Regret buying a laptop

Well I wanted a change from desktops and was really excited about getting a laptop and getting one that could play games. I went for the Dell 9400 and I thought the nvidia 7900gs and 2gb ram would be decent for games. Can't seem to play anything really. Tried to play the Bioshock demo but it was all screwed up. Can't play counterstrike source because I get like 20 fps even with all the settings turned down. I always get messages that my drivers suck and need to update but there's no updates out there for my card. Today I got excited about that Crysis demo news but then remembered "oh yeah it won't work on my computer!".

 

go here for vid card drivers and see if they help: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

 

Counterstrike Source should be playable on an X3100 integrated video laptop. As Morphy said, check your drivers.

 

Well, DX10 games ain't gonna run at any decent speeds on DX9 systems no matter how great is it. Way to much emulation and conversion instructions for the CPU to translate DX10 stuff to DX9..

Now, you got a problem here cuz my old desktop is only a crappie P4, 512 ram and 128mb 5200ultra..and it gets 70 - 118 FPS average in CS-S. Maybe optimize you're OS, (if vista..you got a lot of work).

Just Google "tweaking" or "optimizing" XP or vista w.e you have. Optimize so it's less things going on in the background, allowing everything to focus on the game. Possibly OC you're video card. They REALLY lowered the speeds on those 7 series cards.

Frankly the whole 7 series cards were jokes..

So in s summary,

- Get new drivers, from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ (like morphy suggested.)
- Optimize your OS
- OC your GPU

Frankly good drivers will do wonder..

 

The 7900GS is considerably beefy... In fact, it should actually be stronger than a 8600M GT 256MB that's featured in Dell notebooks.

You're totally right. DX9 cards should be running games using DX9, not DX10. Software emulation is C-R-A-P. Repeat with me: CRAP.

No one in their right minds should enable DX10 if you're running a card that only supports up to DX9...

Also, updating drivers usually DO perform wonders for notebooks. Just check out laptopvideo2go.com like others have already suggested.

BTW, mind telling us what resolution you're running at? Don't expect ANY mobile solution to play games at high FPS at 1600x1050... Quite frankly, if you want maximum performance and picture quality for notebook gaming, you should get a WXGA screen (lowest notebook resolution for Dell notebooks; it's 1280 x 800) and set the resolution to either native 1280 x 800 or 1024x 640.

The higher resolution monitors require too much scaling if you're playing low res games and the picture quality won't look very good.

 

you must be doing something wrong because I can get 80fps on CS:S

either you have a pentium 4 with vista, or you need to turn off AA

 

Yeah turn off AA.. frankly if you run at native res.. the jaggies ain't as bad..

AA render's each frame multiple times so if you got 20fps, and AA set to 4X it has to render each of the 20 frames in that second, 4 times, so 80 frames..

AA is useless.. it's just a cosmetic that slaughters performance.

 

IMHO, AA is essential. I won't play a game without it.

That being said, your laptop should be more than enough to play it even with AA on.

 

My resolution in CS source is 1024x768. I don't have AA on, everything is set to it's lowest settings. Couldn't find drivers on that site mentioned, guess i'm tired.

 

What are you running (OS-wise)? I'm sure we can find it for you if you're really that tired .

We wouldn't want that expensive investment of yours going to waste now, do we ?

 

1. Go to laptopvideo2go.com

2. Click "Download drivers"

3. Along the left side click your OS. If you haven't installed a different version of Windows from what dell provided, you either have XP 32-bit or Vista 32-bit. You should know whether or not you have XP or Vista.

4. Click the version number of the highest version number that's in the list. For vista 32-bit as of this writing that is 165.01.

5. You'll be taken to a forum thread. Click the driver link (has a little download icon next to it). Unzip the file after you download it.

6. Back at the forum thread, click the modded INF link. Save it inside the folder where you unzipped the first file. It should ask if you want to overwrite nv_disp.inf. Say yes.

7. Open the folder and run setup.exe.

8. Follow the on screen instructions, keep clicking next, and ignore any warnings that the drivers aren't certified.

9. After the installation is done, reboot.

Laptopvideo2go.com has an explanation for why you need special drivers in their FAQ. These newer drivers should give you much better performance than whatever Dell shipped.

 

It is always a good idea to format and do a clean installation if Windows without all that crapware DELL put in their preinstalled OSs.

 

I have nothing against Dell laptops for games but then IMHO dell laptops are not meant for game playing. You should have bought Alienware, also manufactured by Dell but they are meant for gaming.

See this: http://www.alienware.com/product_de...sCode=PC-LT-AURORA-M-9700&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT

Or this: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3840

 

anyone who tells someone to buy a alienware 9700 has now idea what they are talking about.....thats a single processor computer. Sure it might be decent right now but its good for maybe another 3-4 months at best.

 

my old sony vaio with radeon 9600 64mb and 512mb of ram plays CSS @ 1024x768 @ medium settings with around 30fps so you're doing something wrong lol

 

Alienware blow.. Those laptops aren't even Santa Rosa.. They not even Directx 10. They're SLI technology is completely impossible to find GOOD drivers for. They're extremely over priced. They're cramped with more Bull Sh!t then 3 Dell systems combined. Plus they're OS build has that stupid GUI mod which screws up the registry completely and slows the system down.

They're desktops are just as bad death-traps.

Worst systems I have ever used/owned/wasted money on.

I'd sooner quit computers all together then recommend or use one of they're systems again.

I took my Alienware desktop, set it over on it's side and jumped on it then took it out side and poor'd gas on it and litterily burned it. So many head aches from that worthless system. Shotty over hyped systems. They're Customer service is far off more worse then Dells..

 

Anyone that says to buy any kind of alienware has no idea what they are talking about....

talk about the most overpriced computers out there... Why pay 2x more for something that you can find in another brand just for an alienhead logo on it?

Look into something like the Asus G1S-A1 for gaming, or a Sager

 

Well I installed the new driver from laptopvideo2go and tested it out with some bots in CS Source and as soon as I get into the map I get like 150 fps and a few seconds later it drops down to 10fps and stays at about that and all the audio starts stuttering. Piece of garbage computer.

 

return it, sounds like a defective laptop to me