Age Of Empires III : Lag in Multiplayer game ( LAN )

Question

I am trying to play AOE3 in LAN. My Desktop and Laptop are connected to a modem through ethernet cable.

Desktop Config:
1 GB RAM  
Intel P4 Processor (1.66 GHz)  
512MB NVIDIA   
Windows XP

Laptop Config: 
3 GB RAM  
Inter Core 2 Duo Processor (2.10 GHz)  
256MB ATI Radeon  
Windows 7  

When I run AOE3 in my laptop in single Player mode, it runs very smoothly, even with high graphic settings enabled and am happy about it. But when playing in multiplayer mode, my laptop lags approximately half a second for every second in the gameplay. My PC runs very fine even in the multiplayer mode without any such lag.

What might be the problem here. Any help is highly appreciated...

Answer 1

What are you doing when playing multiplayer? Internet? LAN? AI only?

A very likely reason for the behavior is the OS. The driver for your LAN Card/WLAN could be old or not really supported for Windows 7. Search for the newest you can find.

Even more likely you are using WLAN with your Laptop and Cable/LAN with your Desktop. If that is the case, try Laptop with cable.

Secondly try disabling Virusscanner(s), Firewall one after the other.

Answer 2

This is kind of a shot in the dark, but it may be the graphics card on your laptop bogging down due to all the actions. When playing on your laptop do you experience that laggy/frame drop feeling when you play in big games (say 7 AI)?