Tweaking my laptop

I have a year old laptop that i was looking to replace but I dont think i can afford that yet....I play some old games like unreal tournament, wow, c&c series and half life.

It is a 1.9ghz turion x2 processor with 1.5gb ram and integrated nvidia 6150 gpu with turbo cache (i know it sucks)...

anyway i have looked at the tweaking guide but i was wondering if there are any tweaks or any overclocking possible with this laptop so that it gives best performance possible with the given specs...

Will increasing the ram improve its gaming performance by any chance?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

Increasing ram won't be much help for games in xp.

I think you'll just have to find the right games.. Battlefield 2 and halo should work fine and are great online especially "halo custom edition"

Have you tried increasing the allocated video ram in your bios?

 

isnt it possible to overclock the proc and gpu

 

I don't think OC'ing the proc would yield very many more FPS. I doubt OC'ing an IGP would really work either.

 

Yes you can OC your gpu and yes it does make a huge difference. My brother has a 6150, and I used nTune to OC it. What's great about the 6150 is that it's usually bundled with an nForce motherboard, so if you download nTune you can OC your GPU and CPU, and lower your ram timings. I turned my brother's 1.6ghz amd X2 to 2.0 and lowered voltages with rmclock, but you gotta monitor your temps.

 

vashts121 can u point me out to a guide or give me more details about ocing and lowering temps....also where can i find the best drivers for the 6150..

 

Follow the link in my sig

 

To OC you processor, NTune is the only program that works(in my experience). GPU OCing....theres many programs. Use eleron's guide. You should give undervolting a try to lower temps using RMClock. Also clean out your vents.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't undervolting and OC'ing the CPU kind of be bass-ackwards? Who knows maybe that CPU is super easy to OC, but in the desktop world you GENERALLY have to increase the voltage to OC (or at least keep @ stock volts).

 

I lowered it by very little. And for some reason his 6150's memory speed was 0mhz, so I bumped that to around 250mhz.

 

That's because it has no memory. It borrows RAM. Also its not advisable to increase voltage on lappy's since they don't have adequate cooling. Also it wouldn't really help you in gaming to OC the processor.

 

leave the proc, amd's are already hot. IGPs are OCable, but don't expect miracles.

 

where can i find the latest drivers for this gpu?

 

Follow the link in my sig, down to the section : Updating NVIDIA drivers ...

 

I just installed the latest 175.80 drivers using eleron's guide....i tried riva tuner to oc the gpu using his guide but it doesnt work on my gpu....

vashts121 can u please give me more info on how to use ntune and rmclock to tweak the pc....

 

Yea, we're talking over MSN right now lol.

 

Heyy guys...

I reinstalled the windows xp sp3 32bit and reinstalled the drivers. i installed 175.80 for the gpu...when i ran 3dmark06 it gave a score of 70!!!

wth 70 thts it...anyway 169.04 dont work the pc crashes when i install those...

with 175.8 i have been able to overclock the cpu(it reverts to stock speed when i reboot so i have to do it again) but the gpu wont budge even after adding coolbits to the registry...

wat should i do...any reccomendations for drivers?

 

I also tried installing 169.44.....still nothing...no ocing...didnt run 3dmark tho....

another problem that i have noticed is that after some idle time the screen turns off even if i have set it not to ever turn off and whn i move the mouse or touch the keypad it turns back on but stays black so i have to restart the computer....i didnt have this problem with the stock drivers on hp website...

wat should i do?

 

score of 224 with stock drivers on hp's sitte

isnt tthis score really low?

 

On your system? No, it`s a very low end and old IGP, so you can`t expect it to game today`s games...
You can always get a cheap Vostro for about 800$ with a 8600M GT and that`d game quite nicely.

 

The reason he wants to OC is because he can't afford a new laptop and wants to make the best of what he has. Try installing 169.04, then 175.80 on top of that (it's how I am able to OC with the newest drivers).

 

i dont even care about ocing anymore....it did run older games that i listed earlier in the thread....and it had a 3dmark06 score of around 700 and now it is 224....

so i am just worried what is wrong now?

 

Maybe before you formatted, your driver settings were on high performance, and right now they are at high quality.

 

Have you made sure you are in high performance mode?

edit: oops didn't read the xp part.

 

He can't be in high performance mode in XP.

 

Maybe you were running it at a lower resolution?

 

I ran it at the max res that my laptop supports 1280 x 800.....so i dunno wats going on here.... i have reinstalled xp sp3 last night and installed the stock gpu drivers....i'll check the performnance settings in nvidia control panel and then run 3dmark again....hopefully it will give a better score....


do u guys know any drivers that work well with these older cards....cuz 169.xx and 175.xx have given me problems. How about some other drivers not forceware without modded inf?

 

Have you flashed your BIOS to the latest one before the XP reinstall? Have you set VRAM to 64/128 in BIOS? And how about other drivers than GPU (chipset, SATA, etc..)? Did you install stock ones or did you get the latest ones from their manufacturer's sites (i.e. not HP site)? After first installing Windows + SP3 + latest DirectX, did you install all the drivers correctly and in correct order? Did you defrag your HDD after all this? Did you optimize your HDD settings? Have you set Windows Power Options for best performance?

OPTIONAL: Have you done multicore patch (not sure if this is included in your XP disc or SP3)?

I'm sorry I don't have direct answers to your problems, but mostly questions.

You should get around 200 points in 3DMark06 at 1280x800 resolution if all is working correctly.

 

I changed the vram from 64 to 128 this time...the drivers were the same from hps site....i havent used any new drivers...i only used the forceware for nividia and it crashed...i dont know wat the right order for installing drivers is so i just randomly install them... i updated the bios to the latest one available on hps site way back when i installed a fresh copy of xp after buying the pc (they dont have another update)...

I didnt defrag my hdd after this installation but its not like it effects the 3dmark score by 500 points...

I dont know how i can optimize my hdd for best performance and i dont know abt best performance power options in xp

i dont know wat a multicore patch is

i had a score of around 650-700 when i first ran 3dmark06 at 1280x800 and now it is 224

 

There's not even a slightest change that Go 6150 would get even close to 650-700. Not even if you overclocked it to the heavens. That score sounds more like what you should get in 3DMark0 5. Score of 224 is just about right for 3DMark0 6. So, it seems everything is working just fine in 3D department then...

However, the other reason I asked some of those questions is because, doing them right, you would get more trouble free and better responsiveness for your fresh Windows install.

Defragging HDD right after the XP+SP3+DX and drivers, before installing anything else, ensures that all the core system files are at the start of the drive where drive access is fastest. Also, making sure that HDD is optimized for performance and always kept organized actually affects fps in games. It doesn't affect it directly like GPU, but it reduces loading times and stuttering/lag, which can sometimes bring fps momentarily to single digit numbers (in worst case). HDD is one of the slowest components in your system so it's pretty good idea to keep it as fast as possible.

You can easily find answers (use the table of contents or search function in Adobe Reader) to my questions and a lot more goodies from this guide (right one is for XP): http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

I can now confirm that multicore patch is not needed for SP3. It includes it.