Crysis on 128MB nVidia 8400m gs

Hi everyone

Ive been visiting the forum for a couple of weeks now and Ive read about Cryis. Most of what Ive read however, pertains to the nvidia 8600m gt and not the 8400m gs (for obvious reasons).

I recently purchased my first laptop about 3 weeks ago and I like it (except for that weird annoying noise from the headphone jack, so ill have to talk to dell about that =/ [wish me luck]). About a week ago, I decided to try out the Crysis demo. At first I played it in 800x600 and then I tried it at 1024x768 and 1280x800 (didnt play it for too long at this resolution tho) in dx10 as well as dx9 (forgot what resolution I had it at for dx9) and I have to say, every time it went smoothly (of course I had all the options at low and no AA).

Now after reading about how hard it is to get the game to run well on a superior system (with an 8600 gt), I was surprised at how well it played (or at least I think so) on mine. Now I assume that most people wouldve played it with some of the options on medium at least, but I am OK with everything at low, as long as I can play it (although I wouldnt mind having some of the stuff turned up )

So my question is..Is it safe to play Crysis (the demo and eventually the full version) on my laptop?? I ask this because Im worried that by playing such a demanding game on a laptop that perhaps wasnt made to play it, I might ruin my computer (from a burnout or overheat or something like that), not to mention the fact that superior systems have trouble playing it. Or, if I am able to play it, then that in itself indicates that everything is OK and I could play it without worries.
( I know the vista preformance rating is pretty much useless, but it rates the demo at 3.0 and my system at 3.7, and I mention this because my thinking is hey, if the computer itself says it can run it, it should, right?)

Im worried that it would overheat too much, especially since its a laptop.
The only thing I noticed is that the laptop got a little warmer (duh) and the cpu fan was blowing a little warm air (duh). I even took the game off fullscreen and opened the task manager and saw that the cpu never went past 62% I believe, and mem usage was at like 60 something. But what about the video card? could that burnout? Like I said, I dont want to overexert my system and eventually ruin it because of that.

I would really like to play the game, and like I said, I dont mind having the options at low. So what do you guys say? Should I or could I safely play it? any advice or suggestions would be appreciated

thanks =)

 

well it's not like 8400M GS was made without gaming in mind. considering many people play WoW w/ integrated graphics i think you'll be fine. i'm sure playing far-cry at high setting will tax your card just as much as playing crysis at low setting.

 

ok thanks hopefully i should be fine then
idk why so many ppl tend to criticize the 8400..i mean sure, its not top of the line, but it could at least even get crysis running... xD

 

Except it's not playable.

And no, it won't "destroy" your computer.

 

a computer doesn't just burn out from playing a game

 

Crysis always is in dx9 unless you set the settings to "very high" which basically means dx10 technology. This will then slow all graphics cards except top of the range desktop cards to a crawl. Infact I believe even the latest laptop 8800gtx can't play crysis at 1024x768 very high aka dx10. Crysis on low is just like any other dx9 game but maybe equal to slightly higher quality settings so its not too surprising that its playable with the 8400gs etc at low settings/res.

It's totally safe to play. I've overclocking my 8400gs on the same machine and played CoD2 for a few hours fine. If you're really worried download rivatuner and check the graphics temps there. Anything above 90deg in peak gaming and i'd maybe get a little concerned but even then its okay.

Dave

 

Crysis is definitely playable on the 8400m gs
I have it on 800x600 and low-med settings and I'm getting 25+ fps

 

Same here.
20-28 fps with everything on low...

But I don't recommend playying it for long periods of time, the laptop will overheat and probably do the auto shutdown thing...the fan automatically spins at its fastest only after like 30 seconds with crysis running..

 

That's weird, my m1330 doesn't get hot at all. The fans will spin up but the heat stays low

 

That depends of the cooling system of your laptop. Personally, i've played 3 hours crysis on my packard bell mv86-003*see specs in sig) and had no problems. Actually, back in july(VERY hot ambient temp) this thing was on all day downloading, defragging and virus scanning, then some hl2 in the evening. The hdd reached 52 C, but it didn't shut down. Right now it sith at about 35 C with the fan on low speed and sometimes stopping completely. So i must say that packard bell has done a great job with the easynote v/mv cooling system.

 

It wont over heat its not overclocked, it is ment to play games. And if it doesn its not your fault, which it wont. Now if you oc it then you might want to worry and then ud have a problem since that voids warrenty.

 

Atleast in theory. But i really don't understand how can they tell wether you oced or not.

 

If its done in software, its not detectable because its not permanent. You have to have that program load every time you start windows to overclock the card. No program, no overclock, no telling that it ever was.

 

Technically, it would case your card to run at high temperatures which should make the life of your card shorter. But then again, every 3d application/game will do that. And by the time your card goes out, your laptop will be obsolete anyway... my guess.

 

Thus arises the question. Is it worth getting an outdated laptop refurbished?

I only plan on getting a good year and a half out of my laptop, and its gonna be a year and a half of hella gaming.

 

I have a 8400m gs and I run the game at 854x480 which is the widescreen version of 800x600 I have all of the settings set to medium and physics set to very high, I run the game at 20+ fps but you need to overclock your card. Use rivatuner and have it set to 600/1200/500. For me it works no prob and my temp never goes above 65c.

 

you can safely think that GPU = CPU in this scenario.

what happens if you run CPU at 100% for long durations? if your cooling system is effective then CPU will never burnout (or fail). but if the cooling system cannot keep up with the heat generating from the CPU eventually the CPU will die given that BIOS/system software don't shutdown the system for over hearing.

same applies to GPUs... normally if you buy a laptop from a reputed manufacture you can safely think that your graphic card's cooling system is well built even when the GPU utilized fully. so in most case just by playing a high-end game won't burnout your graphic card.

its all about heating (temperature). otherwise just because you play a high-end game on a low-end GPU doesn't burnout the CPU or the GPU. you will only experience less game quality.

hope that helps...

 

Do you guys mind posting some screenies?

 

Check out on youtube... many people can play Crysis on 8400gs...

And people have problems with 8600gt because your talking Medium settings and some high which can definitaly take a toll.

And if the laptop starts caving in from melting... youll know lol jk... It wouldnt over heat... nowadays I believe laptops shut down automatically...

And if it overheats youll see artifacting (lines, squares, wrong colors etc...)

 

thank you very much everyone for the advice^^
i guess i should be fine then^^ the other day i let it autodetect/configure and it changed it to medium, but it wasnt really playable so i switched it back to low and it played well

ill also look into getting something to monitor the temperatures (it seems like everyone here uses rivatuner, ive never used it or heard of it, but ill look into it ) just to stay on the safe side

and i was planning on getting a cooling pad with a fan (more for being able to have my laptop on my lap lol ) so hopefully my laptop should benefit form that as well

as far as overclocking it...im not sure if i want to do that yet, as this is my only laptop and it is still new to me and i wouldnt want to risk anything since it is already going well, but its not something i wouldnt be willing to try later on

once again, thanks a lot for the advice

 

I played crysis demo on my packard bell lappie(in sig) pon 848x480 at med-low settings and got 25-35 fps. Pretty good for a 9 month old notebook, i guess. I also played for 3 hours I can't get any temp readings from the gpu and those coming from the cpu are useless(always showing 19 C).

But the laptop was pretty warm, especially under the left palmrest and the bottom. Still it wasn't unpleasant to use. The only part that was really too hot to touch was the vent where the hot air was coming from, but i guess that's normal. Also i got no artifacts, so i should be fine, right?

 

crysis on the 8400m gs... this is a joke right?

 

Why? It's very scalable. I'm surprised how well it runs on the 8600m GT (DDR2 no less).

If you can live with lower resolution and lesser graphical features, why not?

 

not everyone can afford a 8800GTX SLI system ya know

 

The key to playing Crysis on these mid range mobile cards(x1600, 7600, 8400, 8600) is to run at 800x600 or 1024x768 and keep the Shadow and Shader settings turned to low. You can turn the other settings up to medium(maybe high for an 8600) and be OK. You should be able to get 20-30 fps like this.