How does 920xm perform for open-world games (i.e. GTA 5, Witcher 3)?

Hello all,

I understand 920xm is not the fastest thing out there, but I want to know if CPU bottlenecks on high settings with an adequate (7970m+, 680m+) graphics card.

I'd like to be able to play the upcoming fallout4 on my m15x, which is soon going to be upgraded with a 920xm. It will have 8GB ram and I am still deciding whether I'm going to spend money on a 970m or 980m to make this my mobile gaming machine.

I currently have an Xbox One and a PS4 that I play exclusives with. I always play multi-platform games on my gaming desktop for the best experience. I'm going to be deploying soon so I was looking at my options when it comes to gaming on my free time, besides working out. I happened to purchase the GAEMS vanguard for cheap just in case I wanted to take my PS4 initially for gaming. However, reading through some of the FPS issues for witcher 3 and whatnot, I wasn't sure if I would be happy with gaming on the PS4 for these open world games. I'm sure I'll have fun regardless, but I've been gaming on PC since for quite a while so I didn't want to be disappointed or frustrated with the performance. Console exclusives run amazing, but multi-platforms are usually graphically washed out and/or suffer from FPS issues.

It crossed my mind in purchasing a gaming laptop, but then I ran into this forum that the m15x could be upgraded into a beast with a 920xm/970m or 980m combo as of recently. It would save me $$$ as well over buying a brand new laptop if I decided to build.

Does anyone have any experience playing recent open world games like GTA 5 or Witcher 3 on their m15x? How does it run? Does it suffer from CPU bottleneck?

My other option that I'm looking into is to wait for skylake and build a small HTPC with a GTX 980/390X in it (Silverstone Raven FTZ01 case). I would sell the GAEMS vanguard and just bring a monitor with me. Just doing a lot of research into this build since it's going to be a very "tight" build.

 

You will certainly have to overclock the 920XM quite a bit. I think if you can get the 920XM to around 3.5-3.6ghz, you should be OK on playing witcher 3 for sure with a 970/980M. GTA V I'm not so sure, because I know GTA IV was a CPU hog, but I think GTA V was better optimized. The recommended spec is a ivy bridge 3.5 ghz, but I think you can get away with using a nehalem of around the same clockspeed too.

 

Hmm, I believe Fallout 4's requirements are tad less than Witcher 3, which would be good news. I guess I can always hold off on GTA 5 for my desktop with all these new games coming out. Currently running a Xeon x5650 (6 core, 12 threads) at 4.2ghz. It's amazing how a 6 year old CPU is still keeping up with the newer generation.

 

GTA V is really well optimized. It runs really well on dual cores, even the old Core 2 Duos. It does benefit from quads though.

It's mostly GPU dependent, but not that much. I had the game running well on my Acer 5935g which has a GT 130m and a Core 2 Duo T9500. I had frames in the mid 30's on medium-low settings on a 1366x768 res.

This here will give you an idea on how it runs through a Core 2 Duo: GTA5 on 2009 year Laptop - YouTube

Surprising results. My acer gets slightly better frames though. His CPU is slower than mine. Same GPU though. It's a 2.1Ghz T6500.


If you plug a 970m into that m15x running at stock clocks on the 920xm, you should be getting 50-70fps imo of course on high/very high. AA over 4x may cause bottlenecking however, so overclock that 920xm.

 

that sounds good! Really tempting...

 

I'm not sure where you'll be deploying but definitely consider the temperature ramifications of where you will be in regards to what laptop you're running.
If you're somewhere without AC during your freetime then you need to think about whether the heat is going to kill any practical gaming experience with an m15x.
Also consider bulk. The m15x isn't a light machine (as you well know). If you buy a newer laptop it'll have better heat management with just as much or more power and a thinner lighter body, but of course will cost you more than a few pennies.
Just some things to think about.

EDIT:
Also, I do play witcher 3 on my m15x with the build in my sig.
I run my 920xm overclocked and I override my stock fans to run at max. It keeps the temperature manageable on a cool night, warm nights can be iffy. You'll able to play with a mix of high and ultra settings with playable frame rates, 30-40fps.
The witcher 3 at high settings probably demands more power than most of the games released in the next 2 years will, so if you do go down that route, you should be good for a while.

 

I appreciate the help. We are going to a hot place, but most likely will have A/C where I live. Things to look out for is the unlimited amount of sand everywhere haha. 30-40fps on high/ultra sounds pretty good. Much better than whatever xbox one or ps4 will give me. Headphones should help, but hopefully not piss off my roommate if I have one.

 

920xm and 680M here. I played GTA 5 with my 920xm at 3.6ghz all cores. My chip does OC better than 99% of other 920XM (hold record at 4.5ghz!) however at this speed the 680M even OCed was clearly the bottleneck!

All full fans the CPU would get over 90C after a few hours playing. Heat isn't a problem with the old nehalem mobile chips though. Just keep it under 100C otherwise it will throttle clockspeed.

It sounds like reckless advice but it really isn't. The 920xm is a TOUGH cookie.

 

Apparently GTA V just needs four cores to be happy, clock speed or IPC ain't too important. I've got GTA V ready to install (physical discs because my Yorkshire Broadband sucks!), wonder if you'd share what settings you ended up with? I know there are loads of graphical customisation options and I don't want to spend too long setting them up.

Did you sell your old 920XM?

 

Yeah I sold it. That chip could only achieve 3.2ghz stable in prime 95 albeit at low temps and 3.3ghz stable in games. This new chip on mine runs as standard at 3.6ghz stable across all cores with whatever I want it to run. Hotter though.

Have you done some voltmodding yet? I sent you the email a few weeks back right!

As for GTA 5 settings you will need to play around with your 7970M I guess. I clocked my 680M at 940/1100mhz. The higheset stable clockspeeds on stock voltage under stock cooling. You would need to ramp the 7970M to over 1ghz to achieve similar performance. At those clocks the GPU would easily hit nearly 90C lol and combined I was drawing over 240W even though both cpu and gpu were at stock voltage. I guess the game pushes hard.

I believe I ran the game on mostly max settings at 1080p except textures at high not very high as that made HUGE difference and little to no aa. Pretty good for an aging mobile GPU. Not just that but the limitation wasn't core horsepower it was vram. You will likely find the same on an OCed 7970M. 2GB just doesn't cut it.

The in game vram usage calculator. I could load up to 2400mb on it before performance started to fail. don't even try to put settings that consume over 2.5ghz it will become at jerky mess. This basically limits what settings we can turn on or up. Then again you get better vram bandwidth so it could be even stevens.