on how to fix this or where to look for more info would be appreciated. Thanks in any case!

Thanks for the advice on the AV. I tried it out, but that didn't seem to solve the issue I was having...

Thanks for the idea though!

Thanks for the advice on the utility, I'll be trying it out tonight.

I am on the latest version of Omega Drivers, is it still better ot go with ATI drivers?

Unless the Omega drivers did it, I'm not overclocking, at least not on purpose. I'm too much of a noob to deal work with overclocking...

I've blown out the fan vents with compressed air, if that counts for cleaning the fans. I'm a bit too intimidated to open the whole thing up for a more thorough cleaning.

I did go back to BIOS 05 now, so I can set all of my fans to high, so I don't think heating is the issue (but again, I don't really know what I'm doing...)

Thanks again for all the suggestions and the link to the utility!

Thanks for the advice on the bootup. However, I pretty much always reboot as I take my labtop to a buddy's place for LAN gaming and shut it down for transport.

As per the previous advice, I opened up and cleaned out a thick layer of dust from the two easily accessable fans, so it is running cooler now, but that didn't seem to solve the problem.

I downloaded the latency tool and had great hopes for it, but that doesn't seem to have helped either. The only section to mention AGP (something along the lines of "processor to AGP"; the exact line escapes me at the moment) was already set to 032 latency to start with. I played around with 64 and 128, but those did not seem to have any effect either. The parts listed seemed greatly different from those shown in the guru forum listings, but I assume that is because I'm on a notebook instead of a desktop.

I noticed that in the discussion of the latency tool that sound processors came up; even though this appears to be a graphics issue, could sound be the culprit? I'm not sure where to find sound drivers beyond the last one that Dell offered for the iXPS gen1 on their download site...

I tried to install the Radeon Catalyst driver (I must admit I did not uninstall the Omega drivers first) but it fails to install, telling me that it can't find a standard VGA driver. As my game runs in the first place, I assume this is an unrelated issue.

The same issue with cinematics seems to happen in mediaplayer for me as well. I downloaded a guildwars video and a similar freezing/dragging effect appears in windows media player... I can't recall the issue with cinematics in other games though...

In any case, I'm still looking for a solution, but thanks for all the help (and your time) so far...