Acer 5100 5023

I have an Acer 5100 5023 with an ati radeon xpress 1100
here are more specs: http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Spec...4/rpem/ccd/productDetailSpecification.do#tabs

How can I increase my performance, cheaply or for free? As far as editing settings and what not are what I am most concerned about. Battlefield 2142 plays pathetically, even tho I know it is an intense game resource-wise, I would have thought my specs would be good enough if I tweaked them to run it tolerably. Thank you!

Edit: I have just read the sticky,and I realize I was one of the people tricked by the virtual ram trick. I knew what it was, but did not know what little it did. Will I be able to play games effectively on this comp? I paid $600 for it two days ago, could I take it back and getter a better laptop in the same general price range??

 

That pricerange is not for gaming. While you'll be able to run older games fairly well and some newer ones, consider saving som cash and getting a better computer. For about $1000, you'll get a Dell inspiron 1520 with a 8600M GT, a card that's about 6 or 7 as strong as the Xpress 1100. At least. There are also other options that's better. A dedicated card (even a low end) will serv you better.

 

agreed there. spending just a little bit more money will give u a huge boost in performance. the 8600gt will handle just about anything u throw at it. ive heard that the 8700gt can handle Crysis fairly well, and the 8600gt is just a little behind in performance. also remember that the main component in any computer that affects gaming the most is ur GPU. if u want to play games on a laptop, look at what GPU ur getting

 

Not worth doing!!!!

 

Guys he already has the laptop.

Could you give me a link to the "virtual RAM trick"? Playing around with the virtual RAM can jeopardize the stability of your system.

Try updating your drivers to a newer version - use our upgrade guide here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64910

 

i think he just meant the manufacturer labels the card as having 256 MB virtual ram or something making the purchaser think it is capable of gaming.

 

FYI...I have looked at this laptop, and it has 256MB of VRAM, 895 total with sharing according to the Display Properties screen. The issue appears to be the weak performance of the Xpress 1100 chipset period, no matter how much RAM it's given (it's a detuned X300 by the reports I'm reading). I hope to have a chance to get a 3DMARK06 score on it tomorrow, but the news I am seeing doesn't look good. I saw a similar issue with an X1300 desktop card a year or so ago that had 512MB of VRAM...the card was incapable of actually even using it, and game performance was well under what I would have expected.

The problem is that there are very few laptops out there that have a 7600 or 8600 series NVidia card, or an Xpress 1600 series or higher ATI, that are available for under $1000...most are a lot higher. And some of those only take 2MB of RAM, which will make them start to drag eventually if you go to Vista 64-bit in years to come as applications, games and Web multimedia are more fully developed.

 

I'd love to see the 3DMark06 scores posted for this laptop if you still have it.

http://www.futuremark.com/download/3dmark06/

Thanks.

 

The X1100 will barely get 400 in 3DMark06.

 

Yeah...I was just curious to see the specifics on this one with the dedicated VRAM.