8600m GT 256mb DDR2 Crysis demo results-AWESOME!!!

I just got an Inspiron 1520 with windows xp, a Core 2 duo @ 2 GHz, a gig of ram, and the 8600m gt. I was able to run the Crysis demo with textures, shaders, post processing, water, and sound on high; objects on low (will change to medium after I get another gig of ram); and shadows, physics (could probably change to high), volumetric effects, game effects, and particles on medium. I also enabled god rays, edge aa, and parallax mapping via the command console. To run the game like this smoothly I had to set the res to 800 x 600 (full screen scaling off, of course), but personally I find that size more than sufficient (probably because I watch so many tiny youtube videos). I must have been getting at least 30 FPS, the game was running so smooth (that is very smooth for crysis). And there were almost no slowdowns. It would be slow for about a minute after loading up a saved game, and it lagged during cutscenes a little bit. I overclocked my card from 475/400 to 660/560 with ATI Tool (It was my first time overclocking and it was really easy). Before I OC'd I could barely run the game on medium. I hope this helps anyone looking for crysis performance with this card. Later I might try upping physics to high and the res to 1024 x 768.

 

Wow I am not sure I'd be comfortable with OCing a notebook gfx card. What kind of temps are you getting?

 

Well it's a GT card and besides, gpu's can go up to 100C without problem

 

i tried the demo before and boy was it choppy! was running at med settings with 1280x800 resolution. what drivers are you using?

 

Pics...? (a)

 

You can run all high, exept Shadows/Shaders on low @ 1200x800.
FPS will be 20~45 all the time.

 

Many many people OC their notebook GPU on this forum. If you're smart about it, it's safe. Even if you're not smart about it, you probably won't ruin anything.

 

I'll post some pics when I get home from school (in 7 and a half hours). My temps are high, but not ridiculous, so I think the card is ok. It's been running totally stable. My drivers are the modded 101.28 drivers that came with the laptop. And trust me, lowering the res is WELL worth the graphics boost. And considering this was just the demo, which isn't even as well optimized as the full game, AND I'm getting another gig of ram, I think I might be able to run the game with a mix of medium, high, and very high at 1024 x 768.

 

The full game with latest patch runs a clip better than the demo so considering picking that bad boy up.

 

I am more than aware of OCing GPUs on my desktop and what kind of stress they can take. My 7900GS OC'd like crazy with a zalman vf900, it onlyhit 50c under really heavy loads. My 8800GT even with stock cooling has a decent amount of headroom getting 700/1000 and idling at 52c, load gets well into the 70s.

I just wasn't aware that cooling in a laptop was good enough to trust. Even your ambients are going to be effected. I am still curious what your temps are like though so if you have a chance let me know.

Also you should use Rivatuner not ATI Tool, unless they added shader clocks to ATI Tool you can't OC those with it. But you can in RivaTuner

Cool well than I am looking forward to my new laptop purchase even more!

 

How would the results differ with the GDDR3 version?

 

Another way to get more FPS out of Crysis is to install the Natural Mod. You could do many of the tweaks it does yourself but that would take you forever to find the same settings. It recolours the landscape and gives the lighting an even more realistic look. It also reduces texture quality a bit (which you will not notice) and disables DOF and motion blur. But even if you re-enable those you will get better FPS than Crysis vanilla. Check it out. I actually liked Version 1.2 better than 2.0... mostly because of the night scenes but 2.0 looks really sweet in daylight.

http://crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=14195

 

Ya OCing notebook GPUs is easy and pretty much safe, I got my 8600M GS from (stock) 500/400 to 700/500 without any problems.

 

I couldn't OC the shaders in Rivatuner. Maybe it's my drivers, but everything is going smoothly now.
Anyway, I decided not to post pics because pics don't mean anything. I would post a video, but Fraps takes away too much performance, and I don't feel like installing it. But in the good news department, I upped everything to high except shadows on medium and object on low, and upped the res from 800 x 600 to 1024 x 768 and the game was still playable with r_useegdeaa 2 (enables highest edge aa), r_usepom 1 (makes the ground more 3d), and r_sunshafts 2 (enables god rays in DX9). I wouldn't keep it at these settings because the slow downs occurred more often, but the game was playable by all means. I think I'm going to drop the res back to 800 x 600 and up objects to high. I also might drop some minor things (game effects, volumetric, physics) back to medium, as I don't see too much difference.
My video card idles at 52 C, not sure during load, but I can't test that until later as I am leaving for Academic Decathlon in 5 minutes and won't be back for 12 hours. Sorry.

 

Why anyone would disable DOF and MB in their mod is beyond me...
But yes, Natural Mod does look very nice. I also might try a mod from the same guy, Pydon's Shader Tweak, and I might try Helder Pinto's config.

 

Fraps is extremely light on resources, I've never noticed that it lowers the performance of my games at all.

 

unknowntt, I could help not noticing your sig, what kind of machine is that?

 

That's my machine! Unknowntt stole it... Good thing I put LoJack on it...

 

It's a joke.

 

Not to Hijack this thread.
But can anyone do a crtl atl del and find out how much physical memory Crysis takes.
Thank you!!

 

I did this a couple times and I got 1.38GB once and 1.45GB the 2nd time. I have no AV in the background and my idle usage is about 198MB.