8400m GS and Company of Heroes

Hi guys,

I play a lot Company of Heroes but latelz I ended up with a Dell M1330 notebook which has a 8400m GS video card.
Company of Heroes runs pretty slow on that and would like to know what can I do to improve performance.

- Can i OC the card?
- How much would be safe and with what drivers? (i have 186.81 Win7 x64)

Thanks

 

try using 186.42 drivers
as for OC don't bother, this game is just simply demanding and OC'ing this card won't give uch benefit, but temps will just get higher

 

hmmm... so you think overclocking won't bring much to increase performance in COH?

 

yeah, I wouldn't bother - I know what you mean when you say it runs slowly - on my old laptop with X700 radeon it ran ... but not too comfortable
If you play online, then play only 1 on 1 and 2 on 2 matches
How does the game run on everything low and low res?

Try downloading the 186.42 drivers from this link in this topic :

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=410917

 

well the game runs ok with everything low on 1280x800 but it looks like crap .
Would like at least medium details... anyway I just OC'ed to 500/800 with RivaTuner on 186.81 and it runs pretty ok with medium details.
I'll post later more details... any other tips are welcome

 

Use ati tool and push it as hard as you can until it gives artifacts. Overclocking is well worth the performance increase on mid-range cards. Just keep an eye on the temperatures. It is best to keep it under 85C if possible.

 

under 85C???
even without OC it goes up to 90-91.
after I oc'ed and played for 15min it got to 95C

 

8400M GS is a very serious overheat GPU.
My friend 8400M GS got toasted while playing Warcraft III TFT.
9-series Nvidia GPU and above is better for OC due to they are smaller in size, lower power usage and have slightly(10%) better performance than the older version. LOWER power/electricity usage = Lower temperature. The chance temperature decrease, so, it won't easily overheat.

My 9500M GS(475/950/400 > 610/466/1408) is about 75C as max temperature in a 23C-26C place and about 73C(max) at 19C-22C place.

 

Well then your friend got a bad GPU.

My old laptop had a 8400M GS and I had a 15% overclock on core and memory and almost a 100% overclock on shaders.

 

Then my friend it is time for you to whip that card out and apply some fresh thermal compound to it. ICD 7 24 carrat works wonders. It should cut 5C. More if the old compound is in really bad shape.

 

so what frequency for core/shaders and memory would be safe? I don't feel like testing every Mhz...
For now it's at 500 Core, 1000 Shaders and 800 Memory

 

Basically as high as it lets you go is safe. Eventually your card will artifact and downclock itself. That is why it is important to use ATi tool in conjunction with rivatuner to run artifact tests on each new overclock for a good 15 minutes. If it artifacts drop the clocks a little and test again. No artifacts up the clocks. As your card is already running warm at 95C you don't have much headroom left before it will artifact anyway. Unless you get those temps down as I suggested above is a start.

 

Basically 8400M GS is a card which u shouldn't overclock at all!!!

 

Lol people on here overclock igp's the 8400M GS is just about worth it

 

What graphics settings do you have COH on?

 

The 8400m GS is one of the defective NVIDIA cards and you shouldnt overclock it at all unless you wanna kill your laptop

 

Some on low , some on medium @ 1280x800

@King19... I already changed one... if it's deffective they should change it once it crashes... can't care less...

 

I recommend using the clocking tool that comes with system tools from nvidia its more recent that rivatuner.My clocks are at 500/590/1000.

 

what is your memory clock? 590? or 1180? Default is 600 as I remember...
GPU: 500 and Shader: 1000?
thanks

 

core/mem/shader is the order i used.I have the 128mb version with DDR2.

 

If you've got those temperatures you really shouldn't try overclocking.

Back in October there was this big faulty card thing involving mobile and desktop 8400/8600 cards.

 

I have the one with 128 DDR3 memory.
They already changed the fauly one last year with the new revision...
I played at those frequencies for more than 1 hour and everything was fine... max temp was like 93C.

Weird is know that I restarted the PC and rivatuner doesn't let me overclock anymore. Once I click OK it goes back to factory frequencies... any ideas?

 

I had a 8400m GS 128MB last year in my old Sammy, and it was absolute RUBBISH.

I did overclock it quite a bit though can't remember how much, but even then, it wasn't that great still..

Didn't have any overheating problems though, it never used to go over 85 degrees.

 

Undervolt your CPU to partially undo the higher temps because of OC'ing.
While an OC'ed GPU will still produce more heat, the overall 'heat package' will be lower, causing also less wear and tear on your fan.
CoH deserves tweaking! "If I see one more bag of f......."

 

Exactly what I do. XD
If CPU and GPU share the same heatsink or FAN, lower the temperature of 1 side will help the other side too.

 

I have the same notebook and GPU, and overclock to 585 core/900 memory with no artifacting. I applied the copper mod, and used Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal paste.

GPU temps: 50 C idle, 67 C load (5 minutes of RTHDRIBL)

3dMark06 score > 2,100

(CPU has AC MX-2 as well, and is undervolted.)

 

Any ideas?

 

Rivatuner sucks LOL?
Rumour said Rivatuner is for desktop.
I used Rivatuner on my desktop and it sucks.
It allow me to overclock but the temperature of my GPU(ATi) raise 10C(more than gaming) even idling. So, I use CCC(it is official from ATi), but CCC only allow me overclock slightly(damn).
For my laptop(nvidia GPU), I used Nvidia System Tools(nTune) which is an official overclocking software from Nvidia. It allows me to overclock freely and light resource.

 

Runs perfect on my 8600m gt, all settings on high. Maybe you could upgrade to that card if your laptop is mxm compatible.

 

Try running rivatuner with the /build or /rebuild parameter (can't remember which one) to re-initialize the databases.

If that doesn't work, perhaps try re-installing your display driver or use another version.

I'm using 176.44 latest official Dell version.

 

hmmm I tried with the Nvidia System Tools but once I change the performance settings (i put it on custom and OC) under "Device Settings" and hit apply it says:
"The changes made were invalid and will not be applied" and it goes to factory frequencies...

 

thats because you cant use random numbers you have to increase everthing 1 at a time .but increase frequencies at small amounts.

 

i tried that too... doesn't work.
It worked before but now it's not working anymore...

 

try reinstalling system tools and what ever driver you have.im using 190.57 for overclocking my card.Could you take pics of the control panel? Use this: Hit Print Screen button > open Paint ( Start > All Programs > Accessories ) > hit Ctrl +V