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    Half-Life 1 lags on XPS 1645 compared to M1530

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by ZippoMan, Jun 3, 2010.

  1. ZippoMan

    ZippoMan Notebook Evangelist

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    Yes, I still play a HL1 mod :D The specs on my 1645 seem to blow away my old M1530. Strangely though, the FPS on my XPS16 isn't very good. I'm running at 1920x1080 with VSYNC on but come on, the game is like 10 years old! If I turn off VSYNC I get some major tearing that drives me nuts. PowerPlay is enabled and I have it set to Maximum Performance. Most of the 3D settings are set to Performance. All I can figure is that the game preferred nVidia over ATI? :confused: It only utilizes one core but I don't think it is very CPU intensive.
     
    ZippoMan, Jun 3, 2010
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  2. wetcardboard

    wetcardboard Notebook Consultant

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    So...your mad that your not getting over 60FPS without tearing? Anything over 60FPS SHOULD tear because the refresh rate of the LCD is only 60Hz. Download RivaTuner and run the D3D override tool in the background...that helps with games that tear reguardless of vsync on/off or refresh rate like Gears of War.
     
    wetcardboard, Jun 3, 2010
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  3. ZippoMan

    ZippoMan Notebook Evangelist

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    FPS drops to 25-30 when a decent amount of action is going on. Just doesn't seem right for a game this old.

    I never experienced said lag on my M1530, but I also didn't use VSYNC. There was very minor tearing on the M1530 but I was able to live with it as it was hardly noticeable.

    I have max FPS set to 60.
     
    ZippoMan, Jun 3, 2010
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  4. unclewebb

    unclewebb ThrottleStop Author

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    Do you have a 130 watt or a 90 watt power adapter and what bios version are you using? The XPS 1645 has a lot of throttling issues depending on your setup. Provide some more details and this might make more sense.

    When the XPS 1645 starts throttling, its CPU performance will be on par with a Pentium II from the late 90s and sometimes the GPU can also get throttled back to a third of its rated performance. :(

    And no I'm not just making this up. It really can get that bad.
     
    unclewebb, Jun 3, 2010
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  5. ZippoMan

    ZippoMan Notebook Evangelist

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    Latest BIOS, 130w adapter.

    I think the problem might be that I copied over the config file from my nVidia. I'm going to delete the .cfg and let it re-create one. Maybe there's some nVidia specific parameter that it's not liking.
     
    ZippoMan, Jun 3, 2010
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