Black Ops on Area-51m15x

I know that MW2 works fine with little or no problems, I originally thought that Black Ops should work flawlessly with little or no problems, boy was I wrong. My system that I'm trying to use it on is in my sig, and I'd like to say that I have a top of the line version of this system and that it should be sufficient to play the game yet it lags when I move left to right as it appears to be optimization issues frame dips. In any case, any advise on what to set my settings would be greatly appreciated.

I do know that this system struggles to run DX 10 properly I believe due to the outdated Nvidia drivers many of us are being forced to use. However, after I force dx 9 on my system games like bad company and the latest Medal of Honor run fine on my system, which looks grossly superior to Black Ops in terms of sheer graphics.

 

The lag/dips are a well publicised problem with the game from what I understand. I don't play Black Ops much (got it for my birthday, but not my type of game), but the latest patches seem to make the lag/dips less frequent.

Keep in mind that Black Ops is pretty much the same engine as MW2 except for improved visuals so you shouldn't notice too much of a performance drop.

It could be the m15x-R1 but mine seems to run reasonably well with Black Ops and other games. Indeed Medal of Honour (latest one) runs great!

 

It is a problem with Black Ops itself in which it is forcing your cpu to do all of the work rather than the GPU. If you look at your task manager as you are running the game youw ill probably see your cpu usage at around 100% while other software could show you that the GPUis getting minimum usage. This is what is causing the stuttering and until that problem is fixed the issue will remain.

Beyond that, go to the official Black Ops forums on steam and there are many config file edits that definitely help the situation. For instance, the game has dual core cpu disabled by default for instance (what bonehead put that in...?)

 

Yeah I'm going to be pissed if the m11x system plays this flawlessly while my m15x struggles, I promised myself that I would keep this until the m11x surpasses my system in all ways.

 

Should I consider upgrading my m15x? I haven't gotten the new m15x because I haven't been that power hungry. I like my 15 inch laptops to have the best balance possible between battery life and gaming ability as well as portability. I already feel that this system is as bulky as I really want to get on a 15 inch system. I really don't want to get anymore bulkier. The newer M15x also had a Horrible battery life compared to this system (Mind has a secondary modular battery as well) combined with the intel GPU and stealth mode I get 6 hours.

I still think this is a great system minus the known hinge issue, which I can deal/live with.

 

I've also come to the conclusion that I am happy sticking with this laptop. Even though the lack of GPU driver support hinders newer games but it does great playing everything up to the 2009+ era. It runs like a champ, is fast to boot up and run tasks and runs games pre-2010 perfectly with great performance. I can live with it until the end of next year probably and then give it to a friend. I've been using it lately as an HTPC tucked away in my entertainment center hooked up to a 42" LCD running everything at 1080p with a wireless xbox 360 controller. I'm pretty happy right now after I realized my limitations with the newer games.

 

Sorry to double post, but What games are everyone playing on the m15x? I'd be curious to see what games and what performs the best. I'm kindof building a library of playable games for this system and would like to know if I missed any good titles for it.

 

I'm glad to hear you love your m15x. Me too.
I am currently downloading Lost Planet 2 off of steam as a free game that came with my new harddrive. I have played Fear 2, Fear 1, Gears of war, aoe iii, fallout 3, the crysis series and some other games. What are you playing or have played? How old is your m15?

 

Well before I start I want to add that I have the 1st gen m17x with DUAL 9800m gt's with a 2.5 ecu.

With that out of the way, I can play alot of the newer games. I have the the New Fall out, Medal of Honor Black Tier one and, the new Star Wars. Of note Fall Out and MOH due not utilize the second card as the games do not have coding that will activate the SLI feature, yes I have used Force Rendering but in my opinion I havent seen a huge improvement and the the slave card was still running at 45 c so it wasnt being used. The said games are ran at native res (1980/1200) all setting maxed. On Fall Out Bloom and HDR are turned off with an AVERAGE of 40FPS. Remember movie run at 29FPS so 40FPS is smoothe

When I purchased the games I was still running the 186 drivers that you guys are stuck with.

The 8800/9800 cards are beasts, manage and monitor temps and you should be able to play the new games too.

When you cant play the new games anymore, BUT you do not want to shell out atleast 2000 for a "modern" AW upgrade to the GTX 280, its been done, and as long as you monitor temps, and you utilize a good cooling compound like Artic Silver 5 you will be ok.

The key is to monitor temps, clock speeds, and memory usage. We own enthusiastic level gaming laptops and as a side effect you must know how to take care of it, it like owning a Porsche or Ferrari. Dont expect Honda reliability with the Performance you get.

 

You would know, you're the one who burned out a GPU and to buy one off of me lol!

 

Hahahaha yes sir!!!! Ive learned alot of lessons with this Lap Top!!!! But never did I blaim it on Nvidia or AW!

 

Hey,sorry I didn't reply sooner, I was in training at work and couldn't get to the internets. I've been playing alot of Far Cry 2, Stalker-COP, Company of Heroes, Just Cause 2. I've played both Crysis games, Borderlands, Bioshock, tried Mafia 2 (didnt run well), Red Faction - guerilla (didn't run well). I have alot of older games that have run great like MOH-airborne, Fear 1&2, Ghost recon-AWF2, etc. I want to try Fallout 3 and NV.

My m15x is from Dec 2008. It's a Core Duo 2.2, 4GB ram, 9800GT 512MB, 160GB 7200. I'm curious to see if a SSD upgrade would help the performance out.

 

I use an INTEL SSD on mine and it helps alot on boot up so I can switch between the 2 GPU's fairly quickly and it also reduces on the overall heat of the system because most 7200 rpm drives can produce a rather large amount of heat.

 

darkloki,
Have you noticed any improvements in game performance from upgrading?

 

I suppose my load times have improved significantly you get a windows score of like 7.9 or something really high and absurd for an HDD. However, I hardly play FPS games and mostly play RTS games. MY desktop's rather large monitor has made it increasingly difficult and unpleasant to play FPS games as I use my m15x now for RTS games, mobile computing, and alot of Home Theater work.

 

Yeah, my lowest scoring component in Win7-64 is the HDD, but then again that rating doesn't always give a true picture of performance. Thanks