F.E.A.R. on my M90

Well, I just received my M90 this past week, and I have been playing a lot of games and demos. So far the only game I have completely on it is F.E.A.R. I'm also sure most of you have seen me make the comments on the performance of this game. For some reason, I cannot get good results. I'm running the Quadro FX 1500M, which as you can see from the benchmarks is quite the same as a 7900GS. For some reason, no matter what I do, I can't get above an average of 15-20 fps. This just seems way too low. I'm not sure if it's a hardware problem or not. All the other demos I have run great, including Prey. And it's at higher settings. I'm getting very good framerates there.

I even tried turning down to medium settings just to see how it went. Average 16fps. At Maximum settings: 15fps. That just doesn't make sense. And for some reason it auto-sets my CPU to Minimum. That should definitely not be happening with a 2.16 Core Duo. I don't know if it's my RAM bottlenecking my performance or not. At first, I just chalked it up to the fact that F.E.A.R. is a very demanding game. But then I've seen so many people say that they run it at High to Max settings on 6800s and x1600s, and my card is more powerful than those. I'm just wondering if there's something else I should try. I don't want to have to reformat, but I'm beginning to consider it.

 

For starters you have a Quadro. They may be based of the 7900's, but professional rendering cards like the Quadro arent so great for gaming. They provide a choppy experience sometimes. FEAR might just be one of those games in your case.

Second, your RAM is a little low. Fear runs best on 1.5 gigs or higher.

Is your Vsync option turned on? If it is, turn it off and see if that helps. You could also try updating drivers, but that probably wont help gaming on a quadro.

The reason fear always detects your CPU as minimum is because it looks at the CPU clock speed. It isnt so smart, it thinks clocks are all that matters. It doesnt know that a core duo will blow away a P4 clocked at 3.6ghz.

 

notebook_ftw, I had similar problems with F.E.A.R. until I increased my RAM to 2GB. If your HHD LED light blinks constantly during the game then it's definetely a RAM problem.

2TwilightVampire: Dell Quadros are really good game performers. I am able to play F.E.A.R. at 1600x1200 2xFSAA, with no softshadows and everything else on max. I'm getting 30-100 FPS at these settings.

 

I really do not think you are getting 100 fps on fear.. Not even close.. that is bs if you ask me.

 

I have to agree with Tokuman, but I would have worded it nicer

I didnt say it couldnt game, I just said its a quadro. I know professional rendering cards, and gaming CAN (isnt always) be choppy on them. Each card is unique. danton, your Quadro may be better suited for gaming than ftw's. But as a rule of thumb professional cards are for professional apps, not gaming. So they're designed and coded with that in mind.

 

I benchmarked FEAR for the M1710 review:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2887&review=Dell+XPS+M1710

 

I measured this with fraps. 100fps was _max_ fps, 30fps was minimal fps.

Built-in test:

1600x1200
2xAA, 16xAF,
no softshadows, effects and details on max
computer on max
F.E.A.R. 1.06:
Min FPS: 31
Avg FPS: 51
Max FPS: 107

Below 25 FPS: 0%
25-40 FPS: 35%
Above 40 FPS: 65%

I don't see why am I accused of lying

 

I agree that desktop quadros are not a good choice for gaming, especially given their price/performance ratio. On the other hand, from what I've read, equally clocked quadros and geforce cards based on the same core perform more or less equally in games, especially DirectX-based ones.
Quadro FX1500M and FX2500M used in M90 have exactly the same technical characteristics as GeForce 7900GS and 7900GTX in XPS m1710, respectively. From all reviews I've read, these quadros and geforces perform very close if not identically (3dmark05/06, games etc). I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia used the same silicon for both cards, giving them only different pci ids and different bioses.

 

Chaz where you playing at 1600*1200 with everything maximum with that FPS? That's incredible. I have lag while playing with 1024*768 at medium!

I need a new notebook.

Charlie

 

Sorry, I did not mean to sound rude or sound like I was accusing you of lying. I thought you did not know what you were talking about. I am very sorry for my poor choice of words, and the tone that those words are usualy interpreted..

Anyway.. In what part of the game are you getting 107 fps? I get like 35- 60 fps when I am at certain menus and such. With my x1400.. it is barely playable or comparable to the 7900 or a card similar to that.

My brother has the 7800 and he is lucky to get above 35.. but he is running msn and all kinds of stuff I tell him he should not run while gaming.. anyway.. sorry again.

 

No problem

100 FPS is extreme. It's achievable in empty corridors, for example (no menus involved). Anyway, it's not a useable measure of game playability. The most important number is the lowest framerate (30 in my case). The game is still sort of playable @30 FPS, but I personally prefer to lower resolution a bit (to e.g. 1440x900) to have some safety margin.

 

A good guide on optimizing F.E.A.R.:
http://www.tweakguides.com/FEAR_1.html

 

a bit off topic, but I've got a 512MB Quadro 120M (I think its like the 7400 or 7600) how will this be for game performance? I dont mind going to lower res (I've got 1920x1200, but like 1280x800 or 1440x900 would be fine for gaming)

 

The NVS 120M is based on a Go7400, see this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=61530

 

Thanks! thats what I thought but I wasn't 100% sure, so I should be able to run it at low/med settings at like 1280x800, thats cool, I dont think I'm gonna play that too much though, I'm more into less graphic games like NFSU and Rayman, but I do wanna play oblivion, hopefully that'll run on lower settings

 

There should not be this much of a problem. I'm pretty sure it's just my RAM. It's hard to think that 1 gig isn't enough. Times have changed a lot. Anyhow, about the Quadros not being good gaming cards, I'm really kinda tired of hearing that. I will agree that most Quadros are not nearly as good for gaming. Just look at the Quadro NVS line. Even the Quadro FX 1400 and the 350 in the Precision M70 and M65 respectively aren't any good. It seems that they just made a few modifications to the 7900 to make the 1500M and the 2500M. There are a lot of people that agree that the M90 is a fantastic gaming machine.

Anyways, I guess I'm just gonna have to upgrade my RAM. Hopefully within the next few months that will happen. Thanks for the responses guys.

 

Okay, I found the problem. A few days ago, I installed SolidEdge on this machine to do homework, and I used the nVidia Control Panel to set AA for SolidEdge to 16x. Unfortunately, it set my global display settings to 16x, and I guess I forgot to check. So I was running the game at High Settings with 16xAA/16xAF. I'm surprised I was getting average 20fps at those settings. It was actually playable. That explains why it looked so good too...

Anyways, now the in-game test is showing a min 0f 48fps, a max of 147fps, and an average 80fps. That's at high with 2xAA/8xAF, so I'm gonna turn up AA to 4x and AF to 16x and just leave Soft Shadows off, and I should still be averaging 50-60fps. Now just to upgrade the RAM...

It's good to know that Prey and Quake 4 run at max settings with 16xAA turned on.

 

Well, you wupped up on my 7900GS

Auto Performance benchmark test; 1600X1200 (Max Allowed) V1.05

Min-30 FPS
Average -46 FPS
Max – 89 FPS

Nothing wrong with that chip! I would love to try out a T2500 to see if i'm CPU limited.

 

Well, it definitely looks like F.E.A.R. is more CPU limited than GPU limited on our notebooks. On the other hand, my FX 2500M should be equivalent to 7900GTX, not GS (at least according to 3DMarks and some other benches), so this may also be the cause of difference in frame rates.

 

As others have already pointed out, this is not accurate when "discussing" the Quadro FX 1500M and FX 2500M found in the M90 laptops. They perform identical in games to the Go7900 GS and Go7900 GTX in the M1710. Many threads on NBF.com covering this. I suspect many more to come.