Why is my GMA 900 outperforming my Geforce Go 6150?

Okay, so I've spent several hours trying to diagnose this problem. These are the systems in question; long story short, I inherited a rather nice laptop (especially for a freebie!) that wouldn't boot up but I was able to fix it.

My old laptop, with its slower processor, older video card, and less ram seems to be outperforming the newer machine, which has a fresh copy of 7 installed. The game in question is something called "Dragon Saga". I've compared a few other games against these two laptops, and it just seems to be a mixed bag overall.

Old laptop:

Dell B120
Intel Celeron M 1.6 GHz
1 gb DDR2
40 GB HD
Intel GMA 915 graphics
XP SP3

New laptop:

HP DV6448SE
AMD Turion x2 1.8 GHz
2 gb DDR2
160 GB HD
Geforce Go 6150 graphics
Windows 7


I've tried tons and tons of different drivers for the video chipset, but nothing is really budging its performance against the GMA 900. I don't do a lot of gaming, but I'm absolutely stunned (and floored) that this new machine is netting half the framerates older laptop is getting on Dragon Saga. To put it simply, the HP is getting 7-10 fps and the Dell is getting 15-30 fps overall.

Has anyone ever heard of a strange case like this?

Here's what I've tried so far:

- Several different drivers
- Disabling powermizer
- Setting ram to 128 mb in bios
- installing latest windows updates
- Actually OCing; I gained a very minor boost, but not enough at all to justify permanent OCing.

Something I'm tinkering with right now is some newer chipset drivers for the laptop.

But I just don't get it. I should be getting BETTER performance compared to an older setup, shouldn't I? Even if it's just extremely minor. I know both of these cards aren't meant for gaming at all, but it still doesn't make any sense to me..

 

Had a Compaq F730 with the Turion/Athlon X2 1.8 (Advert'd as Athlon but the core was Tyler which is a Turion) and a GeForce Go 6100 and it freaking blew.

However against the GMA 900 I am surprised. Never had the 900 but used to be familiar with it, now against the newer 4500MHD's i think the 6150 would easily lose.

But as far as the 6150's performance goes the only slightly lesser 6100 (wasnt rated for hd playback but worked fine at it?) Doom 3 at minimum res and settings was nearly unplayable constantly. Looking at the requirements which are based on desktop cards id say your skirting the minimum eitherway for dragon saga on the gpu side. Windows 7 could play into it compare to XP but I ran Vista 32 bit on my machine back when so....

I believe my 3dmark06 was a 170? lol and that was probably all cpu score If the battery is the same i might have a battery and power adapter u can have. I just gave away the dvd writer to a poor soul with an HP.

 

I don't know what Dragon Saga is, but maybe it requires a good CPU.
It might not be a multi threaded game, so maybe the Intel Celeron M 1.6 GHz
is better for this game than the AMD CPU?

Is that possible?

 

I came very close to mentioning that and i looked up and was like well.... There was a time (Athlon 64 days) id say against the Celeron M that a single core off the Turion was faster, but without benchmarks I couldn't tell you. He might be able to test it. I was gonna ask if he had checked cpu usage and if it was maxing on the celeron, and or if one core was pegged on the turion as well. Good sign of a bottleneck anyways.

I cant seem to find enough bench data to say much.

 

Either way if it is CPU or GPU limited it doesn't make sense that the Celeron with GMA 915 is getting 2 to 3 times the framerate of the Turion and 6150.

 

I hate to keep adding on, yeah other then the fact the 6150 is a custom HP setup that often wont work with any official drivers, and the HP drivers blow a bit. Sounds like he had much better luck then i did on drivers, didnt say if he tried DOX so. It still is XP versus 7 in the mix as well, 7 will load the turion more than XP on the single core guarantee it (running xp sp3 vista 64 home premium and 7 64 ultimate on my asus in tri boot).

Let me throw one in the mix DOX Drivers before the F730 Died i actually gave it to my mother and ran a year on DOX drivers that ignored the install check and fixed sleep resume resolution issues I was having. I dont remember what versions I used but here try this - Forceware 182.05 - DOX

If that wont work under 7 then try - Forceware 185.68 - DOX

I woulda posted straight file links but since i wasnt sure if u were on 64 or not. I never benched on em either so no clue if it gained performance or just fixed the units other issues only.

 

I do have the 185.XX DOX drivers installed along with some extra software to tune various settings to 'performance' mode.

As far as CPU usage goes, it's very, very low. Windows Task Manager reports 20% CPU usage. GPU-Z however, reports that the GPU load is 86% *Was expecting it to be a full blown 100%*

Here's more info from GPU-Z:

Memory Used: 30 MB
GPU Core Clock: 423.8 MHz
GPU Memory clock: 333 MHz
VDDC: 1.2v
GPU Temp: 71'C

The game is running in window mode with aero disabled. Keep in mind this is with the FSB OC'd from 200 MHz to 227.5 MHz (Used nTune). CPU is at 2 GHz.

On my older Celeron M, if I recall correctly, cpu usage was a bit higher, along the lines of 50% or more. This game choked on my ancient 1.67 GHz Athlon single core.

Here's what the min. requirements call for the game:

OS: Windows XP / Vista
CPU: Pentium 4 1.6 GHz / AMD XP 2500+ or better
RAM: 512 MB or more
HDD: 2 GB Free
Graphics Card: GeForce2, ATI X300, Geforce 5500/6200/7300 or better

Recommended:

OS: Windows Vista / XP
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
RAM: 1024 MB (1 GB)
HDD: 2 GB Free
Graphics Card: GeForce2 FX5700

Oh, and here's another interesting note:

All GFX settings in the game have been set to low (no antialiasing, no soft focus lighting, low textures, low distance, etc.), but when I set it to high, I only get a frame rate that's 1-2 fps LOWER. So on low, in full screen, I'm getting 15 fps (due to OC), but with all high GFX settings enabled, it dips down to only 13-14 fps. If I did this on my old laptop, it would have dipped down to these rates or lower.

I also tried the game on XP, and I got similar results. No real change in the frame rate, but then again, I couldn't find any XP drivers other than what HP had when I was doing this.

I'm starting to think this can be fixed with a registry edit or something...

I really hope you guys can help me out on this one.

 

Sorry to bump up this post again, but I found a program called 3D-Analyze that helped me improve the FPS quite a bit.

Apparently it lets you enable, disable, or force software emulation on several DirectX/OpenGL options like shaders, T&L, etc. on any program.

Checking the box next to "force 16 bit zbuffer (without stencil)" somehow boosted my fps from 15 fps to 35 fps peak. There was a very minor graphical glitch but it wasn't bad. It's MUCH more playable now.

I'm still going to tinker with the settings to see if there's anything else I can play with to improve things, otherwise, I think I'm good.

 

The Intel chip does do software emulation for one of the two types of shaders cant remember off the top of my head. So by design it was partly doing its work that way to begin with in comparison with the GeForce which was all hardware shader.

Mind you normally this is actually a BAD thing, but its there for software compatability when the hardware shader is already present like the case of the GeForce or for capability at all when your using say...intel. Hey if it works for that app good for ya. Nice catch too.

 

I agree. Typically the GPU is supposed to be faster and more efficient at handling shader work and T&L, but what added the real boost for me was forcing 16-bit zbuffering (Wish I knew what that meant..). (EDIT: seems to be a combination of this and some emulation techniques)

I did have a case once where my gf's computer was having a hard time emulating some old PS1 games we had. The 3D rendered scenes were terribly slow and the latest drivers were installed for the video card.

Guess what I had to do? Force software emulation. I'm not kidding. 50% cpu usage and full frame rates. Leave it to SiS to make the lowest of all video chipsets...

 

Off the top of my head last i remember the zbuffer is where hidden transparency work took place. Like if a sprite was behind something it was handled by that. Im sure its much more broad but im going off the top of my head.

I didn't have a huge problem with PS1 emulation on the F730US w/6100. It was held back but FF7 and games like it were perfectly playable. But I have very specific settings for that game and the gpu plugin i use.

 

Question to the OP... have you tried cleaning out the new laptop from dust?
There's a possibility the dust is clogging the system and therefore downclocks the gpu or the overall system as a whole.

 

I did about a week ago when I received the laptop as a freebie (Had GPU solder problem). Dropped the temps down a good 10'C. Idle temps are 50'C-55'C and load temps are 70'C-75'C. This is for the GPU.

 

It's quite puzzling to be honest.
The GMA 900 should not be more powerful compared to the Go 6150, especially with a Celeron M cpu.

Perhaps if you could look up for a patch by any chance?
Have you installed the chipset drivers as well?

 

deks im pretty sure this has been solved in regards to that game. it doesnt seem to appreciate the 6150s hardware implementation of dx shaders and switching to software emulation which is actually what the intel chip used anyways works. the drivers for that chipset are in 7 as well as the forceware update he did probably covered it well.