New 1520 --- performance issues

Hey all, just yesterday I recieved my new Dell 1520 laptop which I tested out for a few hours before putting away for christmas.
This is my first laptop I have ever owned, as I decided to move from my Pentium 4 desktop to something smaller, and hopefully more powerful.
I manily bought the laptop as an upgrade and will mainly be useing it for gaming.

The specs of the laptop are:

---Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7300 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/4MB cache)

---2 GB DDR2 SDRAM 677MHz

---160gb SATA HDD

---256Mb NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT DDR2

---And running Vista Business


I am writing this thread as I was confused with the poor performance this laptop had on the games which I tested out. Which were, S.T.A.L.K.E.R and also Call of duty 2. I say "Poor performance" as I am comparing this to the desktop I was using, which had these specs;

---Pentium 4 3.2Ghz

---1gb DDR ram

---7600GS OC'd (I think I found that I overclocked this to basically the performance of the 7600GT)

---160gb HDD

---And running windows XP professional



Both of the games ran better on my desktop than they did on my new laptop, which was disapointing as I expected the laptop to out-perform my old desktop by a longshot. Especially since I was using a much higher resolution on my desktop as I was running a 23" monitor.


Could the reason the desktop is running faster in these games be because the games were made to use a single core? And since the single core in the Pentium 4 is faster, it out-performs the laptop? I say this as when I ran 3Dmark 05 on the desktop I scored 4460 with the overclock, and on the laptop I scored 5748!

So if I could score so high in this, is there another reason why the games are not performing as well as they should?
I know Vista takes away alot of framerate, but I think there has to be another reason.

Sorry if it's alot to take in, but I would really really appreciate it if someone could help me out!

If there is more information I need to give to diagnos my problem, please ask!

Cheers, Ben!

 

Have you updated your video card drivers? The original Dell ones are pretty bad. I heard they released a new driver a few days ago, but also laptopvideo2go has the latest from Nvidia there.

 

I have the a 1520 T7500/ 256 8600 gt/ 4gb ram. I have no problems running Crysis or COD4 on Med-HiGH settings 1280x800 res.
Make sure that you have your current battery plan set to HIGH PERFORMANCE. Even though you may be running on AC power, the batter setting will have an impact on your gaming performance. I was having a similar performance issue, the battery plan was set to Power save. Once I changed it to HIGH performance, everything ran fine.

 

Cheers, i'm going to get it down now and try that because from what I remember it was running on balanced.

 

Sorry for double posting, but yes I changed it to High performance but it still seems to be running sluggish.

And yes I did also update the drivers when I got the laptop, you guys got any other idea's??

Cheers, Ben!


Edit: Also, i used FRAPS to see what my framerate was for Call of Duty 2, and i'm only getting 12-16 FPS?!?

 

AFAIK Dell is using GDDR3 with that GPU.

 

AFAIK?

I didn't understand what you said, i'm very noobish...

If you ment my GPU, mine is GDDR2

 

AFAIK (As far as I know)

My mistake, it is supposed to be GDDR2, I've got XPS 1530 on the brain!

 

I wish it was GDDR3!


Oh and also should I add, I bought it from eBay. So it's not directly from dell.
So could there be some drivers I could possibly be missing which would cause such low performance??

 

my 1520 ran most games great.......but have never bought anything from ebay because i am afraid of getting someone else's junk lol

 

Maybe it has a hardware issue.

 

and maybe that's why it was on ebay too

 

Yeah I use to be a bit the same, but I make sure I buy from genuine sellers.

This guy was selling lots of dell laptops, all different models, and they were all brand new.


Anyone else be able to give some input? Or anyone with basically the same laptop who has tried the games i mentioned and get similar or different frame rates?

Any info or help would be greatly appreciated!


Edit: And to what scoober doober said; Yeah but that wouldn't make sense because I am still scoring over what the standard of my laptop should be scoring in 3dMark 05. It just seems to be the games basically

 

play cod2 on very high settings, except aa and af and get decent fps, as well as any other games i play on my 1520.
u said u updated ur drivers...which ones did u use? make sure u dnload the correct ones from laptopvideo2go.com (i'm still using 169.04, but there are other newer versions available as well)

 

I updated the drivers from the dell site, as thats where I was told to go when I went to nvidia to update the drivers. I went to the laptopvideo2go drivers but wasn't sure how to install them, would I have to downgrade the drivers I already had, or is it just a simple installation file?

Cheers, Ben!

 

Have any of you gone beyond the current 169.12/13 drivers available?? I have 169.12 and have heard of a higher 169.25 or 23 not sure, but have been hesitant to install since I heard there was some bugs??

Can someone confirm if they are worth the trouble??

 

alright, mayne, here's what u gotta do:
1. get driver cleaner from guru3d.com
2. uninstall ur current drivers from the control panel.
3. restart.
4. go into safemode and run driver cleaner and clean up the mess lol
5. reboot again and this time install the driver u've downloaded from l2g.com. i suggest u use 169.04(make sure u read the installation guide here http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showforum=76 - topics on the top)
6. enjoy

@zero88, i dunno, i'm still using 169.04 and quite happy, i have to admit

 

Ok, I think I may have found the problem and I'm hoping one of you may be able to help me fix it!


I went to the NVIDIA Monitor view which is telling me information about my system, and what its doing at this point in time.

Under where it says Bus speeds, it says the GPU core (3D) is running at 168.000MHz, and the GPU memory is running at 100.000MHz... Isn't it supposed to be running much higher? Around 400 - 500 stock for both of those speeds?

I downloaded ATItool but was unable to overclock, and also downloaded Rivatuna and it doesn't seem to do anything when I change the speeds...

I'm so confused right now, anymore help I would love as I would love to have it working before christmas so I can use it properly on the day!

Cheers, Ben...

 

That's right as those are the 2nd clock frequencies. Hit the drop down tab and select performance 3d.

First thing you need to do is download 3dmark2006 and run it.
At 1280x800, I get 3,139 with my GPU stock.

If you run yours, you should get higher than me because your processor has another 500MHz. So I'd say more like 3,500. Give it a run and report back. Remember to state what the SM2/SM3 AND CPU scores say. That way we can determine if specific hardware is failing.

 

Yea the Dell drivers suck. With the Laptop2go drivers I completed Call of Duty 4 on Max settings (2x AA, AF turned off).
And also Unreal Tournament 3 Demo on max settings..
I had a problem with my LCD and the dell CSR made me reinstall the dell drivers by taking control of laptop and now games always freeze on me and vista comes up saying video device driver failed.