Intel X3100 users rejoice! It's finally here! New Pre-Beta Drivers

I can finally ditch x3100 and move onto my new lappy with 9600GT. The good thing about x3100, actually, is that your work productivity is much higher, due to the fact that you simply play games less.

IntelUser, once again, my respect! Keep up the good work!

 

yep.

run -swtnl for best results. the game is unbearably slow without it turned on.

 

I've tried pixelvion but all the thing become much more square (especially ugly with spell) so I don't like that mod too much. I've realized with or without Pixelion the difference in FPS is only about 1.
If you want the best FPS for Oblivion just download the newest patch, they have the very low(which they turn off shader I believe) option, in this mode the game will be hardly below 24FPS even in the outside.

 

i edit the pixelivion which i deleted some file in the mod file example like if u don't want the spell to look square pixel go delete the spell folder inside it, u will notice a different...while i using pixelivion those place like oblivion realm with alot of bump maping could be more playable because the pixelivion disable all the bump maping...i know about the lowest setting, but it is too bright for me..& can't stand those ugly graphics...haha

 

I'm still waiting for the GMA 4500MHD or GMA X4500 user to come out with the test for Windows 7. It would be fun just to see the numbers and see if its improved.

 

No GMA 4500MHD/X4500HD users with Windows 7??

Anyways, I'm liking how Win7 is helping the X3100 quite a bit. So maybe it was all MS's fault that X3100 was worse on Vista than XP.

That gave me something to ponder. It seems its the improved memory management that would be responsible for performance increase. In the end, it always seems to be memory management that is the bottleneck of computing.

It looks like X3100's core could be more powerful than I thought. The reason in certain cases GMA 950 is superior to X3100 is because of Zone Rendering, which can save bandwidth and increase performance(They took it out because it doesn't work well with modern games and it doesn't work all the time either).

Now sure the IGPs have DMA(Direct Memory Access) so its not clobbered by FSB. But in Intel's case, they might have crippled it to cut costs.

The successor to GMA 4500 in Nehalem might have a potential with its substantially enhanced "memory management" and bandwidth.

 

Thanks for the suggest, gonna try it soon
I've just tried the Burnout Paradise on x3100, the game mostly unplayable in all Paradise city at around 8 FPS, some place it boost to 30FPS but they're pretty rare. That's in XP, in Win7 the FPS is even worse.

 

Bah... some EA games are so badly optimized... I wish they back on the good times from NFS Underground 1 & 2... fast games... runs really well in the poor X3100...

Call of Duty 4 is another game that impress me on the X3100...

Is just so cool... and it runs... very playable...

 

EA Games are always unplayable unless you have a super PC and they are very BADLY optimized!

I quit playing games on PCs (I bought a PS3, at the end it is a cheaper solution *if* you generally buy games ), they always offer you problems... Be it drivers, SO, HDD, etc. I start my PS3 on 5 seconds and the game on 5 more seconds. On a Hibernated PC you take at least 5-6x times more than that and it isn´t always silk smooth.

My laptop (= most X3_00 X4_00 owners) is for work and funny games (= older ones), not for playing latest games.

 

Haha this is true, me and my 9600M GT are wasting too much time! Keep fighting the good fight, guys!

 

Thank you guys for your suggestions.

 

new drivers for xp, v. 14.37.1.5029
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/fil...+XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go!

these 6.14.10.5029 against latest desktop drivers 6.14.10.5002 (gl 960, 2gb ram)

3dmark01 about + 200 points, now 3400
3dmark03 about + 50 points, now 1292
3dmark05 about + 20 points, now 676


I'm continuing to test...

 

In the Desktop section some new driver releases appeared. As always with the desktop releases - no changelog yet. However will some day show up in the GM965 chipset section:

. Vista 32-Bit v15.12.2.1637 dated 2/1/2009

. Vista 64-Bit v15.12.2.64.1637 dated 2/1/2009

 

i cant get them to work with my dell inspiron 1525 :S with the 965 intel chipset?
Someone help? thnx

 

anyone notice the aero performance on these new driver releases steadily dropping?

the pre-beta got a score of 3.4, second to latest desktop version got 3.0, and now these new desktop ones only get a 2.7.

 

have u try the "have disk" method?

 

have disk method?
Nope... but i think they are not compitable with the mobile version of 965 family... but whats the disk method? can you explain it to me thnX!

 

The driver comes with a file installation_readme.txt, which explains the MANUAL "HAVE-DISK" method in section 3.

They are compatible with the mobile GM965 in general.

However specific to the Inspiron 1525 any version beyond 7.15.10.1537 failed with color artefacts:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/user-community-for-visual-computing/topic/61093/

I don't know whether v15.12.2.1637 fixes this. It's only a known issue with the Inspiron 1525.

 

it worked felles! thnxx alot!
i played css with cevo cfg and its playable... not perfect but playable...

 

You say v15.12.2.1637 works on Dell Inspiron 1525 without color artefacts? What's the BIOS version you have installed on the 1525?

 

The newest, ithink 13A

 

Hi there i installed F.E.A.R and in one part of the game it crashes and i get Don't send error please help ..

 

which part of the game it crashed? I have finished FEAR without problems on x3100 before.

 

hm i just retested the latest desktop drivers and got a 3.4 under aero performance.

BEST DRIVERS EVER!

 

In the beginning where the character is knocked with wood stick and you are ordered to join your teammates.

 

aereo performance on my old desktop pc with an old Radeon 9700 gives a score better than a GeForce 7600GT DDR3!!! it is better to use serious benchmarks to see which drivers are best

 

Problem solved

 

Can someone tell me that *if I put an 2Gb SODIMM + 1Gb SODIMM* (both of the same speed and type) I will still run on a dual channel configuration with my 865 chipset and will my X3100 run the same way?

At present I have 1Gb + 1Gb 667Mhz CL5

 

Any one tried Left 4 Dead ? I was able to run it but the fps were average 10 maybe someone has a configuration or something to get better fps?

 

One Half (= 1GB) of the 2GB module will then run in dual channel mode with the other entire 1GB Module. However the upper half of the 2GB module will run in single channel.

It's called Flex Mode:

Kapitel 5.2.1.1
Intel Flex Memory Technology (Dual Channel Interleaved Mode with Unequal Memory Population)
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/316273.pdf

For normal desktop usage with a discrete GPU this should be fine. However with the X3100 regarding graphics you rely on fast memory performance and therefore I suggest buying at lest 2x 2GB = 4GB.

I have 4GB in my Dell XPS M1330 with lots of devices (webcam, fingerprint, cardreader, WiFi, Bluetooth, Firewire, ...) and even using a 32-Bit OS I can use up to 3.57GB. I consider this very fair!

 

I just hope you don't judge the performance by the WEI performance index

Did a quick test: TrackMania Forever 2.11.11 en Benchmark 1280 x 720 defaults, HW TL

3 independent runs:
v15.12.1: 27,8fps 28,1fps 27,9fps
v15.12.2: 28,3fps 28,3fps 28,4fps

Does somebody know of a trustfully benchmark related to driver performance such as:
http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=309411

I'd be particulary interested in the Vista vs. Windows 7 Gaming performance.

 

7oby: thanks for the quick answer. I was looking forward to buy 2Gb + 2Gb but I don´t know if my MSI PR200 (MS-1221) can handle (initial manual said 3Gb)

I don´t mind the OS only uses 3.57Gb as long as it uses it on dual channel and 3.57 is better than 3Gb

I´ll be using Windows 7

 

MSI state it can take up to 4gb here - http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?...at_no=135&cat2_no=&cat3_no=&prod_no=1208#menu
Just as stated above a 32bit operating system can not access that much, you'd need a 64bit OS.

Without spending more time searching I don't know if they have a 64bit capable CPU with which to run a 64bit OS on though.

 

The main problem here is when u look at the teamate the FPS drop dramatically, unless there's a patch that fix it, the game will be unplayable
By the way, anyone can get Dynasty Warriors 6 to work, the game is slow as hell (it just like very smoothing slow-mo) even when the FPS is 30.

 

I don't want to go into the details of any 32 bit vs. 64 bit OS discussion. This is definitely not the right place to due it.

However the decision of whether you aim for a 32 or 64 bit OS should be made indepently of how much memory you have installed. The binaries of the 64-Bit OS are bigger, consume more memory and there is no real advantage memorywise if you have 3,57GB 32-Bit OS or a 4GB 64-Bit OS. It just doesn't matter.

Despite Dell etc. selling 64-Bit OS preinstalled there are still cases where you require a 32-Bit OS. Cisco VPN Client is still not available in 64-Bit just to mention one common example.

If all you do is surf the internet, watch powerpoints, do some spreadsheet etc. then there is no difference at all betwenn 32-bit and 64-bit OS.

Last but not least:
http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php
and Gavotte Ramdisk can make use of the "lost" memory between 3,5 GB - 4GB on a 32-Bit OS. However you'll no longer be able to use hibernate ...

 

Mine uses T7100 (Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz 800MHz) which would handle nicely a 64-bit OS but I want to stick with Windows 7 + hibernate (= 3.57Gb).

Thanks for the info, I think I´ll have to buy 2x 2Gb for my laptop. I don´t play games (basically web, office, video transcoding) so I don´t know if I´ll see any differences from going from 2 to 4Gb or if my battery will drain faster or slower...

Has anyone changed from 2 to 4Gb that could post the differences? (specially considering battery + X3100 performance)

 

Mine uses T7100 (Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz 800MHz) which would handle nicely a 64-bit OS but I want to stick with Windows 7 + hibernate (= 3.57Gb).

Thanks for the info, I think I´ll have to buy 2x 2Gb for my laptop. I don´t play games (basically web, office, video transcoding) so I don´t know if I´ll see any differences from going from 2 to 4Gb or if my battery will drain faster or slower...

Has anyone changed from 2 to 4Gb that could post the differences? (specially considering battery + X3100 performance)

 

I upgraded from 2x 1GB => 2x 2GB on a Dell XPS M1330 with the GM965 chipset.

While I do much more than office, I still noticed a much more snappy desktop performance. Office nowadays includes a lot of memory hungry processes running such as: internet browser, e-mail client maybe even launching word for spell checking, adobe acrobat in the background even when closed, aero (dwm.exe), sidebar, dock, anti virus, ... powerpoint, visio, skype, ...

On the other hand: Most of this snappy performance I would have gotten from a 3GB config as well.

Due to some poor written legacy applications I have to use from time to time a XP installation which I launch in virtual machine. This saves me a reboot and also allows me to switch between tasks if that's necessary. Launching a VM really pays off any MB you have installed.

--

Windows 7 is somewhat different. Most of it's smaller memory footprint and quicker startup it gets from managing services more resource efficient. The most prominent optimization are the on demand (read: triggered) services. You may read all about it here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Goin...Service-Controller-and-Background-Processing/
Therefore the difference between a 3GB and 4GB config might not be as noticable as in Vista.

It is very likely that most Windows 7 installations will be 64-Bit. And from this perspective 4GB just make more sense.

 

@7oby

I´m thinking on staying with my laptop for quite some time more, I´ve just upgraded the HDD from a normal 160Gb 5400rpm Toshiba (30-50Mb/s) to a 320Gb 5400rpm Toshiba (50-60Mb/s) and with Windows 7 I get another boost of performance.

I´m thinking on getting those 2x 2Gb 667MHz and reinstalling Windows 7, I think I´ll be better prepared for future apps. Nevertheless I still can´t manage to get X3100 Windows 7 *very* advanced driver to work with most games (PES2009 for ex.) and I have to install the nasty Vista driver.

64-bit seems very appealing but most guys I know with Vista 64-bit have serious problems with driver/program compatibility, not to mention gamming.

Nevertheless I´ve a serious target to bring my laptop to a very good performance:
- HDD update (DONE) - from 160Gb normal HDD to a new fast and rather energy efficient 320Gb 5400rpm TOSHIBA HDD SATA

- RAM update (TO DO): 2Gb 667MHz to 4Gb 667Mhz

- OVER/UNDERCLOCKING program for MSI PR200/MS-1221 (I can´t manage to find my clock PLL on the motherboard so I can´t underclock or overclock my CPU to have more battery/power): I think I´ll never find the answer to this one...

 

I swapped from vista32 to vista64 a couple of months after putting a clean v32 install on a new x61t with 2gb ram.

I have had no problems that were not generic vista incompatibility problems (rapidly overcome) and I would never go back. It felt snappier from the start, and testing some 64bit apps they use less cpu overall for better performance (eg mplayer classic hc 64). not running a 64bit OS cuts you off from a reasonable selection of improved software these days.
I later upgraded to 4gb ram (snappier overall but vista hibernation takes longer, win7 hibernation is much faster).

win7-64 is great too.

 

I'm not against 64-Bit software. Not at all. I was one of the very first people enjoying/benchmarking/using 64-Bit Java on Opteron Servers in 2003. And due to Sparc etc. I used 64-Bit software before. I'm also very aware that many recently shipped computers come with 64-Bit Vista and Microsoft is expecting to ship the majority Windows 7 installations in 64-Bit.

There are hundreds of threads here at NBR where people claim "just installed 64-Bit XP/Vista and it feels soooo much faster". Most of them really experience this since they switched from a 32-Bit installation that carried many 3rd Party apps (iTunes, Acrobat, Office, java Updater, ... all those launch during startup). You say having switched from a clean 32-Bit installation and still notice a speedup. That's hard for me to believe since all 32 vs 64 Bit Windows comparison benchmarks I have seen to date (and there are at least a dozen that I read) find out that both perform almost equally.

Anyway you mentioned MPC-HC 64-Bit and user rmcrys mentions that he's doing video transcoding. That's sufficient to give some light on the recent developments regarding this matter:

MPC-HC 64-Bit requires 64-Bit Codecs to be installed as can be seen from the readme. I think the Codec that matters most here is the H.264 one. One reason is that it's very CPU demanding and any % gain you get is highly appreciated. The other reason is that e.g. MPEG2 is decoded using the X3100 in hardware anyway.

Now let's assume you install 64 Bit ffdshow-tryouts rev2698 dated 18/02/09. A 32-Bit user will easily outperform the 64-Bit user by using 32-Bit the CoreAVC codec. Unfortunately there is no 64-Bit CoreAVC todate. But since CoreAVC is commercial and costs you US$ 14.95 the 32-Bit user will most likely also outperform the 64-Bit ffdshow-tryout user, by using ffdshow- MT which is uses a different kind of multithreading. Unfortunately only 32-Bit versions of ffdshow- MT are available. The performance gains of CoreAVC as well as the MT version can be seen here. Although I admit that on a dual core the performance gain of the MT version might not be that much as in the quad core benchmark.

If you try to do a apples by apples comparison, which is far from real word for a couple of reasons, you'll still find only very minor performance improvements. Any decoder/encoder uses the SIMD 128-Bit SSE2/3 registers for data processing anyway. To be more precise: On 11/02/09 (not that long ago!) 64-Bit Windows support for the most popular H.264 encoder entered the git repository and showed up on http://x264.nl/. This encoder is used in many popular encoders such as handbrake, super, MeGUI etc.

Anyway, the performance gain is about 1-3%. I doubt you'll notice this. In very rare cases and really insane (!= real world) encoding settings you might get up to 10% performance gain.

However you'll have a hard time getting 64-Bit x264 to fly. Avisynth 64-Bit support is poor. The most practical approach is to pipe data in from a 32-Bit process using 32-Bit Avisynth. Installing a 64-Bit Avisynth and MeGUI toolchain turns out to be a pain in the 4ss. And even if it flies you'll quickly notice the 2GB filesize bug.

All links I posted are from 2009 and very recent developments. In general the benefits from using 64-Bit are poor and only few apps can make use of it:
http://www.start64.com/

The performance gains 64-Bit apps get are due to the different calling conventions. On the other hand 64-Bit apps polute the 1st and 2nd Level caches of CPUs. The real benefit of 64-Bit apps is if your apps require >2GB of main memory. If that's the case your 64-Bit app will outperform the 32-Bit app by an arbitrary factor.

Greater gains from using 64-Bit apps you get by installing Linux. Almost any application is available in 64-Bit. Even Adobe Flash and also x264 supported 64-Bit on Linux since ages.

Summary:
. hardly any noticable speed differences 32 bit vs 64 bit app
. trying to gain slight performance boosts by replacing 32 bit with 64 bit apps is tough - especially if it comes to any sort of video decoding/encoding
. you may certainly install efficient 32-Bit Codecs on a 64-Bit Vista

 

so when i take my laptop to a 1920x1200 DCLCD monitor threw VGA.... everything is blurry & has a ghost underneath... anybody else experience this.. or have a fix?

 

I've got mine attached to a 1920x1080 LCD screen through VGA, and ive got no such problems.

 

what drivers do u have & what os u on?

 

check rez and refresh compatibility.
otherwise sounds like a bad / not well shielded cable.

 

rez & refresh rate are fine... & the cable is fine... i tryed 3 different ones... but i plugged it into my other computer which has a 8800... & it works perfect....

 

This is a typical analog VGA connector problem.

I don't know whether you guys remember, but CRT monitors >110MHz were supposed to be connected by means of seperate shielded BNC cables. Now you use a 154 MHz signal (~ 1920 x 1200 at reduced blanking) and try to convey this by means of a simple analog VGA cable.

Yes, there are desktop graphics cards where 1920 x 1200 still looks good when connected by VGA. But notebooks have a much worse signal quality than desktop cards and most notebooks I've seen don't look good at 1920 x 1200.

There isn't much you can do besides getting a notebook with DVI/HDMI output or a USB graphics card.

Some people removed resistors on the graphics card to improve signal quality. Don't have guides for this. Just googled this one to get an impression:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24222

However you certainly don't want to solder on your notebook.

 

yeah screw that hahaha.... lol.. ill just use it for my xbox 360 than i guess.. or my other computer... lol

 

I've used Vista and XP with the newest drivers and its looked fine. No obvious ghosting or bluriness. A little bit of noise if you closely but the individual pixels and letters are well defined.

 

A driver won't make a difference - it's a hardware issue.

I have GM965 (X3100) : can switch 1920 x 1200 between HDMI/VGA on same 24"
I had 855GM (Extreme Graphics 2 graphics) : 1920 x 1200 (works with IEGD drivers) and could switch between DVI (docking station) and VGA on same 24"

And seen some more notebooks: In direct comparison VGA vs. digital is always visible. Whether you see ghostings and blurry letters if you don't have a digital display for comparison depends on:
. the particular hardware and mainboard layout. The extend to which the image gets worse depends on the way the OEM designed the mainboard and its components.
. your eyes. There are people which won't notice an interpolated display. You can't expect those to see the differences between VGA and digital.

Yes the cable also makes a differences, but since he tried already three different ones...