M1330 Bioshock Experience

NOW WITH SCREENSHOTS - SEE REPLY #16

It's a hot game right now, and I know there have been several questions floating around as to whether or not the ultralight m1330 has the cajones to run it.

Well, having played for a few days now, I can unreservedly say that while this notebook is indeed not designed for heavy gaming, it CAN support a very enjoyable experience with even the latest crop of DX10 games. For reference, I've also played Bioshock on a seriously major rig (Quad core extreme, 8800 Ultra, huge 1080P widescreen), and while this little laptop obviously can't compare to that in terms of quality, being able to whip this sort of game out of your backpack in Starbucks or on a plane, put on headphones and enjoy it literally anywhere is a huge plus for some folks, like me.

Anyway, I did have a few install issues, as Bioshock is famously flaky with Vista (despite being a DX10 title!) In my case, I tracked it down to conflicts with some previously-installed audio codecs. After removing them, installing the requisite "Bioshock" 163.44 drivers from laptopvideo2go with its modified .inf, and restarting, it was off to the races...

The short answer is you will not be able to run at the highest settings. Not even close. This much is given - the 8400GS is only a middleweight in the mobile GPU field. On the other hand, it's not as horrible a processor as some make it out to be.

At native resolution (1280x800); vertical sync off; shadow maps/high detail post processing/high detail shaders/distortion/DirectX10 textures on; vertical sync/real time reflections/force global lighting off; and medium actor and texture details - the game looks stunning, and runs on the border between smooth and mildly steppy (not quite jerky). In emptied environments, even with water, lighting effects and haze, it still feels great. Throw in a few enemies, however, and it starts to bog down a bit.

Keeping the same settings and stepping down to the next-lowest widescreen resolution (1024x640) makes the game -totally- playable and buttery smooth.

I can't decide whether to keep the fancy effects and step down, or stay at the native resolution and perhaps turn off some processing. At 1280x800, everything is so razor sharp you sometimes have to stop just to look around at the unbelievable view. However, the shaders and atmospheric effects add tremendously to the overall feel of the game, so I'm going to take a bit more time to play around, figuring out the best combination for the limited resources of the 1330. If only they had managed to squeeze an 8400GT in there!

The most amazing thing in the end, however, is picking up a 4-pound notebook in your hand as it chews through some of the most demanding software available today. It's pretty wild, so if this your rig and you like this sort of gaming, getting Bioshock for your XPS M1330 is totally worth it.

 

An additional note: If and when someone releases the next -overclockable- version of the nVidia drivers, with the same fixes that are present in 163.44...

I'll be tweaking away and hoping to hit all those processing features at native resolution

 

ya...im waiting for tweakable 163.44's
cuz once that happens native will be butta

 

i am sooo happy to hear that the 8400 can do DX10 properly....i was afraid that they were going to be underpowered

that's cool. very cool. because then that means that i won't regret not waiting for the 9x00 series...

 

tried running on 800x600 med settings, in my view it is unplayable for my standards but you are quite right - not many lightweight notebooks run this at the moment.

can you please tell me if 163.44 allows you to hibernate/sleep the notebook properly?

 

I haven't tried Bioshock on my 1420, but 163.44 drivers let me hibernate/sleep with no problems at all.

 

^ thanks PhoenixAG! will give it a go and I'll report back

 

okay with 163.44 sleep/hibernate works but i get lots of clipping in other games which looked awful. (bioshock obviously runs with better results than 165.01 but still unplayable)

 

you can also overclock your card relatively modestly and get up to a +25% performance boost.

 

Yeah, I had the exact same experience with Bioshock as the 1st poster... I know I can get another 25% boost by overclocking but the damn drivers refuse to allow it!

Sleep doesn't work on my 1330 with the 163.44 drivers (Hibernate works fine though...)

 

I haven't experienced any sleep issues with 163.44 - they seem as stable as the stock shipping drivers. Also, 163.44 simply doesn't allow OCing, but the additional stability it brings to Bioshock makes it worth it if that's what you're playing right now. Hopefully, a future iteration will include the same fixes and also allow overclocking.

I'm not sure what you mean by 800x600 at medium being unplayable...are you sure that there isn't something in your system causing some sort of conflict or slowdown. Because as I said, I've also played Bioshock on a serious quad core extreme system with an 8800 Ultra and know what high standards should look like, but I still find that anything under 1024x640 at medium is buttery smooth with no jitter or stuttering under 90% of game situations.

 

Any screenshots?

 

Snowkarver, i guess its the 10% i'm referring to - when enemies jump on screen the whole experience is ruined. but like i've said previously, its pretty amazing how a portable notebook can run it in the first place.

 

Yeah could you post some screenshots and maybe with FRAPS shwoing the FPS?

Cheers

 

not sure if you meant 8800 ultra screenies, but here are some 8400m gs

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2357176#post2357176

brightness was turned up a bit in the first four, sorry

 

By popular demand, here are some fresh FRAPS screenshots of Bioshock, that should prove without a doubt that this game is ultimately very playable on our 4 pound ultralight notebooks!

Each screenshot is at full resolution and unretouched (except for conversion to JPEG at 70% quality to preserve bandwidth), and are exactly as they appear on my system. Bear in mind that with such a marginal system, FRAPS itself likely has an overhead of maybe 2-3fps, and you could probably gain another 2-3 by shutting down some Windows services and tweaking judiciously. This would add maybe 4 or 5fps to these frame rates.

My system:
- XPS m1330, T7300 2.0ghz, 2GB RAM, 160GB 7200rpm drive, nVidia 8400M GS
- Full Vista Home Premium installation with minimal tweaking and all services
- Forceware 163.44 "Bioshock" driver, no overclocking

The screenshots:

864x480 widescreen, ALL effects, lighting and shaders ON ("high quality")

1 - water distortion and general corridor - 25fps
2 - general lighting and large chamber - 17fps
3 - opening scene, real-time reflection and particle effects - 21fps
4 - shader, texture and shadow details - 22fps

1024x640 widescreen (this is the resolution I play at, one below native res)

5 - same scene as #4, detail shader and reflections ON - 13 fps
6 - same scene as #4, with detail shader and reflections OFF - 15fps


As you can see, resolution has the most impact on the game, while the shaders and lighting have relatively less effect on frame rate. Given the EXCELLENT atmosphere of this game in terms of shadows and lighting, I would recommend sacrificing resolution for playing in high quality. You can see how dull #6 looks compared to #5 - pay attention especially to the specular reflections on the statue, banner, and underneath the carved panel on the right!

If you can handle playing in the teens, 1024x640 looks very sharp on our 1280 panels, while jumping down to 864 makes the scenes a little murkier, but gives you rates well into the 20s, 90% of the time. This should satisfy all but the most hardcore gamers, and is HIGHLY remarkable for such a lightweight notebook. With overclockable 163.44 drivers, 1024 speeds should move into the twenties too, which would be even more terrific.

So there you go - the Bioshock experience on the m1330. If you found this thread useful and/or entertaining, I wouldn't mind a rep or two!

Thanks much, and get playing!

 

Snowkarver, a big thank you and a rep!!!
This will give me more insight on how my Inspiron 1420 will run Bioshock.
Your review is very useful and I think this is how reviews should be - real life practical testing.

Do you think you can experiment some overclocking results from the game?

*EDIT: darkcond0, thank you for linking me to your screenshots. I can't help but notice that Snowkarver's screenshots look considerably better with a higher framerate than yoour 800x600 res with identical machine specs? How is this so? Different driver version I assume?

 

Excellent pics!!! - i was going to put some up myself but i think this should come with a word of caution - at high settings the card will struggle at some points in the game (eg at pic 3) where you have water reflections, and at sometimes feel like a slideshow. again, i reiterate that it is amazing that bioshock runs on a 4lb notebook and is playable.

 

dsam, it looks like darkcond0 was using the drivers just prior to the "official" 163.44 Bioshock drivers, and it is an established fact that 163.44 results in at least a 25% performance increase specifically in this game due to optimizations.

It's important to note that 163.44, while being the best drivers for Bioshock, are not overclock enabled, so it is impossible to test OC performance with them. However, based on my knowledge of the capabilities of an 8400M GS with DDR3, if they were to be overclocked safely, it's not unreasonable to assume about a 20 or 25% increase in performance.

As khull notes, my rates are pretty much best-case scenarios, and you have to expect some slowdowns at certain points, especially during battles. However, I would disagree with him somewhat in that I've never had an "empty" room, even with fire/water/mist/particle effects slow the m1330 down to the point of being a slide show...they have always been smooth for me.

With a Big Daddy and a couple of splicers firing grenades at me, it's a bit different (borderline slideshowish), but still playable because these situations are actually pretty infrequent, and IMHO they are worth the slowdown for the most excellent improved atmosphere you get when not fighting.

 

yeah I just ran Bioshock demo on my 8400gs (163.44) and it ran crap
anything under 20fps is frustrating. Orienteering the crosshair makes me want to pull my hair out!

 

Did you bump down the resolution or attempt this at native? Because no matter how hard you try, it won't be very smooth at 1280x800 on our GPUs.

At 864, I don't think you'll be tearing your hair out - you should be hitting 20 consistently. Switch off real time reflections and/or high quality shaders for a little more fps too.

 

what i did was run it at native with medium detail textures and everything off - shadows, real time reflections and high quality shaders. I might try 1024.768 but it'll look worse... I'm using 163.44 drivers as mentioned but I'll see how 163.71 - not convinced that my current drivers are optimized for Bioshock..

 

a question

how long will your battery last while play this game on plane? I plan fly from UK to US, will one 6cell + 9cell last ??

 

something tells me it wont lol...how long is the flight from the UK to US?
keep in mind 9 cell will last 3hrs gaming, 6 cell about 2 i think

 

LOL. Playing Bioshock with the kind of settings we're talking about here (bear in mind it's a pretty dark game, you'll want to bump up the backlight somewhat), I've gotten maybe 90 minutes max on a 6 cell. The 9 cell nets another 50%, so maybe 2 hrs and 15 minutes, for a total of just under 4 hours. So it depends how long you want to play!

That might do you, if you're not using it for anything else. London to NYC is about 7 hrs and change, isn't it? Minus an hour for takeoff and approach, another hour for eating and such, and you're looking at 5 hours to spare. Might work. Or else you could see if your airline has laptop power connections, and get an adaptor thingy...

 

d94, playing games on batteries is generally not recommended due to the amount of drain it causes on the battery for the period of time. most of the "exploding batteries" you hear about are caused by draining or recharging the battery too quickly. having said that i still do play games on batteries when a powerplug is not nearby

 

alot of planes have power sockets.