*****The GMA X3100 gaming thread - HL2 screens + more*****

Don't take the GMA900/950 comparisons to heart. Although technically the X3100 has significantly more powerful hardware, the driver is not up to par. I am thinking that the simpler architecture of the GMA900/950 enables the drivers not to be so complex.

See how the X3100 users ran it before concluding. You may not have a problem, but just to be sure.

 

I will get back to you with pictures and info when i get my laptop for San andreas

 

maybe I can test it on my laptop, but I'll have to find the GTA:SA DVD first

 

that would be cool, thanks

 

Hey, my friend has just got an X3100 graphics card and would like to know 2 things

1. Where can he get a Windows Vista driver update
2. how can he change his settings. like form high to medium etc..

he said thanks

 

1. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=128777
2. you can change that in-game options (usually go to settings, then video).

 

I have an IBM x61 and i can't seem to install the newest intel driver. It comes up with an error saying that "The driver being installed is not validated for this computer. Please obtain the appropriate driver from the computer's manufacturer." Do i really need to use lenovo drivers (which don't exist)?

I can't seem to run CoD4, it comes up with an error saying my graphics chip/driver can't do some sort of rendering (can't remember what error exactly).

any help?

 

Teh N00b,
go to: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2800&lang=eng
There download the latest drivers for the proper OS you have. The latest driver should allows you to run COD4, it runs but not at the highest quality.

 

Sorry i've already tried, and as i've said in my previous post, there's an error message not allowing me to install it

By the way, what fps i would get with a T7500 and X3100 on minimum detail for:
CoD2 and 4
CSS
DoD:S
TF2
and BF2

thanks in advance

edit: driver got installed, had to uninstall old ones first and then reinstall new ones

 

Someone needs to run tests with Team Fortress 2. Game runs like crap for some reason.

 

How is HL2 for you? What are you specs?

I have a Dual Core T2310, Windows Vista, and 1GB RAM and I can't even move in TF2. I'm gonna try to add RAM soon, because I believe Vista is the main culprit, when my older laptop with XP could run the same games.

 

it works well in directx 8 mode. I had to set it in the autoexec.cfg because the command line didn't work

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=195332&page=3

 

hey was wondering if anyone knows if it will run dreamfall:the longest journey?
as it says on their official site it doesn`t work on intel gpu`s, but i wanted to know if it still applies in the case of the X3100.
Oh also how does supreme commander run?

 

I get playable flamerates for TF2 with a FPS config, running at the lowest widescreen config with my r61. Make sure you have the dxlevel set to 8.1. I get minimum of ~20 fps in firefights and run around with 40-60.

 

My notebooks will not play it right now... one is just too slow (IGP320M) and the newer one has a "dead" GPU..

Still doesnt run very good for how it looks though using my desktop (A64 4200+ @ 2.7, X1950XTX, 4x512 @ 2-3-3-7-2T).. when you get a big firefight going that is. Fine otherwise usually.

EDIT - Thats TF2. HL2 runs nicely.

 

My experience:
HL2-EP2 is not playable. (0,1 fps in the main menu - like 3-4 fps ingame with everything low on 640) I think the only one really 'playable' from the OrangeBox is Portal (with portal render depth 0 ofc).

(WINXP System)

 

Did you read the posts immediately before your post? Run it in dx8 mode. If the command line doesnt work, create a autoexec.cfg.

 

Yeah, I did read it. But I have a desktop pc at home so I can play it there with everything on high, so I'm not wasting my time trying to get it to work properly on the x3100 ;-)
Anyway I hate playing shoters on notebooks, they are just not made for it. And so the X3100 is not made for games.

The thing that really sucks about the X3100 is STILL the drivers issue, e.g. Settlers 5 will bluescreen on XP. And that is a game you can play on notebooks!

 

Now I think I know why more of the GMA X3100 users report slow fps in hardware T&L than the GMA X3000 users do.

GMA X3000 has 33% higher clock speed and 20% more memory bandwidth.

Here's what led me to the conclusion:

G45, aka GMA X4500 is supposed to be 1.7x faster in 3dmark06 than G35. Now a G45 based system will have 66% more memory bandwidth and 25% more execution units(10 vs 8)

GMA X3000/X3100 gains about 50-60% performance for every 100% increase in bandwidth: tests have yielded 11% gain from DDR2-667 to DDR2-800

66% more memory bandwidth=35% faster
25% more shaders+optimization=25% faster

Makes sense??

Now applying that to the GMA X3000 vs. GMA X3100:

20% more memory bandwidth=11% faster
33% higher core clock speed=25-30% faster

Noxxle's 3dmark05 results with XP and 14.32 drivers
Software T&L: 868
Hardware T&L: 690

My result
Software T&L: 932
Hardware T&L: 998

Look at my hardware T&L results vs. Noxxle's results. The difference in percentages is 44.6%.

The thing I noticed with GMA950 is that its not as memory bandwidth sensitive as the X3000 is, and I think that's because the T&L and the shaders are done on the software using the CPU.

However, hardware T&L and Shaders demand more on the GPU. Therefore it becomes sensitive to memory bandwidth.

 

So what are you saying IntelUser? That we should give up with X3100 and wait for X4500? or find a way to grab Intel's attention at this?

 

Montevina's X4500 will have same 10 execution units but use DDR3-800 memory and have 475MHz core. From that it may need the mobile X4500 to catch to the desktop X3000's performance. The desktop version seemingly is gonna increase the difference further than it is now.

I just pointed out the X4500's performance by Intel because that's a desktop version since they compared against a G33 and G35 which are also desktop chipsets. G45/X4500 will use DDR3-1333 memory, significantly higher bandwidth than current G965 and next gen G35's DDR2-800. From, that I thought "How can they extract 70% with 25% more shaders and some optimizations?? Well, the majority of the rest I figure, is the significantly improved memory bandwidth.

What I am saying is that there is a limit how much drivers will give you. It might give you 10-20% more performance, and fix bugs, but its a hardware limitation. The combination of lower core clock and the lower memory bandwidth currently makes hardware T&L much slower on the X3100 than the X3000.

The technology on the IGP has advanced, but some fundamental problems can't change, like lack of memory bandwidth

By all, you guys are welcome to wait for the drivers to improve, but don't expect miracles. The enabler driver was really with the 15.6 and 14.31 driver. The following drivers just fix bugs.

 

Hah, I didn't know running FRAPS in game hurt playability. Battlefield 2 is playable at 1024x768 everything High!! The frames take a bit to stabilize in the beginning but when it does it seems like I am getting 15-20 fps. It lags a lot with FRAPS, don't know why. Maybe this tells how sensitive to memory the X3000/X3100 actually is.

 

No, i think FRAPS does that normaly? It also uses harddrive to save, and some memory, so a slowdown is kinda expected

 

WHOA!!! I just do this by accident! Before playing Star Wars: Republic Commandos, right-click to Property, Compatibility, and set to run compatible as Windows XP SP2 (now this is for Vista users obviously). When I played the game, I set game texture setting to Medium, and screen resolution to 1024x768, with FRAPS mark: FPS clock at 20-35 FPS! Lowest was around 13-15, but that was during very huge explosives actions. Now if run as Vista by default, FPS would've been around 14-20 (which I confirmed when I tried it). I'm going to try other games and see if there's any improvement in Compatibility Mode, even though the mode was design to run the program in case Vista doesn't run it, the performance was sharply increase!

 

does anyone of u having issue with swkotor2 on xp??
i can run the game but everytimes when i start new game after the the first clip, its crash to the desktop...

using 14.32 intel g driver

 

Hey guys,

my mate would like to know what are teh best settings he should set his game on to play san andreas

thnx

 

Setting the details to Low on GTA SA will give playable FPS

 

yes but how does he set it too low, he goes on start, options, display options, advanced

and they have about 6 different options their

 

hi
i have just bought my new laptop - FSC Esprimo M V5505 (T2330,2GB DDR2,x3100) and i have som problems with playability of all games. i use Win XP(just installed) and i have installed version 14.31.1 drivers for x3100... but when i start for example, need for speed: underground (800x600,lowest details) a have only 10-25 fps! thats even worse than on my old pc (celeron 1,2ghz,384mb,TNT2 32mb !!! )

where is the problem? are drivers for WXP worse than drivers for Vista? or...?

 

Are you talking about the first Need for Speed: Underground?? Not the second one?? Well if its the first one, I tried the demo out. I have a desktop X3000 and I get 20-25 fps with 1280x1024 everything High.

E6600
DG965WH
2x1GB DDR2-800
14.32 driver

 

yes, i mean NFSU 1... i dont think that ammount of FPS highly depends on CPU in case of NFSU1 (i have only T2330 on 1,6ghz but i think, that 10 to 25 FPS is too low)


EDIT: where can i download drivers 14.32 ? here http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=2800&OSFullName=Windows*+XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go%21#DRV i found only 14.31.1

 

I don't get why Intel just can't make a decent shared memory GPU solution. Why can't they just do as AMD machines do, have a real GPU with some dedicated + shared VRAM?

 

I MIGHT have find a possible, temporary solution to most of the Vista problems:
Play the game under Compatibility Mode: Windows XP SP2.

Under Compatibility Mode, I find a very HUGE increase in performance. Company of Heroes for example, in Normal Mode (Vista), Low Setting, FPS was around 10-15. Under Compatibility Mode (XP SP2), same setting, FPS 18-26.

 

That's very interesting. Can you verify with another game or two?

 

Try running 3dmark05 in Xp compatibility mode. let us know how much the score differs from Vista's

 

a tried to reinstall drivers, but still the same... 18 fps avg in NFSU

 

I'll look into that very soon. For some reason, on Vista, the game is nearly unplayable whenever I scroll across the map. (version 2.0+)

 

Did you try running the game in software mode?

 

no, i dont, because i do not know how to play NFSU in software mode. when i enter 3Dsetup.exe in NFSU install folder, there is only one possibility to chose for 3D rendering ("3D3 device")

 

Alright, I'll try my best to explain to you how to do it.
1- Open regedit (Vista: type in regedit in "search")
2- do a search (ctrl+F) for _3dmark06.exe
3- Once that pops up, create a new dword (rightclick, new->dword)
4- let's assume the game file is called game.exe, for example, the name will be set to "_game.exe" (without the quotes)
5- with the newly created registry value, double click it, and replace the 0 (hardware mode) with 1 (software mode)

The game should work with increased framerates. If it doesn't work, the game doesn't support software mode, and you'll have to set the value back to 0. Hope that helped.

 

be more useful to search for the exe of the game installed than 3dmark 2006's exe, btw.

Also just try running in windowed mode. Might be able to put "-window" in the shortcut to the came.

 

will wow work on this card

 

Yes, it will, as I've already said.

 

Well one thing I have found that is because your X3100 is weaker than the X3000 on the desktop. X3000 is clocked 33% higher, and also has 20% more bandwidth. That would result in 30-50% performance difference, which is a fact you may have to live with. You can see 2-3 pages previous to this post and see my post about that. I score 44% higher in hardware mode than Noxxle's hardware mode for example.

I guess I was wrong about CPU playing a big part. The difference in software mode for me and Noxxle was only 7%, despite that I have E6600 vs. his T7300, and my 1066MHz FSB vs. 800MHz FSB.

Remember how with GPU limited games, using a faster CPU wouldn't change the performance much with graphics?? Well, I guess it is same with the X3000/X3100 at least with hardware mode. The default rendering option for the NFSU is hardware. You may gain performance by using software mode.

Well Intel pulled the drivers. You may still be able to find it somewhere on the internet, but they pulled it because it had serious bugs like changing desktop resolution to 800x600 every time the computer is booted up.

 

Hey StarScream4Ever,

How do i set it to Compatibility mode?

 

Yeah same here. TF2 has to be put down to bare minimum on my laptop to get around 10-15fps

 

Can Football Manager 08, C&C 3 and Civilization IV work with this, and on what stats?

Thanks,

Jewp

 

To enable a game to run under Compatibility Mode, right-click on the Program to Properties, go to the tab under Compatibility, check the box where it said "Run Program Under:" set to Windows XP SP2. Apply and you're all set.

I also discovered a rather chilling graphical setback when doing this, under SOME games, the shader would failed to run, resulting in a rather bland look to the game. So I advise to use the Compatibility Mode with cautions, it gives more boast in performance but expect some minor graphical set backs.

BTW. Civ4 will work fine either settings, its more CPU than GPU that matter.

 

Can you use FRAPS and tell me what your average frame rate in Civ4 is when you zoom all the way out (before the clouds appear)? Because I get about 25fps when I am zoomed all the way in, but less then 10 when I zoom out.

 

So will they all run on decent settings?