Ntune and Dell xps 1530

Hiya!

I've been reading alot on these forums but only just registered coz I need to ask some questions which I couldn't find the answer for in other posts.

I bought a Dell xps 1530 and can tell in here that it's a popular buy, and so far i'm very happy with it, only a few things i'd like to get better.

First off, am I expecting to much from it's performance ?

Here's the tech stuff:

intel core duo 2, 2,10 ghz
3gb ram
geforce 8600m GT
5400 rpm hdd
wsxga+ monitor 1680-1050 native.

Running Vista home premium 32 bit.

I play Wow, and since it's an old game I would imagine this computer should run it smoothly in very high settings, but my findings are that as soon as I use above 1x multisampling I get very low FPS, also in other games as soon as I go above 1x multisampling the game get's very slow, Assassins creed.

Been reading around the forums and seeing what scores ppl get from 3dmark, also been trying different drivers, atm i'm using 174.74, and seems to be running well but not sure if i'm getting better results as some people mention.

Also been checking my temp with Ntune, looks good, normally not over 70 Celsius while gaming.

I noticed that in Ntune alot of the hardware is listed as Not registered/reported, basically it only tells me about my GPU, clock freq etc.
And when I tried the 3 hour tune up that's in Ntune, it counted down but nothing really seemed to be happening,no unstability/crash or reboot as it's stated most likely to happen.

Alot of questions I know, and thanks in advance for anyone bothering to answer them, I just want to get the most out of this notebook and find out if my demands are too high

Thanks again for a great forum!

 

I wouldn't run any of those "auto tune" programs because they could cause instability. If you want to overclock your card there's plenty of information out there(use the search bar at the top of the page )

174.74 and 169.09 are 2 very good drivers i have tested.

Your framerates could be dipping if you are enabling AA or AF while running at your monitors native res 1680x1050.
The 8600m gt doesn't have the memory\bandwidth to run a game like assassins creed with high res, textures and AA\AF so try turning down some of those settings.

 

Gonna try and answer some of your questions since this post is bout to hit the 2nd page even though I have no experience with this card First thing you need to know is that the 8600gt is 128 bit and it is gonna struggle at high resolutions like 1680x1050 especially the newer the game. Also if you didn't know multisampling as they call it in WOW is the same as anti-aliasing and it kills fps more than any other graphic effect. At 1680x1050 I think AA above 2 is overkill, if you have to have it enabled you may need to drop the resolution to 1440x900 or something similar, I think this looks worse but its a matter of opinion. I know that WOW runs well on igp's but in my experience it hits a brick wall performance wise no matter how strong the gpu (comparing my 7600 to my 8800gts) and I think it has something to do with it being a MMORPG and relying on internet speed and latency.

As far as your clocks not being displayed correctly there are other programs that allow you to check speeds and sometimes are more accurate based on your driver. You could try Rivatuner and the new EVGA overclocking utility to check speeds also.

Another thing you should know is that if you are comparing to performance to other people here on the forum with the 8600gt gddr3 many of them claim that it overclocks well and therefore many have posted numbers with it highly overclocked therefore your score may compare badly.

Here is a performance thread about the 8600gt to give you more of idea how it performs with some games you may not own. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=214982

 

Thank you both for your replys, made me a smarter man so basically multisampling is bad, and lower res is required.
I'll check out your link and also rivatuner.

Thanks again!

 

Multisampling/Anti-Aliasing is not "bad" it just requires alot of gpu power and will lower your fps. On screen what it does is minimize jagged edges. If you are getting low fps in any game it would be the first thing I would lower or disable especially at high resolutions where the jagged edges usually aren't as noticeable. And yeah if all else fails lower your resolution and it should help alot.

Here is some general info but it doesn't have in-game shots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

Here is a Half-Life 2 comparison shot
http://www.tweakguides.com/images/Antialiasing.gif

 

I see I see, great stuff, I don't mind that there's a bit of jagged edges, as long as it runs smoothly and still looks good

I did some OC testing and so far I got these results, hope it's ok I link to the other thread so I don't have to put it all in again
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=240790&page=5

Thanks!