Just recently I got Call of Duty 4 and I noticed that it was EXTREMLY choppy all the time in gameplay. I read a couple of posts on this site and found out the problem was Vista and graphics, which both went hand-in-hand. So I figured that the graphic card I have (NVIDIA) and the driver software for it may help. I went to the NVIDIA controll panel and I found a way to fix the laggyness. This is only for NVIDIA graphics card and NVIDIA driver software users.
Right click on the desktop of your computer
Open up the NVIDIA controll panel
If prompted, click "advance" in the dialog box. If not prompted, make sure you are going to edit the advance options.
On the left in the "slect a task" box, under 3D Settings, go to "Manage 3D Settings"
In this, go to the second tab, labeled "program settings"
Click add and add the game's main .exe file
Next, go to the bottom text box and scroll down to where it says "Texture filtering - Quality"
Click on the drop box and select "High preformance"
Click the apply button on the bottom right of the screen
What this feature in the NVIDIA Controll Panel does is it overrides the program's preformace and graphics setting to make it to whatever you change in the 2nd text box. What we did here is we made it so NVIDIA overrides the game and puts it on poorer graphics quality, but it improves the gameplay SIGNIFICANTLY to get rid of the choppyness/lagg. The poorer quality graphics is worth it. This works with every game you can install on Windows Vista.
Anyway, I hope this helped anyone who was going to switch back to Windows XP just to resolve this.
You could also increase the amount of RAM on your system (Vista wants 2GB or more), and use a dedicated graphics card (nVidia 7 or 8 series) if you are using an on-board display. Freeing up disk space is also a good idea.
You neglected to provide any specs for you computer, so I'm generalizing...
tru but i dont wanna spend any more money on my computer. i spent ALOT on it in the first place and it has a tone of features. all the extra ports and plugs for extra features had been maxed out when i got the machine, so i spent quite a few dollars on it already. so i figured i'd find a free way in improving the game play. but thanks for the advice. if i ever do scare up some extra change, i might hust do what you said.
