Will a X3100 play Battlefield 2142?

Ok, here's the deal. A Sony store near me has a great deal on a N series notebook, it has a T7100, 2gb of RAM, Vista Business, but it only has the X3100 GPU. They have it on sale for $999.99, and i love the styling of the vaio notebooks. Now, i'm not very heavily into gaming, just CS 1.6, and sometimes BF2142. Will the X3100 play BF2142 at all? i have my desktop for serious gaming, just wondering if this will do some very light gaming. Thanks for your input.

 

I don't know jack about the X3100, but I can tell you without a doubt you can do much better than that configuration for the $1,000 price range with a Vostro, if you're willing to wait for shipping.

 

as of now no, but when Intel releases new driver later this year it will be able to run it smoothly.

 

what are you basing that on? no amount of drivers can hide the fact that x3100 is a weak integrated GPU.

 

Intel has released new 14.31 drivers for XP a few days ago that are now out of beta and enable full hardware DX9.0c support including SM3.0. In Intel's blog announcing the release, they claim the drivers will now allow you to play BF2 which previously wouldn't start because of the requirement for hardware shaders. Now what they mean by "play" and whether running BF2 can carry over to BF2142, I don't know for sure, but that is the latest information.

http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2007/08/gaming_on_integrated_graphics.html

It should run given a GeForceFX 5700 or Radeon 9550 are the minimum requirements, but you would definitely be looking at low resolutions and settings.

 

Actually i really can't. I'm in Canada, so dell screws us. A Vostro 1500 with the C2D T5470 (worse than the vaio), 2gb of ram and a x3100 starts at $949, so i'd save $50, but would have to wait for a couple weeks. I think i might pick up that vaio.

Aslo, i'm not looking for it to play at amazing detail, just playable (at native res would be nice, but doesn't have to be).

Thanks for all the input though, it's appreciated.

 

hey where in canada do you live, cause i see no N vaio models that have that GPU, the only model i see is CR120 which i was considering to get but its 1500$ and its the x3100 that has me in doubt if it had a dedicated card i would get it in a heartbeat cause sony's are sexy

 

btw all the VAIO N's have intel 950 WHICH WILL NOT PLAY CS, (i too want to be able to play cs and sometimes source on w.e laptop i purchase)

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=157766

 

I'm in Halifax, and it's weird, because i can't find the model they have in-store online. I'm not positive it's an N series, i just guessed it was as it was the closest one i could find on sony.ca, but it's a 15.4" with the x3100.

 

I'm from ontario, and I am postive none of the N series have x3100 the most they have is 950, i think somebody prolly misplaced the floor model on the wrong place, showing you the wrong spec on the tag, the next time you go to the store ( possibly a sony store so you can see all models) browse the floor models go to my computer on teh models and check their specs. The only other models I can remember that has 15.4" is the fs and fz and those are expensive if they only have models without the blue ray it would be way cheaper

 

My view is that Intel GPUs are notorious for poor performance with regards to gaming. Intel can claim that their X3100 is the end-all-and-be-all of GPUs with the latest shader model support and DX135 support, but I would not take them at their word until I actually saw the card perform well or read about it here or at some other respected journalists article.

If you are asking about gaming, you already have worries as to the X3100's abilities. Save yourself the grief and get a different card, or wait until the non-beta drivers come out and then see if people have issues or not.

 

As a side note, the X3100 is now able to play BF2 with the Shader Model 3 equipped WHQL drivers.

Link
Gives you hope for BF2142, at least.

Unfortunately, desktop only ATM

 

I'm sure you can run it, probably at low- medium settings.

 

weak integrated gpu? no, its one of the best integrated GPU out there right now

 

what i meant was, its a integrated GPU thus it's weak.

 

its actually not that bad, its even better than some older dedicated cards

 

yes maybe comparable to a high-end geforce 3 / low-end geforce 4

 

It's not exactly a weak integrated GPU. It's better than most of intel's integrated parts.

 

DailyTech seems to be incorrect. The new 14.31 drivers are compatible with the GMA 950, GMA 3000, GMA X3000, GMA X3100, and GMA X3500. Of course, the GMA 950 and GMA 3000 don't have a T&L engine or VS physically in hardware so they can't be activated and only receive the bug fixes. The "X" series should all have DX9.0c SM3.0 hardware acceleration now though.

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/13876/ENG/relnotes_2k_xp_gfx.htm

 

Hi.

I have an nvidia 7000m and i can play Battlefield 2142 on low and the x3100 is supposed to be equivalent or slightly better.

regards

John.

 

I am not sure how a x3100 will perform in BF2142 realistically. However, I used to own a x300 ATI radeon which has a lower 3dmark06 score than the x3100 (200 vs 270). I was able to get it running at 800x600, with low details (maybe some medium, I am not so sure. it has been a while), and got about 20 FPS on average.

Therefore, my recommendation is to get a dedicated card, even a weak dedicated such as 8400m GS will be much better.

P.S. The x300 was the desktop version not the mobility one, yeah can you believe it! x300-> 8600m GT is quite a jump for me.

 

A word of warning:

Counter-Strike 1.6 ran terribly on my laptop with the X3100, however I'm not sure if it was just my laptop or what, because it didn't make sense.

 

my desktop X700 couldnt run Battlefield 2142....so i think you should look in to something else

 

Will it run.... yes, possibly, at ultra lowest settings.

Will it run playably.... absolutely not. You should be looking for something much more powerful.

 

My Vaio was $999 at Best Buy.

 

I bought a low end GPU and didn't plan on heavy gaming. Now I am and it sux having a crappy card.

If you game a little get the best GPU you can afford or will regret it later like I am. And definitely stay away from integrated cards if you want to game since they almost always never give enough performance to game well.