Need for speed Undercover LAG issues

When the game lags, does the screen turn bluish? If so, this is a graphics issue with Undercover not being able to keep up, especially in areas with lots of buildings like Palm Harbor.

Some players also reported a game aspect as lag. If you use an analog controller, the game penalizes the player if a car touches something off track, which slows the car down and reduces control inputs for about 1 second or so. Contact with other cars doesn't trigger the slowdown, only contact with stuff like the walls on the side of a track. The slowdown doesn't happen if you use a digital controller, and instead the game tends to speed up the car for a short time. For a digital controller, using the handbrake for a brief moment can also speed up a car (game bug).

There are two patches for Undercover: patch 1.0.1.17, and patch 1.0.1.18. Patch 1.0.1.18 adds a challenge series, which when completed (if all gold), rewards three special tier 1 cars: Dominator Z06, Speed Machine 911, and Battle Machine RX7 . The challenge series can be run before doing career mode, allowing a player to use any of those three special tier 1 cars for career mode.

Getting back to the bluish screen lag issue:

It's possible that patch 1.0.1.17 fixes this. The last patch was 1.0.1.18, but I don't see it at ea downloads.

ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/patches/NFS/Undercover/

http://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/patches/NFS/Undercover/

You can do a web search for find patch 1.0.1.18 for Undercover. I have the US version, so my patch is NFSU_v1.0.1.18_enUS.exe.

There is also a registry setting that might help, changing "g_perf", from 0 to 2 may help with the lag.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA Games\Need for Speed Undercover]
"g_PerformanceLevel"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA Games\Need for Speed Undercover]
"g_PerformanceLevel"=dword:00000002

The patches and/or the g_perf... changes fixed the bluish screen lag, which I now only get if I'm recording using something like fraps.