eek shit lappy game performance

[Yaka]

my bros got this lappy HP G70-105EA 17-inch Laptop PC, Intel Pentium Dual Core: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo with 4gb ram instead of 2, he has tried trine, hl2, gt4 and is getting piss poor performance from it. apart from gta4 i woulda thought it would be ok running hl2 and trine. ive upadated everything inc gfx driver and performance is still shit.


wondering if installing xp give him a good performance bump?

 

[Zenith.UK]

I took the liberty of checking the HP site for any drivers and updates before answering. Put simply, the laptop will run XP, but don't expect much in the way of driver support for ANY hardware. ALL the drivers that HP provide are for Vista. Even the Win7 downloads are only applications.

This is the page in question.
Select software and drivers HP G70-105EA Notebook PC - HP technical support (United Kingdom - English)

Those are the "approved" drivers, so you could possibly get better or updated ones directly from the respective manufacturers. For example, you can check the Intel chipset drivers are completely up to date from here:
Intel® Driver Update Utility

You say you've updated the graphic drivers. Have you tried a custom driver or modded .inf file from NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com


I'll be honest, the G9200M GE isn't meant to be a "proper" gaming card. It's got hardware for processing HD video and powering the display, but it's not exactly got "oomph" for recent games. My Acer Aspire 5920G is over 2 years old now, but the GF8600M GT in it allows me to play HL2, TF2 and L4D at decent detail level with hardly any dropped frames at native res (1280x800). Has he considered playing at a lower rez scaled up?

 

[kirennia]

It still pisses me off that many companies are siphoning off older specification hardware components to the public by attaching appropriately high numbers to certain parts of a system, despite them not really delivering what most people would think in terms of performance. They know all too well exactly what most people will look towards when considering a computer spec and act accordingly, allowing them to sell cheaper, older technology components still, despite their relative age/power. This has become most privilent in graphics card and processors.

The graphics card, although it is a 9 series nVidia card which one would think should be able to perform relatively well, the fact that it's a 92 may as well cut that down to a 7600 series. Add on top the fact that it's a mobile card of course and it's even weaker then a desktop equivalent.

The processor, while most people look at the speed (2GHz dual core in this case), the fact that it's a T3 series will greatly hinder it, baring it mind that technology is years old making the computer a whole lot slower at accessing what's available in the tank. A 1mb cache...while I'm unsure of general laptop amounts, for a desktop intel you're probably looking at more like 4mb with newer processors being around 12mb. This is (correct me if I'm wrong someone) a pre-process component of the processor allowing for larger amounts of data to be registered to the processor at a time, effecting the performance greatly; arguably, this has a greater effect on a computer speed then the speed of the actual processor itself when handled right.


Unfortunately it seems your brother has been 'done' by this trick as well although dependant on the price which I can't see (blind as a bat?), it may well be a decent machine none the less. Look out on adverts as an example and you'll see what I mean. You can still occasionally see what on the face of things look like fantastic deals for laptops but astoundingly, T1 processors or the like are even put on some of them when they should be T7-9.

Sorry to be the barer of bad news but the first thing I would have recommended would have been to put XP on there but Zenith has already blown that idea out of the water; I wouldn't recommend it if the laptops hardware has no support for it.

You may well find that the computer handles certain graphics better then others however...e.g. shaders (non-antialiased) are based more heavily on processing speed in comparison to more details in sprites which are more influenced by your graphics card. All I can recommend is picking a game and playing about with the settings until you find the niche which the computer is best at filling, then act accordingly for all of your games.


On a side note, when I bought my laptop it was fresh out of the box, running 950mb of ram on idle because of all of the crap installed by Acer. I managed to reduce this to 550mb and noticed a pretty significant difference to graphics heavy applications. The first step would be to remove all the crap you don't need and have as little as you can load up when the computer boots. NOTE: Only remove things you KNOW your computer wont rely on...laptops generally have a lot more obscure things running in the background so be careful...last thing you want is to end up without a touchpad or something similar. If in doubt, leave it be...

Hope this helps.

 

[Yaka]

ta for the info guys, i knew it was poor lappy he got in january, i did recommend him not to buy it and go for cheaper better specced one else where.
still i was under the impression it would run hl2 to a playable state with lower rez and and gfx settings.

 

[ST^]

kirennia that's a load of bollocks tbh The part numbers don't necessarily indicate the hardware specs, and never have. The graphics card is a very poor example on your part, as the card in question supports DX10 -- is that really old hardware? No, it's just budget hardware and is priced appropriately.

 

[Syri]

The part number of the cpu does dictate the spec, actually. The part number quoted, the T3 series, is the cpu used, which is a Pentium Dual Core cpu, it's not even a core 2. That's pretty old, seeing as the core 2 has been replaced now, after seeing 3 generations of mobile processors. The laptop is running vista, I'm guessing, from the question if XP would give an improvement in performance. Vista was launched after the core 2, so it's obvious that the cpu in question was a previous generation when installed, and it's certainly a much older cpu than the geforce 9 series chips.
Talking of the geforce chip, supporting DX10 means nothing, it's performance that matters for running games, and a desktop version of the 9200 would be, for lack of a better word, shite in this respect. The mobile version, having a lower voltage and slower bus, is even worse. Therefore in terms of performance, not features, it is well below a mid range chip from 3 series behind it.
Kirennia's post is perfectly reasonable, and explains the drawbacks of that machine very well, I felt.

 

[MYstIC G]

Frankly before rubbing Vista and dropping to XP he should try disabling all the aero interface shit and going through the processes in Task Manager.

If he's not into all that shit, try installing this: Game Booster | Faster Play, Free Download | Free Game Accelerator Download

Run it, let it auto disable stuff (it'll turn it back on afterwards), then fire up HL2 and see if there's a difference. If there is then there's something shitty running in the background, if not then the lappy just doesn't have the stones to run stuff.

 

[ST^]

The part number of the cpu does dictate the spec, actually. The part number quoted, the T3 series, is the cpu used, which is a Pentium Dual Core cpu, it's not even a core 2. That's pretty old, seeing as the core 2 has been replaced now, after seeing 3 generations of mobile processors. The laptop is running vista, I'm guessing, from the question if XP would give an improvement in performance. Vista was launched after the core 2, so it's obvious that the cpu in question was a previous generation when installed, and it's certainly a much older cpu than the geforce 9 series chips.
Talking of the geforce chip, supporting DX10 means nothing, it's performance that matters for running games, and a desktop version of the 9200 would be, for lack of a better word, shite in this respect. The mobile version, having a lower voltage and slower bus, is even worse. Therefore in terms of performance, not features, it is well below a mid range chip from 3 series behind it.
Kirennia's post is perfectly reasonable, and explains the drawbacks of that machine very well, I felt.

There's a fucking huge gap between old hardware and budget/mobile hardware. His post isn't an explanation of the machine, it's a misguided whine about part numbering.

 

[Syri]

Sorry, still don't see how that can be anything but an explanation. He states the cpu is a t3 series, which as I said is a pentium dual core, NOT a core 2. But they don't mention that it's an old generation one, the head-liner is 2ghz! Shame a 1.8 or even 1.6ghz core 2 would probably wipe the floor with it...
And the graphics, it's a 9 series! the very bottom of the 9 series, not suited to anything more graphically intensive than quake 3, but it's highlighted that it's a 9 series card.
That's what Kirennia is pointing out, they mention only the good parts of these bits of hardware, i.e. the cpu speed, that it's dual core and the fact it has a 9 series card. If they said it has a 3 generation old cpu, and a bottom of the current range graphics card, I bet they'd get nowhere near as many sales, so they try to hide that fact.
end of the day, it's a mix of old and low spec parts, but with that brushed over in the marketing. if you still don't see it, then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[ST^]

The T3200 is old hardware? Low spec? Are you fucking kidding me? It's a core 2 duo relabelled, with less cache, so they can sell it to the cheaper market. Other than cache intensive stuff (games), it'll perform exactly like other mobile core 2 duos. And with games, most mobile processors have too little cache either way.

I'd love to see a benchmark of the T3200 performing badly -_-

 

[kirennia]

kirennia that's a load of bollocks tbh The part numbers don't necessarily indicate the hardware specs, and never have. The graphics card is a very poor example on your part, as the card in question supports DX10 -- is that really old hardware? No, it's just budget hardware and is priced appropriately.

They don't indicate hardware specs whatsoever, I completely agree with that; that wasn't completely what I was trying to say. Upto and including the 9 series of nvidia cards, the first number incidated the 'generation' of the card while the second number represented the budget range and overall performance.

For example the 9200 and 9800 came out at round about the same time but the performance difference is huge. Note that in my post I didn't say the graphics card was old technology (although nowadays it's kind of getting there), more that it's part of the marketing ploy to state things such as a high GRAM, DX10 compatibility and a high generation label of the chip. The problem is that when you compare the budget series (9200M) to an older generation of card with a higher budget range...e.g. the 8600M, the 9200 would get shown up for being an inferior card. Granted it may well have DX10 firmware on it but it's not much use for gaming (which was part of the initial post, hence why I kept on that topic) if the card isn't as powerful as a DX9 counterpart.

The T3200 is old hardware? Low spec? Are you fucking kidding me? It's a core 2 duo relabelled, with less cache, so they can sell it to the cheaper market. Other than cache intensive stuff (games), it'll perform exactly like other mobile core 2 duos. And with games, most mobile processors have too little cache either way.

I'd love to see a benchmark of the T3200 performing badly -_-

It all depends on what you're comparing it with. All I said as Syri kindly pointed out is the highlighting of manufacturers towards parts of a component which will give a positive indication to the consumer. My main example was the 2Ghz dual core which they slapped on it when in reality, the third generation of chips with that speed will not perform (in general) as well as a newer generation chip with the same cache and clock speed.

If I recall correctly, there wasn't a huge jump between the 3-6 series, maybe even the 7 but in reality, both the 8 and 9th generation of chips have been out for a long time now and are improved by a large margin, even the ones which have the same clock speed.


The point of my post wasn't to disregard them as in reality, you may well end up paying a lot less for them as well, thus the performance difference is down to personal taste, as always with a computer. I'm just trying to explain why a computer on face value, may not perform as well as expected.

 

[Madmaxx]

Frankly before rubbing Vista and dropping to XP he should try disabling all the aero interface shit and going through the processes in Task Manager.

If he's not into all that shit, try installing this: Game Booster | Faster Play, Free Download | Free Game Accelerator Download

Run it, let it auto disable stuff (it'll turn it back on afterwards), then fire up HL2 and see if there's a difference. If there is then there's something shitty running in the background, if not then the lappy just doesn't have the stones to run stuff.

Im going to Rep you for recommending that programm. As I wasnt too sure about turning stuff off, but this programm is great for turning off things i dont need for a while, then turning it back on after. Saves my laptop from going boom hehe. Many thanks

 

[MYstIC G]

No problem, glad it helped.