About the Ati mobility Radeon HD 5870.

I installed this into my Alienware M15x. It was a success. Massive fps improvements. For example Dead Space can run on max setting on 1900x1200 no problem (I use vsync so its capped at 60). There some things that doesn't make sense to me. In Dead Space if I use the flame thrower and stand still while continuously spewing fire onto a corpse, and the ember and smoke effects start up, the game's fps drastically goes down to 10< . Ive messed with settings and resolutions. Ive tried the lowest possible resolution, the 800x or 680x resolution?, and turned graphic options in game and on the CCC to as low as possible but it still does the exact same thing. It goes all the way down to 10 fps. Same with Bioshock 2's fire plasmid (except ts not nearly severe). It just doesn't sound right to me, is the 5870 really that weak or is this poor optimization on the developers part? Can anything be done to edit the effect particles level or something.

 

I noticed the same thing in crysis when you shoot the floor and the dust and particles rise up. I noted that doing this heavily loads the cpu and makes the fps drop like a stone. Your issue sounds similar so its not too much a stretch to say that it's probably the cpu getting bogged down with the particle fx.

 

It loads the cpu? I only have a i5 so theoretically if I upgraded to a mid or high end i7 it should improve or no?

 

To be honest i havn't given it much thought before because i've only encountered it on rare occasions but i'm not sure how much a more powerful processor would help. I'll test it out a bit more tomorrow and see if it's making it throttle because of the load or wether it's simply bogging down.

1 thing you could try is get throttlestop and run it in logging mode in the background whilst ur making it happen in the games and look in the log to see if theres any noticable dips in cpu speed.

 

Well looking at a cpu usage graph durring gameplay it shows that while Im using the flamethrower that Core 2 is maxed out and core 1 is about 30is%. When I stop core 2 goes back down to around 30%.
I was thinking the jump from 2.3 gh to 2.8 or 3.0+ would help if its a cpu problem.

 

Same in BC2, the smoke effects really choke up this GPU. I had more constant gameplay with my 9800m gts.

 

more or less it's the physix (or lack there of) that's causing the complex effects to slow down the computer, since it doesn't have a GPU to offload the calculations too, it has to go through the processor(so in those games a faster processor will make a big difference). Metro2033 is notorious for such slowdowns, even the menu is a slide show at maximum settings with my M17x. It's not really the 5870's fault. Unless you want to blame nvidia for buying out Ageia.

 

Yeah it didnt seem like a GPU problem (in other words The 5870's fault) since it always dropped to 10 frames no matter what graphical setting.
So Im thinking about upgrading from my i5 to a i7 820QM, do you think that will improve particle effects?

 

PhysX GPU acceleration has to be coded into the game to offload calcs to the GPU, I don't believe Dead Space is one of those games.

Smoke rendering is a known crippler to CPU's, as well as small particles that fly around ect. It really doesnt matter what the card is, smoke will cripple CPU performance.

Side note; I'd suggest if you're really thinking of buying a 820qm, just go for the 840. It gives 920xm performance minus the overclocking features of an x chip.

 

if he's looking at an alienware, an 840 would not equal a 920. The multipliers in extreme edition processors automatically go up to the highest selectable in AW laptops, even if all 4 cores are in use, while the 840 will clock back along with number of active cores.

 

For both things, I don't understand? How do you know Dead Space uses physx? Is it GPU or CPU PhysX? Proof?

Secondly I don't recognize his name as an AW owner, perhaps I'm mistaken which is why I referred him to the 840.

 

this maybe?

edited, dead space is not coded for physx.

As for the 840, if all 4 cores were in use, the processor would not clock boost all 4 cores to 3.2ghz, the 920 would actually run all 4 cores @ 3.2ghz if so needed. *huge* difference.

 

Oh LOL. GG drinking, skipping parts of the post while reading. Yeah in that case 740qm? What would you suggest to him Lozz since you are familiar with AW's BIOS.

 

lawl, nothing wrong with drinking and surfing. In all honestly, 920's are fairly cheap these days, a 740 is still going to cost $288, and that's only another $100 ish from a 920 on flea-bay. There's very little reason to upgrade to a 7xx or 8xx given the availability of 9xx processors and the significant performance advantages. Plus, unlocked multipliers make them golden for over clocking.

 

Where can I find these for sale? On Rjtech a 820qm goes 600.00 and a 920 goes for $1200.

 

You'll have to settle for ES samples, which has risks in itself, but of the dozens of people in these forums that have used them, none have had any problems whatsoever that I'm aware of.
www.ebay.com

if you want to go retail, then I would agree, the $600 price difference probably isn't worth it, although i'd be buying them from dell anyway for the warranty coverage, so maybe they're a bit cheaper.

 

Whats es samples? A user on here?

 

Engineering Samples. Essentially Testing samples used by Intel that could not be sold as retail products for whatever unknown reason.
INTEL quad mobile i7 920XM 3.2GHZ 12M 1333Mhz KING! - eBay (item 130399856319 end time Aug-11-10 03:54:39 PDT)
$428 from a reputable seller with user experiences with that seller in these forums even is very tempting if you can look past the fact that there's only a 7day return and 30day warranty on them.

 

And this would help with particle effects in games, such as Dead Space? thats the whole reason I would upgrade is for optimal gaming performance.

 

An ES sample is an engineering sample of a sample CPU. Wait.. thats kinda silly.

They are CPU's given by Intel to manufacturers and reviewers for testing. They are cheaper, but don't come with warranty. They are not completely legal.

 

as much as people like to say that;
1) I've never ever seen anywhere, that someone has had any legal issue with an ES sample
2) Is there some source where people are getting that they're not legal? Ie, some Intel Contract or other piece of paper that specifically addresses ES samples and what their owners can or can not do with them? With so many on the market, I can't help but think that it can't be *that* hard to obtain them, which then makes me believe there's nothing wrong with them in the legal sense..
3) Ebay does not allow the sale or transaction of illegal items, If you're saying that because they're on sale and ES samples that makes them illegal by default then there's absolutely no way Ebay would allow the transactions to take place for such a long time.

 

Well i can confirm that at least the problem i've seen isn't throttling related. So it probably is as lozz said - the physics and physx loading the cpu.
I've been considering getting a 920xm myself for a while but my only reason before was probably benching which wasn't a good enough reason really.
But now theres more food for thought... Still think i'll stick with what i've got for the time being.

Regarding ES chips, the only time i have heard of legal complications is that someone bought one and then contacted intel to tell them he had "unknowingly" bought an ES and that he wasn't happy (a lie) and they said he shouldn't have been given as ES and in the end they sent him an OEM chip as a swap. So he saved like £300.
Not really a complication though - more of a manipulation of the system.
So really even if they find out (theres no real way they can unless you tell them) the probability is that you'll just get it swapped for a commercial version.

 

Hm this is a very interesting thread, I always thought I could save money on the cpu when buying a gaming laptop, but apparantly I should get a very strong one since I will be playing games with a lot of smoke in them in the future (Empire total war has lots of smoke for example).

But for someone who is on a small budget, selecting a more powerfull corei7 cpu for +1000€ from dell/aw is not an option, and installing one myself would probably result into complete and utter failure. Do you guys think it would suffice to just go with one of the 'cheap' core i7 720/740 cpu's compared to the i5 processors, or are the i7 8 and 9 series an absolute must for future games (like metro2033)?

 

I can play Napoleon Total war(same game engine) on completly maxed settings sans AA and AF on one 5870 and a 720QM just fine, with no slow down at all.

There's a difference between physx and the nvidia drivers being able to offload general physics calculations to the GPU, it's why strong physics(but not ageia Physx) games run better on nvidia cards. Physx is just a more 'realistic' interpretation of actual world physics, while most games just use their own brand, however they're usually still able to offload some caculations to the GPU. It's why Crossfire 5970s still don't run metro2033 very well. My single GTS250 (which is basiclly a single 280M) plays Metro2033 just as well as and in alot of cases better than my crossfire 5870s in my m17x. If we had desktop speed cpus it would be different, but we dont. Even a fairly mid-range 870 clocks up to 3.6ghz, and a lot of people manage 4ghz on air with those easily, which would make it a lot less noticeable.

 

The way things are going games seem to be becoming more and more gpu bound and gpu technology seems to be progressing more towards general processing which includes physics/particles etc.
I have had the benefit of experiencing both nvidia and ati cards recently in an m17x and i can say that i never noticed these issues with the nvidia gpu's. Wether or not this is because of physx (which most of the games i play dont use) or just the fact that they're better suited for general physics calculation i cannot say - i can only speculate.

My instinct would be to stick with nvidia gpus for the foreseeable future as they seem to have worked out the kinks with the new line of cards (460m etc).

Processor wise i can only say that with ati cards - get a good cpu. With nvidias you can loosen it a little.

EDIT: lozz just seen your post - same general idea lol