M17 Gamer Needs Advice

So I am just weeks in the ownership of an M17 with the 2.2 duo, 4GB ram and dual 3870's. Vista 64 and upgraded screen.

I am just frustrated with how games are not performing all that well.

1. Games I am tinkering with are Crysis Warhead, Devil May cry 4, Dead Space and Fear 2.

2. All these games I have to drop the resolution to 12x7 or 10x7 to get steady fast performance and at that I still have to tweak deeper and reduce particular settings to boost it a bit.

3. Some examples are Fear 2 dropped to the 10x7 range with no grain and I still see drag turning hear and there. Crysis has some settings as low as min. to get it to run smooth and fast. Dead Space lower settings and resolution around the 10x7 range and Devil May Cry runs more to expectation and good settings and 140 frames per second+.

Advice of owners of these games??

Thanks
Scott

 

Update your video card driver?

Update your CPU?

I guess this is all you can do! Or do you want to OC?

THe P8400 isn't that fast^^ But I think Crysis should run better ... when I had the P8400 I played it with 20fps and 1280x720 and everything on high (I am not so sure because it's some time ago)

Greetings
Julian

 

no his laptop should be running those fine.

upgrade your drivers here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=347611
and i hav ran crysis and fear 2 maxed out. at 1440

 

With new drivers and T9400 you (-Warhead) can but I doubt the P8400 can handle Crysis Warhead maxed out^^

 

ohh no crysis will not be maxed out on m17
but fear and the other ones it should not problem

 

Don't say that^^ Crysis is playabel with 20-25fps and you will get 22-26 fps with 9.2/9.3 maxed out

We are lucky to have the 1440x900 native res

So we CAN say, YES WE CAN

Greetings
Julian

 

ohhh yea and they say 1440 sucked i literally MAX it all out

 

If you are using AW drivers then thats your issue. If im not mistaken theres no profile for Fear2 or dead space on those drivers hence the poor performance. Also, almost every driver after 8.12 boost Crysis performance by a bit. So as others said download the newest drivers and give them another try.

 

@1920*1200 with a t9400 crysis maxed out average 17fps. it wasnt playble. but i have tried any other settings. Lol. i just couldnt turn it down. i refused. Lol. but you cpu is alittle low end. but games should be better.
steps to try

set your power setting to high performance(simple and easy but most people forget it.)

update your gpu drivers. (i tried 9.1 and 9.2 and 8.5.) the newer the better. but 9.3 is out now. so i would recommend trying those.

kill some background apps. the ati cards will use any cpu power it can get because it depends on it alot. so dont do any hardcore video converting in the background.

deadspace maxed at i stayed at 62fps average and DMC4 was over 100fps alot of the time. crysis is a nvidia game. the only ati cards that i see playing crysis is the 4850 and 4870. so dont except to much from them with that game.

 

All you can really do now is to get better drivers installed to increase performance. Another option is to overclock your GPU and CPU, if you know what you are doing.

 

well overclocking his cpu will increase his performance alot more then the gpu. but that depends on if he is comfortable with that.

 

Ok thanks for the info. So many saying 20 FPS on Crysis etc.. I am getting more than that and it runs 95% smooth then I am ok giving up some eye candy. Maybe I expect too much from the laptop.

I recall my AW tech sheet had my score at 1150 ish. Yes I have not touched my ATI drivers. I figured it was so new I would not need to be looking just yet. I look at the steps here http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=347611 and it seems some what straight foward. Should I only install from the 64 bit link or do I do both to cover 32 bit apps? I just remember old days messing with drivers causing more damage than benifit.

As far as my CPU is my MOBO limited to the P8400 series? I just went with that CPU assuming an easy upgrade as prices fall faster on CPU's for an upgrade later. I think this is my MOBO based on some home work..
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2765

Like I said running at 1900 x 1200 is beating me down. If I drop it I can push much faster speeds and game play. My friends are like "dude this looks great" what is your malfunction? Fresh from dropping 3300 bones I may be expecting much, for that mattter 600 of it was Blu-Ray, Warranty and Bag.

Keep shooting advice as you may have been in a similar place at one time and I appreciate it.

Scott

P.S.

The way I remember doing drivers was un-installing all ATI stuff and re-booting and deleting the video adapter, then re-booting discovering native generic as is and then extracting and installing new driver package. Then re-boot again. Still about the same really?

 

lol yea 1900 will kill alot of games and the driver will help alot more then they hurt. make a system restore and if you mess up then just restore try again. no your cpu can be upgraded to
p8400
p8600
t9400
t9500
x9100
q2000
qx9300
some more to i think