Question about GMA 4500

Hi all

I don't wanna get bashed by people telling me that the GMA4500 is not for gaming, so I wanna say right off the bat that I mainly play older games and lately I've been trying some emulators, so I am not at all trying to get games like Crysis running on my laptop

So with that said.. I have 2GB of DDR3 RAM on my Thinkpad X200 running Windows 7 RC1, and I can play games like Prince of Persia 3 and Hitman: Blood Money smoothly at medium settings @ 1280x720 resolution. But every now and then I will get a little lag.. so I was just wondering, how much would it help to add another stick of 2GB RAM to make it 4GB dual-channel?

I am aware that the CPU communicates with the memory controller over the FSB.. So seeing how the FSB is 1066Mhz and the DDR3 is 1333Mhz, I will not gain anything in CPU memory bandwidth. But how about the integrated video chipset? What sort of interface does it have with the memory controller? Will I actually get any kind of gain by doubling the memory bus?

I'd appreciate any suggestions! Thanks for reading

Faruk

 

I don't think it's the memory that is limiting you, rather, I think it's just the processing power of the GMA 4500MHD. I don't think it will help much, or at all. The lag is likely due to some effects in the game that prove to be more taxing (ie: smoke, water reflections, etc.) that are occasionally present.

 

Thanks for the reply!

I think you are right about the special effects with the water, smoke, etc. It is mostly those situations which produce the lag.

Theoretically though, I just want to know if the GMA4500 will be able to benefit from a 128-bit memory bus in certain situations. Like loading high-resolution textures, for example?

And interestingly.. I updated my driver from the one that came included in Windows 7 (8.15.10.1749) to the new one on Intel's website (8.15.10.1808), and my Windows Experience scores actually changed.. They used to be 3.6 and 4.9, and now they are 3.8 and 3.6 - for desktop graphics and gaming graphics, respectively. I wonder what caused the difference..

 

The integrated GPU is weak, plain and simple. It doesn't matter what bus width it has, there's not a lot of solid hardware to work from for rendering games older than 2005-2006.

The windows WEI score is purely for show, what matters more is whether you can see a significant performance difference in games.

 

Additional memory bandwidth WILL help.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4843422&postcount=1684

Even the previous generation X3100 is getting 10-50% increase in performance going from single to dual channel with average performance lying in the 30% range.

 

Yes I am indeed aware that the Intel graphics chipset is weak.. but like I said I play mostly older games, and what I wanted to know is whether a dual channel configuration improves things even by a little bit.

IntelUser, thank you very much for answering my question! That's exactly what I wanted to know, and the next time I get the chance to visit Canada Computers I will fetch myself another 2GB stick of memory

 

Are you sure your laptop has 1 stick of 2 GB? Most laptops use 2 sticks, so they are already using a dual-channel configuration.

 

Those sort of WEI scores would indicate to me that you may already be running a dual-channel setup, based on the results here showing dual-channel WEI between 3.8 and 4.4. So worth double-checking your existing RAM modules.

Can squeeze more performance if setfsb can overclock your FSB.

 

Another thing you can do is kill the power-saving the the chip's control panel. By default it's set to save power.

 

GMA 4500 MHD is a failure like all integrated intel GPU's. Good luck on playing any games using it. I really hate intel GPU's..............

 

could u guys stop giving useless information and actually try helping the guy? we all know that gma stuff sucks so stop restating it. Even the OP recognized the fact, and he clearly states trying to play old games.

Anyways to help answer you question, i used to have a gma950 in my old laptop with one gig of ram. I managed to get Red Alert3 running but like at 10 FPS on everything low. After upgrading to 2 gigs dual channel i could get it to a playable 25. This is all DDR2 so I think with your DDR3 and 2 steps higher gma it should help.

 

how about Oblivion?
is it playable on GMA?

anyway...what's the differ between X4500 with 4500HD?

 

IIRC, these are the desktop versions, the mobile one is the 4500MHD.

 

Wow, lots of new replies! Thanks for the info everyone

lol - "You have given out too much reputation in the past 24 hours, please try again later" - I think this restriction needs to be removed

Yep I'm sure, I configured my laptop that way from Lenovo. I paid a bit extra to make it 1 stick of 2GB instead of 2 sticks of 1GB, so that later on I could buy my own stick of 2GB. DDR3 was very expensive when I bought this laptop a year ago, but now it'll cost me under $50 to get a stick of 2GB.

Very interesting! Well I don't have dual-channel now as I stated above, but I will pay attention to what happens to the WEI scores after I put in the extra stick. And thanks for the link to that program, I'm gonna check it out. Do you have any guidelines on how far it is safe to increase the FSB?

I thought that the power management kicks in only when on battery power? Am I wrong?

That's good to know, I guess I'll post here when I install the extra 2 gigs to let everyone know what happens

I will check for you when I get the chance, and post/PM you the results

 

curious also what games could be run with such haha.

definitely plants vs zombies work

 

Well I played Prince of Persia 2 and 3 on it, at 1280x800 resolution with medium settings. I've also played Civilization 4 at 1280x800 with max settings. Hitman Blood Money at 1280x800, but I forget which settings I played that with.

Sometimes I play games at 1280x720 resolution to try to improve performance a bit, so I get small black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. It can help by 10-15%, so if there is a game that lags just a little bit at 1280x800 it is worth trying to see how it will run at 720 instead.

I tried playing Prince of Persia 4 at 1280x720 but it was going like 10-15 fps, so I tried at 960x600 instead (seems like an odd resolution, but it was listed in the game options - it's like a "wide" version of 800x600 I guess ) and it ran better. I would have been curious to try at 1024x640 but I'm not sure how to make the custom resolution, I might make a post later about that

Haven't tried Oblivion yet but I will when I get the chance. And we'll see what happens when I add in the extra 2GB.

Edit: Oh and it's an old game but I also played Metal Gear Solid 2 - man that was awesome I really wanna play MGS4 but I don't have a PS3.. sigh...

Edit #2: I should probably also mention that I have an Intel C2D P8600 (2.4Ghz)

 

afaik, 4500HD allows for hardware decoding of 1080p... 4500 does not

 

Update: I tried playing Oblivion, first with medium-ish settings at 960x600 resolution and everything was smooth in the opening level. Then I bumped it up to 1280x720 resolution at low settings and it was still smooth. I'm new to this game so I couldn't really test it any further in the game But I'm assuming that if everything is still smooth at 1280x720, the worst case would be that you'd have to drop it down to 960x600 in the more intense scenes. And of course this is with my single-channel 2GB RAM.

And also I just remembered - I think this game is "officially" supported by Intel, because in one of the driver updates they listed a bug fix for Oblivion.

So I think with 4GB of RAM it should run Oblivion pretty smoothly at decent settings.

 

@Faruk
whoaaaa....nice review u have there.
so this means the GMA 4500 is not really that bad (for DX8 n 9 games; don't expect too much on DX10 games).

I guess your C2D P8600 helps boost the game performance

 

Yeah I think the P8600 does help.. and I also remember reading in earlier reviews that there's a pretty big difference going from DDR2-667 to DDR3-1066.

Basically as a "rule of thumb" I think the GMA4500 shouldn't have any issues playing any games from 2007 and earlier with mid-range settings. For newer games there's no guarantee though I think hardcore gamers always like to go max settings and also throw in some AA/AF, but personally I don't really have issues with playing at lower resolutions/settings. I'm not really a hardcore gamer at all. I'm more of an "occasional" gamer

 

Have you gone outdoors? They are more graphically demanding.

 

Oblivion is probably in Intel's optimization list. That's why games like Crysis performs especially bad, since they couldn't care less. Oblivion is some of the better candidate of games to advertise 4500.

 

Intel's own power schemes for the chip appear to be active all the time. There are advanced options you can play with.

 

hey sean473... are you trying to brag about the lowest internet connection ever?
i think dial up has a higher upload!
srry. but u bashing bout intel gpu's...
they are good as an integrated option -and hey blue-ray playback on an intel gma.... who thought they would see the day!