Laptop Performance

Hello everyone,

I recently got a sager 8130 and I am concerned about the gaming performance of my laptop. Here's the situation:

i7-2720qm (not overclocked)
gtx 460m (265.77 and not overclocked)[i tried the latest driver 266.58 and it gave an error,which is common, and didnt want to use altered desktop drivers instead]
8gb ram (3.49 usable)
generic Hitachi HD
power setting is set to high performance
windows 7 32-bit (I am aware that 32-bit windows cannot use all the ram)

COD:Black Ops = I am getting 15-25fps in any scene with shooting with 1920*1280 resolution and everything else set to low.

BFBC2 = With everything maxed, 25 fps in average (I was expecting this). The problem is that I get 35 fps in average with everything set to low, including the resolution. I get between 25 and 35 fps with all the intermediate settings. I have tried every setting for this game(including the ones in nvidia control panel) to no avail.

Crysis= Again around 25 fps with 1920*1280 and everything set to low and doesnt get much higher with everything is set to low.

Please note that I am aware of the capabilities of the gpu and dont expect to play every game at highest details with 60 fps.
But I am sure that there is a performance issue here.
The difference between my fps and those in netbookcheck's gpu chart is obvious.
( NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M - Notebookcheck.net Tech)

What is the reason? Is there something I am missing?

 

Not sure about anything else that isn't helping but:

32 bit OS limits ALL memory, that doesn't include just the RAM but also the video cards memory amongst many many other things. IIRC the max memory for your GPU is ~1.5GB which means that that limits your memory to 2.5 by itself (if the system allows the video card to use all of its memory to begin with, it's easily possible that Windows is preventing the GPU from using any of its onboard memory at all). Otherwise I don't know enough about Sagers to really come up with anything, unless there's some throttling involved somewhere...

edit: Old but relevant reading http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm

After your memory is all reserved by the system, you might have around 1.5-2GB of RAM available, most of which will get eaten up by background/kernel processes very quickly. That 32 bit addressing limit is most likely very seriously impacting the amount of memory available to you, possibly to the point of making the PC useless. Windows 7 installs come in with both 32/64 installs. There is NO reason to run on 32 bit anymore. NONE. At least not on a modern system. You might hear about PAE or some such crud. None of it works. PAE was neutered a long long time ago, and all it does is introduce bug prone commands to the processor. The other 'solutions' start stealing memory from the kernel and add it to other processes, none of which helps either.

 

Make sure your power plan is not on a power saving mode (which will downclock everything).

I assume you tried these games with the AC adapter plugged in... if not that's the problem. The battery can't provide enough power for such a high-end system, it will downclock itself on battery.

 

Use an older nVidia driver and a 64bit OS.

 

The first thing you want to do is to run HWmonitor to check all of your temps at idle and under load to make sure nothing is downclocking due to overheating. Also you are actually creating unnecessary heat and higher clocks by using high performance mode, the balanced profile is much better and you won't lose out.

Notebook check are not exactly reliable and their results are hard to reproduce because they don't follow the same conditions.

If you have Windows 7 32 bit then you should also have a copy of the 64 bit too unless your one didn't come with a disk or something.

 

Yeah, install 7 64-bit. Why were you using 32-bit in the first place? 64-bit is just 100% better these days, especially on a gaming machine.

Pretty much do everything that LaptopNut said.

 

I say its a gpu throttling issue. If you can, install MSI Afterburner. Launch it, then into settings configure OSD to show Core/Shaders/Memory on screen and monitor GPU clocks behaviour.
Also try to see how much CPU is used in those games, because if its near 90% that should mean GPU Bottlenecking and thus the gpu isnt working at all.
Before doing so, set the NVCP like this:

Go under 3d Options:
- Set display mode in Single Display Mode
- Set power management from Adaptive to Prefer Maximum Performance

And try again. If theres any sign of PowerMizer, disable it.

Also you may want to try latest Verde Notebook Driver, which are 266.58. Dont mess with Hacked Desktop Drivers, instead get the legit Verde ones from GeForce.com and run the built in scan tool.
And its not common to get any error using verde notebook 266.58. They should install fine if you get the right ones.
Besides 8gb of ram and you're using a 32bit OS? No way. A 64bit os can handle 32bit apps as well therefore theres no need to stick to 32bit with such a powerful cpu and gpu.

 

Thanks everyone, I switched to 64bit windows and now my pc runs like it should

 

Glad to hear it.

 

We have to wonder whether it's the clean install or going to 64-bit that fixed the issue. lol (Though, as soon as I saw the amount of usable memory and the 32-bit OS, I suspected that the graphics card wasn't using most of it's VRAM.)

I guess it doesn't matter what fixed the problem though; it's just a good thing that it's fixed!

 

In 32 bit OS, all non-RAM system memory is partitioned out first, including video memory, then RAM. So the video card would get its memory, but after everything (including bus allocations etc) you'd probably only have about 1.5-2GB of RAM, most of which gets used by the system fairly quickly these days. That, and you need RAM to interface with the video memory too. Long story short, in 32 bit, you have 4GB, minus video/bus/etc. It's why when Vista came out so many suggested only putting 3GB of RAM in computers, because that last gig would be swallowed by everything else (when most video cards were 256-512MB).

 

That doesn't explain why 3.5GB were usable.

 

Then their computer defaulted 512MB to video/bus/etc and gave the rest to the OS, which didn't help either The way 32 bit OS (really legacy these days) do things is generally...eh..what's the word? senile? The way that computers in general are designed to have some backwards compatibility has always been a bit awkward to begin with. Mem registers get saved for odd things, like default VGA/sound memory registers that are reserved since the original x86 days, on top of what gets saved for the actual video card in the PC. This happens in x86-64 as well and is for backwards compatibility in case you decide to drop certain older programs in the PC (doesn't usually work all that well, as we know..). The computer properties window also tends to report installed memory these days but -not- the amount of memory actually available. It's all quite awkward, and misleading. Best thing to do to avoid all the trouble is just to avoid 32 bit unless you have a reason not to.

 

wow i never realized the 32/64 bit would have such an impact on the performance of someone's PC.

 

Ouch. And people try to argue that XP x86 is still the best for gaming...

I'd say that's nice to know, but since I never planed to use a 32-bit OS on my computer ever again, it isn't a big deal. Still, it's nice to have another argument to prove to the XP diehards that they're only hurting themselves. Yes, I know I shouldn't be bothering them...

 

I dont want to say that youre offtrack or wrong, but you need to understand the context first.
Xp requirements doesnt require the same amount of ram that Vista or XP does. Check any game that supports both and you'll see that XP: 1gb of ram - Vista: 2gb of ram.
Being 4, Xp can use up to 3gb and vista up to 64gb or something like that.

Also, consider the os framework, the drivers, and the footprint. XP is still light, fast, and an OS made with DX9 in mind, which is the only thing that it supports.

As an example, im an xps m1730 user, with dual 9800m GTX. Nvidia keep releasing drivers but they dont work well with older cards under x64 Oses like Vista or Seven.

Switching to XP with the same drivers, theres a performance gain around 20fps, which arent 1 or 2. Same thing applied with Black Ops (game runs better under xp than vista on medium end hardware) and Bad Company 2....and alot of other games as well (Dirt 2, F1 2010, Source games, so on).

What i find WRONG is to advice to get rid of something when there are so many realities. XP is old, doesnt support DX10 at all, granted. But for DX9 gaming its the best thing you can do.
Dual boot doesnt require any effort, plus i dont see the point of play games CRIPPLED in their performance when they are DX9 coded.

Im dual booting with 7 x64. When i need to game with DX10 games, i fire it up. Or with emulators that requires a new os with 64bit.
If not, im happy to have a crazy performance under XP.

Because you know, when you do a session of 3-5 ours in a game like Cod,BC2 or anything else you hardly pay attention that is just XP.
Plus the SLI scaling works better as well as Crossfire. Its still a gamer choiche, imho.

To conclude my benchmarks with COD BO and dirt 2 are:

Using 265.90quadros on both Oses.

Dirt 2 sli enabled (maxed out DX9/8xMsaa):
XP: min 50 avg 60fps (video here: YouTube - Dirt 2 benchmark xps m1730 maxed out)
7 x64: min 36 avg 50fps

COD: BO sli enabled (maxed out DX9/8xMsaa/16xAF):
XP: min 45 max 125 avg 75
7: min 35 nax 90 avg 45

Thats it. And no matter what game you take for benchmark, xp still beats 7 on anything DX9 related. The memory limit is a myth because the specified amount of ram required by xp is halved compared to 7. The os is light, eats less resources. So 3,5gb is still a fairly large amount to use.

 

I was mostly talking about video memory, which neither XP nor Vista/7 uses a significant amount of. Less than 512MB is not enough for modern games. I was also talking about the the people who refuse to even dual boot 7, yet complain about BF3 not supporting DX9/XP.

 

quite likely it was a combination of a clean install along with the fact x64 OS will utilize the hardware in a much better way.