BATTLEFIELD 2142 on a Budget

I have been playing the BF2142 demo on my budget notebook PC for over a week now and have been impressed with the new Titan game mode as well as my laptop's performance. I was supprised when my system passed the System Requirements Lab test for the game's minimum requirements and just fell short of the recommended requirements. It's impressive that an integrated graphics card is capable of playing an upcomming FPS such as BF2142 (although as many have stated, this game isn't very intensive).
So far, I have been playing at low settings on the highest resolution (occsionally on medium settings, but with noticable choppiness). At these settings, the game is very playable; even with all of the special lighting effects turned off, the game looks wonderful.
However, as this is just a demo, the system requirements may change again as well as certain gameplay aspects. (I'm hoping that they do fix some of the controls) I'm not familiar to BF2, as I've never played it before, but I think that the game's futuristic look is an improvement to this successful series. Titan mode, in my opinion, is actually a very strategic and fun new mode; conquest mode doesn't hold my interest anymore after playing with the new game mode. It really encourages coordination, cooperation, and some strategy with squad leaders and the commander.

FYI my notebook's specs are:
Turion 64 X2 ML50
ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 (128MB shared)
120GB HD
1024MB DDR2

While these screenshots are crude at best compared to dedicated graphic cards (see "BF2142 on X1400(screenshots)"), I am stilll somewhat proud of them!

Note: These screenshots were taken on the lowest settings (which explains the lack of enhanced visual effects), although the game was able to run at medium settings (I'll try to get a few more screenshots at med settings soon).

[EDIT] accidentally deleted screenshots

 

That's pretty impressive for the X1100, actually. Good work, I wouldn't mind playing with those settings if I had to!

 

Very nice! Wouldn't look too bad on a 12" screen, really. Makes an ultra-portable look a little more enticing...

 

Great post! Thank you very very much. Do you know how much 3dmark05 the X1100m scores?

Like Sylvain said, gaming on a 12" wont be bad at all.

Charlie

 

Thanks for the comments. The 3DMark05 score for the ATI Xpress 1100 is 622 according to this site http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/359/8
which compares the X1100 with low-end dedicated PCI Express cards.

 

622 points? I have seen X200M scoring more then that. I would guess around 1000 3dmark05 points. Maybe you can give it a run?

Charlie

 

The game is very nice on a 12" notebook, I can vouch for that.

 

It is tricky to judge integrated video cards based on a synthetic benchmark like 3DMark05. I would just ignore the results as they can be misleading.

The X1100 should be about the same speed as a Radeon X300, since it is 33% faster than the X200M according to ATI.

 

To the OP: Would you have any other games in your collection to test? I'd love to see how the X1100 performs on source engine games.

 

Sorry, the only other games I own are BFMEII and Halo (both run perfectly fine on the X1100). Besides these, I've played the new AOEIII demo (ran great) as well as Microsoft's Flight Simulator X demo (which didn't run all too well). I've never played any source games sorry (although I might try HL2 Episode 2 with the included Team Fortress 2 in the future.

 

How does BFME2 run for you? I play it at 1024x768 Medium Settings @30FPS on my X1400.

 

I'm not too sure about framerate (I don't think it is at 30fps though), but the game runs quite smoothly on low settings with a bit of choppiness at medium settings. I might download the demo again to run some tests.

 

Ok I will. I just have to download the trial right? Ill update thisi post with teh results.
P.S. check out the new in-mech screenshot.

 

OK, I downloaded the HL2 demo from valve and it worked remarkably well. I'd say it ran much better than BF2412 did on my notebook. Details like shadows, lighting, reflection were all turned on (unlike in BF2142) and the game ran smoothly. And what's more, my notebook passed both the min and rec requirements for the game! I'll post some screenshots soon when I have the time. Ok heres my first screenshot.

[EDIT] accidentally deleted screenshots

While youre in source, check out the Team Fortress 2 videos. Pretty nice looking and a nice change from traditional WWII online multiplayers. Source claims that the graphics will be more advanced than in any of its previous Half Life games. This looks to be true (in a stylized way) from what I've seen from the videos so far. Does anyone know if HL2: Episode Two will sell for around the same price as Episode One even with the included bonuses?

 

HL2 looks great there! Too bad there aren't many X1100/X1150 machines sold in Australia, it looks to be a nice improvement over the X200. And, you don't have to have Ep 1 to get Ep 2 right? I might look at it just for TF2.