Someone please take a look at my CoH!

I don't know why my game is running so poorly... I just purchased the three-pack City of Heroes, City of Villains, & Going Rogue, installed it last night, and played for the first time today. I've played other games ie. The Sims 3 and The Movies, and never had such horrible graphics and performance issues! While I was in create-a-character, the game looked and performed great, but then when I went to the tutorial, the graphics took a HUGE dive, and there was so much lag on the motions that I couldn't even tell where my character was moving!
I read another similar issue/thread and someone checked out their CoH diagnostics, so I got mine to post on here as well. TIA!!!

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---
DxDiag gathered at August 27, 2010 18:27 (-05:00)
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2 (6002.vistasp2_gdr.100608-0458)
System Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
System Model: Satellite L305
BIOS: InsydeH2O Version 1.90
Central Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T3400 @ 2.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Memory: 2940MB
.Net Memory Report: 1814MB out of 2939MB available
Page File: 4587MB (1505MB currently in use)
C Drive: (WDC WD2500BEVS-26VAT0) 126145MB out of 229554MB (54%) free
E Drive: (MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ880AS) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 7.00.6002.18107 (32-bit version)
Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
Manufacturer / Chip: Intel Corporation / Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
Video Memory: 1341 MB
Driver Version: 7.15.0010.1502
Driver Date: 6/12/2008 9:37:32 PM
Driver Language: English
Sound Device Description: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Driver File: RTKVHDA.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5599
Driver Date: 4/9/2008 9:00:04 PM

WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: Portable PC
Motherboard Version: Base Board Version
BIOS Manufacturer: INSYDE
BIOS Name: InsydeH2O Version 1.90
BIOS Version: TOSINV - 1
BIOS Release: 20090604000000.000000+000

Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1024x768
3D Resolution: 1024x768 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes

Physics Quality: Medium
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No

Anti-aliasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: None
Texture LOD Bias: Crisp
Water Effects: None
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High

World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: No
Shadow Mode: Stencil shadows
Shadow Map Shader: Unknown (0)
Environmental Reflections: Disabled
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Occlusion Strength: Off
Blur: Bilateral
Ambient Resolution: Performance

Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes
Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600
Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.500
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: Unknown bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1850.201007290124.21T2
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes
Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found

For it's age, CoX is actually a fairly GPU intensive game, especially when using some of the higher settings. You're using a laptop with integrated video, so some of the graphics settings you currently have may be contributing towards your slowdown.

1) Bloom is enabled and set to 100%. Lower this or turn it off.
2) Depth of field effects are on. Debatable, but turning this off might help.
3) World texture level is set to very high. Debatable, but lowering this might help.

Overall, your problem may be that the graphics options are set a little too high. I'd go through each option and lower the slider until you have a good balance of performance and desirable quality. Your system specs are well within CoX spec, and I don't believe you have a hardware issue.

Here is a nice post explaining all the graphics options in detail.

good luck.

In adition to what Slauterhause said, your videocard drivers are from 2008. That's ancient. You should get those updated asap. And the soundcard drivers too.

good thing you didn't use the other initialism.

Thank you, Champion.

I appreciate you guys getting back to me, but I tried turning those options down/off and that didn't really help, I searched for updates for my drivers and everything is supposedly up to date, and when I decided to uninstall/reinstall everything, it did load, and I was in the city and able to move around, but the graphics and performance were so crappy!!! It's like block-detail, and the lag is so bad that by the time I hit a button, whatever commands I hit a minute before are just catching up! It looks like crap!!!
I'm so disappointed, and I guess it is just my computer... I'm thinking of just getting my money back for this game (if i can...)

Your graphics chip is the most bare bones chip that can run CoH. It may or may not be able to run the game depending on your drivers and the rest of your computer. The rest of your computer seems beefy enough, so, there's a good chance you can run CoH at low settings.

First, you definitely need to update the drivers for your Intel Graphics chip. See this thread for the Intel links:

Notice: just because your Computer Says your Drivers are up to date: they probably are not



Also, check out these threads:

• Common Solutions & Posting Guidelines

• Players experiencing issues related to Graphics cards

• Ultra Mode: here's what you need to know

• Ultra Mode Graphics Settings Breakdown