5870 CrossFire

I got the G73jh a few months back, and it hasn't performed quite as well as I thought it would. I do score the average 8k on vantage and 9k with oc, but it still suffers in games. Not a whole lot of suffering, pretty minor.

I was wondering what card I could swap in instead of the single 5870. I was hoping I could eventually throw in the 5870x2. I understand it costs a whole lot of money for laptop cards, but I can spare enough for this single upgrade

So then, my questions. How does ASUS build their laptop GPU slots? Is it the standard MxM type? How hot will it get? Will wattage and volts have an affect? Is it possible to switch out for the gtx480? Should I just wait for the 6xxx series to come out from ATI?

Thanks in advance

 

id like to know this too what slot would you even use if you were to throw in an extra o-ne?

 

As far as I know, Only the alienware m17x have CF. And no, you can't upgrade them because those card don't exist or compatible. The g73jW rumor to have the gtx 480m. But most of us speculated its not going to be that due to the high cost and heat issues. Maybe your doing it wrong, but the g73 still among the top, behind dual gpu laptop.

 

Well I understand that is a laptop, and that the mobility 5870 isn't really even built around the 5800 series... but I still hoped it would perform decently. I did buy it before benchmarks and game fps were well known.

I tend to lag in Bad Company 2. I can't use anti-aliasing at all without hiccups. I can only run on medium settings, and even then, with all the snow/dust blowing around, I sometimes fall below 40 fps.

Also, in the APB demo, I couldn't play the game smoothly unless it was set to low. That's pretty bad for a mobility 5870, don't you think?

People keep saying they can play BC2 on high, then they say it runs at like 30 fps. They also claim that the human eye cannot see beyond 30fps, which is not true at all. I start seeing lag around 45-ish.

Anyways, is the mobile GTX480 worth the upgrade?

 

I find that a little hard to beleive.
Movies play at 24FPS and TV's at 30FPS .
Don't take this the wrong way but anything over 30FPS is fine.
And forget about XF in this laptop it's just not happening because it was not designed for it.
1) there not any room for a second card
2) the PSU would not be able to handle a additional card.
Do you game on battery alone?
If so always play plugged in for maximum performance.

 

There must be something wrong with your setup. I'm running Bad Company 2 at these settings:

and I'm getting an average of 35-47 FPS.

 

This has been brought up many times... movies have motion blur. If you pause a movie, you will see it is very "blendy" around the edges of whatever is moving. This is not true on video games, because movement is not pre-determined.

Trust me, I can notice lag under 45-ish fps. This is mainly because BC2 doesn't use motion blur. Games like Crysis and racing games have motion blur, so for those, anything 30+ feels fine.

It's actually not hard to find, just do some research on how fast the human eye can see. I did some research while contemplating laser eye surgery.

Edit: @Cheeseman, I can run about there too, but once again, those fps are much to slow for me. Even without fraps, I need to turn the settings down until it feels better. It may just be stuttering, and not actual fps lag. BC2 is pretty messed up. One of my tennis games never falls below 60 fps, but it lags quite a bit.

Edit Again: I believe people have thrown in CF and SLI into a single GPU laptop before. Otherwise, I may just buy a GTX480 which is slightly quicker than this 5870.

 

Human eye can see much much more than 30fps. I had a prosumer Sony trinitron tube in my old IBM p202 series CRTs and could tell 60/75/85/100/120hz every time. My friend who told me the human eye couldn't see it set the hz, put up a static image, then I looked at it and told him what it was. They definitely have different 'feels' to them on a CRT, while LCDs tend to minimize the effect. My eyes are nothing special in this respect, I bet a racecar driver sees a lot faster than I do.

As for more GPU power:
You cannot add another card. period.
You cannot add a gtx480m without burning out your power supply, it's already at it's 150W limits with this laptop. Even if you DID want to burn through power supplies, the 480m is likely to draw 30-50% more power, for 5-15% more FPS, not a good deal.
Overclock your 5870m, it has plenty of thermal headroom to overclock and a good OC on the 5870m is probably going to match or beat the 480m.

For Bad Company 2, I see this game mentioned a lot with those symptoms. Try disabling core parking, at google up the other common fixes for i7/5870 users for this game. A lot of people say disabling core parking fix it up just fine.

 

If you want more power, specifically 5870 Crossfire, go here: Alienware Computers - Custom-Built Gaming Desktops and Laptops and purchase the M17x-R2 (it's what I have in my sig).

 

You cannot just put another card in a laptop with only one gpu slot.
If you want crossfire, get either the M17x (crossfire/sli with a mobile i7) or a Clevo x7200 (crossfire/sli with a desktop i7) or a Clevo x8100 (sli with a mobile i7).
And the discussion about fps - some people that look closely enough to see it, they can notice a difference between 30 and 60 fps, but than id say youre not enjoying the game if youre looking at the picture itself to find that out (i dont notice a difference beyond 30 fps when im gaming), but one thing is sure here - the laptop screen has a refresh rate of 60hz (except some rare new cases), so its capable of showing 60fps and no more, so anything beyond 60fps will NOT make a difference on it becouse the screen wont be able to display it.

 

I dont get all of you, saying u cant tell a difference anything above 30fps....there is an obvious visual difference as well as input difference when you are hitting keys or moving the mouse, no one is saying they can see the frames, its more that the overall appearance isnt as smooth period. There is "lag" and that is a fact, especially when the game isnt designed to run at 30fps, which most FPS arent. Racing games and RTS are. Hell, I can even tell a huge difference in WoW when im in 25man raids and the framerate dips from 60 to 30 or so fps in both aspects. Also it isnt that some people that look "closely" enough can tell the difference its just more obvious to some people even without looking "closely" enough. Also you are playing on a computer where the games arent designed for one specific set of hardware to run at a specific framerate. BC2 is extremely laggy feeling on my G73 where as CODMW2 is extremely smooth. BC2 runs 35-50fps where CODMW2 runs 60fps most of the time.

 

Are you talking about over 60fps, when you exceed the monitors 60hz it looks like its lagging but its not ts just that the monitor cant keep up, if your talking about 45fps dipping to 30fps you wont see a difference the human eye can register small changes but as long as you have v-sync enabled your fine for gameplay. If it bugs you so much get a framerate limiter put it at around 30fps so your fps's dont "dip".

-Googlei

 

Get rid of the AA, you don't need it at this high of a resolution. Turn off HBAO. This laptop can run BC2 perfectly fine at high settings, just don't enable the stupid ones that decrease performance by 20fps for almost no visual improvement. Start gaming at 800/1100 clocks, the 5870M has room to be OC'd.