COD4- Laptop vs Desktop

So I wanted to do a side by side test of my desktop vs my laptop. I chose COD4 pretty much at random. It just happens to be a game that's on both machines. In the end I was pretty sad about the results.

Desktop:
AMD Athlon 64 3700+
8600 GT
1GB ( I can't remember how fast and I'm too lazy to check so nyah)
5200RPM HDD
Viewsonic G90f (totally not widescreen) CRT
Windows XP

Laptop in sig

Now I realize the biggest differences in my setups are:

A. Cor 2 duo 2.8 vs AM64 2.21
A. Vista vs XP
B.16:10 vs 4:3
C. 4GB vs 1GB

The GPU's are essentially the same from what I read. I turned off aero to test, but it honestly did nothing.

The results:

On the same settings (other than slight resolution difference because of the widescreen) and desktop actually gets about 9-10 FPS more and looks a thousand times better, because of the CRT. (I hate LCD's) Of course maps load waaaay faster, but I expected my laptop to at least match the FPS of my desktop. Also, have newest laptop2go on laptop and 6 month old driver on desktop. Lame. Anyone have a suggestion for bettering my laptop graphics?

 

For your HP laptop with Vista, is it the original Vista or with Service Pack 1 (SP1)? I remember on my brother's desktop, he had ran Crysis with 1gb of ram and a 3.0ghz Pentium 4 in XP. He upgraded to Vista, no service pack and 2gb of ram and a Core 2 Duo and it actually ran noticeably slower!! He immediately wiped it off and reinstalled XP and we saw a huge performance difference. So we've been scared off by Vista.

I hear that Vista SP1 is much better in performance now though, especially in games but we haven't tried it out yet ourselves, we're still happy with XP. But I'm sure you'll notice a nice boost with SP1 if you don't have it already.

One reason the maps may load faster on the desktop is because almost all desktops' hard drives run at 7200RPM whereas most laptop hard drives run at a slower 5400rpm.

What is the videocard on the HP laptop?

 

oops, I didn't realize my GPU wasn't listed in my sig. 9600m GT, pretty much an 8600 GT. The maps load faster on my laptop actually, the desktop drive is 5200 (it's pretty old, I custom built it and have only uprgaded the gpu, because my 6800 GT died) (two of them actually.) (why do I keep buying crappy nvidia cards....)

I do have SP1, it came preinstalled. It's not a huge performance difference, I just figured the cor duo 2.8 would at least improve me some...even for games not multi-threaded. Unless of course it is vista and my cor 2 is actually just evening the gap.

p.s. Unreal 3 test:

Same results, except that on my desktop I have around 14 or 15 fps until things load into my ram. Running around sometimes causes it to spike down to 20 (from 40-50)

*edit- I did some more playing around and my laptop started beating out my desktop. I went to torlan and my desktop kept dropping to 10-15fps whenever it had to render something new.

If I had more RAM it'd do better. On the plus side, I enable hardware physics on my laptop. I'm not sure my poor desktop could take it.

 

I'm not sure about this, but I hear that a laptop version of an 8600GT for example can be up to 30% slower than the desktop version.
Can anyone confirm?

I assume your running the game on your laptop plugged in. Maybe you have some power saving feature enabled and the graphics card is being down-clocked to conserve power, even if plugged in.

 

The desktop card is considerably more powerful than the mobile card. 25-30ish% depending on the clocks and drivers is what I have read in non-standardized posts. Your desktop is decent with a better gpu, your laptop is overall a bit better with the mobile gpu. If you were to do some minor upgrades on your desktop, it would be significantly better than your laptop.

 

Does that performance difference apply to all desktop and notebook videocards or have maybe the newer generations like the Geforce 9000 series shortened that large performance gap? That may deter me from getting a desktop replacement gaming laptop and just get a desktop instead.

 

I've been planning on getting a new mobo, putting in an AMD quadcore, 10,000rpm HDD and getting faster/more RAM. It'd be a pretty cheap upgrade and then my desktop would fly past my laptop. I still do prefer playing games on my laptop, because I do like being able to alt-tab out and load faster. I just expected things to be different.

 

Install XP on it, I bet it'll be much faster than the desktop after that. If you have an XP disk you should go ahead and try it.

 

I do have an xp disc, but drivers are screwy. People have only gotten xp to mostly work on the DV7. I'd prefer fully working vista over gimpy xp. I don't mind my laptop's performance.

*Edit-
After more testing my laptop is starting to shine out ahead. When a lot starts going on my desktop starts getting bogged down, I actually decided to down a few settings on COD4. It became unplayable during big firefights.

 

I agree the laptop cards are still way behind their desktop counterparts. Take for example, the most powerful notebook card,the 9800M GTX is even weaker than the desktop 8800 GT. Definitely your desktop 8600 GT is way more powerful than your notebook's 9600M GT.

 

Rahul, in my opinion, supported by Pranalien, the desktop cards will always be more powerful. The mobile cards will always be restricted by space regs and heat. Desktop cards have more space and better cooling, hands down. Desktop cards also have a higher tolerance for oc'ing compared to the mobile cards. Even two 8600GT's in sli would make a great gaming machine.

 

I knew that a desktop card would always win out. The mobile version of a graphics card is about 25 to 30% weaker than its desktop counterpart? I didn't know the difference would be THAT large. But its to be expected I suppose.
I'm completely torn between getting a desktop or desktop replacement laptop. But if the performance difference of a desktop card is that much greater than the mobile version, that gives another pro to getting a desktop.

 

Dear Bungalo Bill

CRT monitors have a better DIsplay, but it has very bad side effects.

 

Hmm there must be something else underlying in your vista install. Personally I notice little to no difference working in XP or vista on my dell. I may see 1-3 FPS difference but for the most part they are exactly on par with each other. Granted this is SP1 on as pre sp1 there was a noticeable difference in performance between vista and xp, but now the difference just isnt there so I have my XP discs in storage.

 

What exactly were the resolutions on your desktop and laptop, Bungalo Bill? If the slight difference is more pixels for your desktop, then your conclusion logically follows (i.e. 1280x1024 desktop, 1280x800 laptop), but if it's in favour of your laptop (i.e. 1024x768 desktop, 1280x800 laptop), the difference in FPS may actually be smaller than it is.

I'd agree that generally desktop cards are better, but I don't know that the difference is that much. One of my friends has a desktop 8600 GT (I have a laptop one) and it performed noticeably better - but it also has GDDR3 instead of DDR2. I'm not sure if the difference would have been noticeable with GDDR3 - but then again, you could certainly argue that getting DDR2 instead of GDDR3 in a laptop without paying more is a tradeoff that puts desktop cards ahead. I don't know about 25-30% though - perhaps 10-20%? It does vary by card though.

In overall gaming terms, as well as economy and upgradability, a desktop is the better choice. The only real advantage of a laptop is its portability. That's really why I went with a laptop - had I been going into the workplace and living in one place instead of college and traveling home several times a year, I probably would have gotten a desktop.