Gaming issues with 8600m GT 512mb

from what I've heard there it's not well supported at the moment it could be something that improves over time tho ie post SP1

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39287431,00.htm

http://news.com.com/HP+says+no+to+Intels+Turbo+Memory/2100-1004_3-6188531.html

I don't think it was a waste of cash getting it, but I don't think you'll see much benefits til later patches/updates or when SP1 comes out.. with ready boost usb sticks I guess the jury is out on those too at the moment but if you had a spare one then stick it in.. it's worth a go!

 

I have a Sager 2090 out of the box. I'm sticking with the 64bit Vista Business. What driver for my graphics card should I get? and where do I get it?

 

The 165.01 drivers should be fine for you. If you need help installing them, PM me. I'll be glad to help.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13791

Download both the driver executable and the modded INF.

 

One big factor in the load times is the harddrive speed. Which is why I wouldn't settle for a 5400rpm (which you did). 7200rpm could be up to 10-15% faster.
And of course, I wouldn't have put vista on the machine if you wanted the best gaming performance. I'm getting vista once the drivers are more mature so I don't have a huge hit in performance. Also when running vista, you should really have 2 gigs of ram minimum, vista takes up ALOT, and 1 gig will just not suffice.

 

K just ordered http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=C13-6064

 

I'm a bit of a noob here, where graphics cards are concerned, but 512mb of VRAM is a lot of memory on a graphics card? So, why is this a problem? The other graphics cards I see are mainly 256mb.

I take it the 512mb on the 8600GT is indeed 'dedicated' memory, and not 'shared' memory (ie. shared with system RAM)? Or is it shared?

I would have thought that problems would arise mainly on shared-memory graphics cards, not dedicated ones with huge amounts of dedicated RAM on them (that is if the 512mb is indeed dedicated and completely separate to system RAM)

Cheers

 

half of it is dedicated and the other half is shared.

 

I too am running into some weird issues with the BF series (dont have any other shooters to try out). The game in single player will run great (probably small map sizes) however once I hop on multiplayer the HDD activity light stays on non-stop. Then once it does stop the game performance is incredible. Now my question is this...I have an Acer 5920G with the following specs:

T5250 (1.5GHz)
2GB RAM
160GB 5400RPM
8600m GT 256 MB DDR2
Vista Premium

Now the only thing I can come up with is that its a HDD and speed issue. Ive seen the games run great, when the HDD activity light is off. So Im taking that as the CPU is fast enough as well as the GPU. Obviously 2GB RAM is enough to run BF2/2142.

So could it be pretty possible that the access rates of HDD are causing problems?

Oh also a side note I can run Company of Heroes maxed out with 4x AA and 1280x7xx Res with great results and no HDD activity. I get around 25-40 FPS in COH with a map maxed out.

Thanks for the help!

 

Thanks for that. Is there any way of turning the shared capability completely off, so it never ever shares system RAM?

 

No, it has actually 512MB dedicated vram and can be turbocached upto 1GB ( source). Turbo cache only takes system ram when it needs it. Most likely, that is never, even if you are a hardcore gamer. But if still have a need to turn it off, Rivatuner application should have the option.

About the ram and hdd.. 1 GB of system ram is not enough for latest games to play at maximum settings, even with Windows XP and definitely not with Vista. From experience I can tell that, FEAR and many other games using high res textures stuttered too much with maximum texture setting when I had only 1GB of ram. Other settings could pretty much be set to maximum but not the textures, since they eat the memory most. So with only 1GB of ram, many latest games were very playable with maximum settings, except textures at medium or even minimum. And this is with Windows XP, which doesn't need so much ram for it self than Vista does.

Games that need to load stuff like sounds or textures a lot on the fly, can cause stuttering a lot more with slower HDDs. Generally though, slower HDDs only slow down the load times (loading a level etc.), which is not that of a big problem. 5400rpm drive should be fast enough. Making a 360 degree turn in 3D games, should load all the visible textures into vram and make the gameplay smooth until getting again to new area (works atleast in Oblivion ).