Original Counter-Strike/Operation Flashpoint on Intel GMA 950?

Will the ORIGINAL CS, Operation Flashpoint, and a couple of old Half Life mods like the Natural Selection and the original Day of Defeat perform well on a laptop useing:

-Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
-Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7200 (2.00GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 667 MHz FSB)
-2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHZ, 2 DIMM
-80GB 7200RPM HD

I just want to make sure, as these will be the only games I will be playing. OF for single player, and CS for the net.

Can I get a solid 60FPS in these games at decent visual quality? I used to play CS at 100+ FPS using a GF [email protected] P4 at full detail settings, no AA. 30FPS I think on a TNT 2@733MHz P3. This thing has got to AT LEAST give me 60FPS.

I know some of you guys must play these games. What kind of performance should I expect for those of you with similar setups.

 

I dont think 60fps, but it should be very decently playable, heck even HL2 runs on the GMA 950 ok.

 

What kind of frame rates do you get? 30 FPS? What's your system specs?

I figure the laptop has 2GB of memory, so that should help out at least. 2.0Ghz processor too. I was hoping for 60FPS solid, my 1.8Ghz PC with a GF 3 used to play up in the 100's.

 

CS 1.6 and the original Half-Life will run fine on the GMA950. I can't find myself recommending a machine that has integrated graphics for gaming though.

That looks like an awfully powerful machine; an integrated video card looks out of place. What laptop are you looking at? There is probably one in your price range with a dedicated card.

 

OFP will run fine at 1280x800 res, as I used to play it on a Mirage 2 card. Had to have the details at medium, with reduced view distance, but the Intel should handle it fine, maybe even run a texture replacement mod or something.

 

It's a Dell e1405. An ultra portable. No option for any dedicated graphics card. I won't be playing games on it, but i'm sure they'll be a time when I feel like installing my old copy of Counter strike and playing over the net, or Operation Flashpoint for single player when on the go. Once in a blue. But ultra portablity and a lot of power at a good price is more important to me.

I'm curious, does the Intel GMA 950 support transform and lighting? Does it support anything hardware wise? Would be useful to know when setting up the games settings.

I'm may be picking up an Xbox 360 for gaming if anything anyway.

I figuered it should run. The game isn't very hardware intensive. Hopefully at a solid 30FPS.

 

My buddy has exactly the same setup, but with the 2.16 C2D and 20 more GB on the Hard Drive. Impressively enough, the 950 is plenty powerful to run CS:S and 1.6, so it should not be a problem. The only thing you might want to do is drop much of the special effects, so there is less lag.

 

What kind of frame rates does he get with CS: Source? I hope at least like a solid 30FPS. The Half Life engines are usually very flexible.

 

I would suggest taking a look at the HP dv2000t; it is available with a 128MB Go7200, which is infinitely better than the GMA950 for gaming. It is available with the same components that you have configured in that E1405. The HP will be more expensive, but has better quality overall and a more pleasing design (although the latter is personal preference).

 

If these games don't perform well on this machine, oh well. I'll try them soon enough. I got too good a deal with the Dell. All that and more for a little over 1,000 USD. It's very small, powerful (only weakness is the video card) and the design is decent.

If I can at least manage to play the original CS at 60FPS (Even 30 solid is very playable), then I will be in heaven. That's all that really matters. CS: Source would be a real bonus, but I don't own the game so I don't care. I have no newer or future PC gaming interest. With the money I saved, I will be picking up an Xbox 360 very soon.

When I get the unit, i'll definately tell you guys what kind of frame rates I get at what settings. For CS and Flashpoint. I just wanted to see what framerates people were getting who already have the system.

 

I wonder, if you crank the graphics down REAL low, if you could get ArmA running on it.

 

The complaint about the GMA 950 is that while it has hardware pixel shaders, it has neither hardware vertex shaders or hardware T&L support. For the original CS it shouldn't matter since the requirements for CS is for a 2MB video card. CS is a DX5 or DX6 generation game so it doesn't need hardware PS, VS, T&L or a GPU as we know it. For newer games, the GMA 950 may be a concern, but I don't think you'll be disappointed in original CS. I don't know exact frame rates, but other GMA 950 systems with weaker components than yours easily get over 100fps in Quake III at 1024x768 with high settings when plugged in and around 80fps when on battery, so that should be pretty representative of CS.

 

So it seems both CS and OFP should work pretty well with only a Intel GMA 950. Here's an added question.

Could "Half Life 2/Counter Strike: Source, 64 Bit" get playable frame rates of around 30FPS with this card. Will the CPU come more into play, due to the fact the software is designed to use the dual CPU setup. I'm using a Core 2 Duo.

This would be a nice little bonus and I woluld pick it up soon as I get Vista. Anyone tried this?

 

I have no experience with the 64-bit versions of CS:Source or Half Life 2, but I thought they were a bit finicky and not quite as well developed as the 32-bit versions so they may not be the best option. In addition, neither of them are multithreaded since I don't think Valve is implementing that until the upcoming Episode Two. Still the advantage of dual core is that, one core can run the game, while the 2nd core can run the T&L and VS.

I don't know exact frame rates, but my friend has an older E1405 with a 2GHz Core Duo, and he doesn't complain when playing CS:Source. (That's not quite the same as saying it's great or even good of course.) He mainly plays quick games with bots though in his spare time, using AC, and I don't think his settings are particularly high. Not sure how much you game, but for casual gaming the GMA 950 could do it. The great thing about the Source engine is that it is highly scalable. I believe the GMA 950 defaults to running in DX9 mode, but if you want better performance, you could force it to run in DX8.1 mode for instance. It still looks pretty good, but you'll see double digit percentage gains in frame rate.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281&p=3

 

CS (and later on CS:S) are the epitome of graphics coding optimizations. If you toss a 32MB video card in a trash can and hit it with a taser, it'll run CS. You'll be able to play CS:S on your Intel GMA with pretty nice frame rates on medium-low details, no shadows, and no HDR.

Having said that, most developers are not interested in spending months out of a development cycle to optimize their code for older hardware. If you want to play FEAR or Oblivion or some of the soon to be released graphics heavy games, get at least an MR X1600 or 7600Go dedicated video card. I suggest going as high as your budget allows.

 

Check this out (Counter Strike/DOD: Source):

http://www.dayofdefeat.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=69273

 

Just found a little info on the GMA 950 that could be useful to people searching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA

 

The GMA950 is fine for Half Life and Flashpoint. It does not suppport hardware t&l but emulates it in software.

That bolded bit above is false though, sorry. CS:S is not playable properly on a GMA950 even on low settings, but Half Life 2 itself is just about.

 

Is online games significantly different from offline games against bots? My friend plays a quick round of CS:S against bots when he has spare time on his E1405 and it generally seems okay. Not great, but still playable. Next time I see him I'll try to get a FRAPS screencapture. I'd be interested in what the real frame rate is too rather than just perception.

 

T&L may be supported on the GMA 950 in the software, but not in the hardware, where it really counts.

 

If you are going to play CS:S at any decent resolution, the Direct X level has to be set to 7. Any higher and it just can't produce the effects fast enough.