Booted up VtMB for the first time two nights ago; logo cinematics all played fine but as soon as I got to the menu I experienced horrible stuttering with the music and lag with the mouse. I started a new game to see if this was just a problem with the main menu but the issues persisted, and the intro cutscene was stuttering so badly it was unintelligible.

Here are the solutions I've tried so far:

1. Turned off environmental effects and high quality audio. This did help the stuttering with the main menu music but nowhere else, and only if I didn't move the mouse at all.

2. Ran vampire.exe in Windows 98/Me compatibility mode (sidenote: in the game files there was another .exe file called "Vampire_4GB_fixed". I'm not sure what it is exactly but I ran it in compatibility mode too just to be safe)

3. Adjusted the launch parameters several times. The solution I found said to enter the line ":-game Unofficial_Patch - heapsize xxxxxx" with "xxxxxx" representing half my PC's available RAM in kilobytes. I played around with a few different values but none of them worked.

From what I read turning off Vsync is another solution, but all the research I've done tells me that this is not possible to do in Windows 8, and my OS is 8.1. And, finally, according to all the system scans I've done- my graphics driver is up to date.

These are my PC specs:

Processor: AMD A6-4455M APU with Radeon HD Graphics, 2.10 GHz
Installed memory (RAM): 4.00 GB (3.48 GB usable)
System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor

I've been combing through Google for the past two days trying to find a fix for this and am about to start tearing my hair out!! I'm not tech literate (I didn't even know how to find my PC specs before this whole debacle) so if any of you out there can help a computer dumb-dumb get this fixed, I would be SO THANKFUL!!!



EDIT: I should note that the mouse itself moves at normal speed, it's just whatever elements it rolls over that lag

-Also ran my computer's compatibility troubleshooter and it suggested the Windows XP Service Pack 3 compatibility mode. Tried that for both "vampire.exe" and "Vampire_4GB_fixed.exe". "Fixed" just didn't launch at all; "vampire.exe" launched fine but still exhibited the same problems.

Are you running the "patched" version?
(From your message I'm assuming you're not sure how to tell you have patched successfully; but that you *have* updated the "drivers" to your graphics, and that this mess of juddering and stuttering doesn't happen to other games directly from GOG.com or via their Galaxy client...)

"Processor: AMD A6-4455M APU with Radeon HD Graphics, 2.10 GHz"

Does this mean the GPU is kind of integrated with the CPU? Because the game is known to having issues with integrated Intel GPUs and this might be the same. For Intel the 3D-Analyze app is said to help...

This is why I assumed graphics drivers were up-to-date, because I can't fix a hardware compatibility problem...

(AMD do a healthy list of drivers on their site, but I would need a model number to diagnose further...)

Thank you to everyone that has replied!! My apologizes for disappearing, had a lot of irl stuff to take care of!

So it turns out the solution WAS just a simple matter of my graphics driver being out of date. I downloaded one from the manufacture's website for my laptop and that cleared the problem right up.

Moral of the story I guess is to never listen the Windows diagnostic tool when it tells you all your drivers are up to date because it's a filthy liar