eMachines gaming? Uh...no

The title of this thread may be misleading but oh well. ._.

I recently purchased a eMachines D620 laptop from Bestbuy for $300USD.

It has:
-AMD Athlon 64 2650e 1.6GHz, 512KB, 800MHz (single core)
-1GB DDR2-667 (1x1024)
-160GB 5,400RPM SATA
-ATi Radeon Xpress X1250 (Set to 128MB)
-14.1" 1280x800 LCD
-Windows Vista Home Basic

I'm having horrible, horrible 2D gaming performance and much worse 3D performance.

I can't run Second Life above 4FPS on the lowest of settings and I can't manage over 10FPS on Half-Life 2 Deathmatch.

My older Dell Latitude D610 could run SL with at least 15FPS and it has a Intel GMA900 graphics chip.

Is Vista the real culprit behind this performance?

 

Get some more RAM!!!! That will seriously bring up your performance. I recommend getting at least 2GB DDR2 800, but get 4GB if you can. Your games are going to be very slow because they will be constantly accessing the hard drive to load the game files since there isn't enough RAM.

-J.B.

 

Agreed, getting some more ram will help with vista. But...

Really, don't expect a huge improvement. Not sure about second life, but HL2 deathmatch will probably not make huge gains - what settings and res are you running?

 

Madness? THIS IS... d*mn, can't get a 300 reference in here. oh well.

at any rate, definitely upgrade your RAM. get a 667mhz 2Gb stick, and if you have another open RAM slot, put it in there to give you 3Gb (which is about as much as Vista 32bit can use). if you only have one slot, just take out the 1Gb stick and replace it, 2Gb should go a long way.

on a side note, don't expect too much performance from an internal graphics chipset like that.

 

you wont be gaming much with what you have listed obviously....

either the folks at BB lied to you or you didnt know what you were getting yourself into.

with a CPU like that and video card that was never meant to play games such as what you have i dont think even a memory upgrade will do you good like other suggested...

 

sell the laptop and get something that can play games (or exchange it if BB will let you)

and do your research next time

 

That's a 1.6 GHz single core processor running Vista on 1GB of RAM with a Radeon X1250 IGP.

There are all kinds of problems here.

 

The CPU is fine as I could run Vista with a p4b 2.4ghz(POS) and 2gb of ram without any problems....

To the OP:
Get more RAM. Newegg has 2gb kits for $25.99:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231116

 

Well, I'm just going to slap XP on it and see what happens. I technically got this laptop for classes so if it doesn't play any games then so be it.

The X1250 has almost double the power as a GMA900 though, even with the crappy CPU it should be better than a GMA900 w/ 512MB RAM and a 1.86GHz P-M.

As for HL2-DM I try to run it at 640x480 with all the lowest settings.


I'm saying that this thing can't even play Flash animations smoothly...

Plus this laptop can only take 2GB 667MHz at most. (Why not 800... I'm not sure.)

 

If it can not even play Flash smoothly, I think something else is up. Have you uninstalled and reinstalled the video drivers and made sure you have the latest ones ?? More memory will definetly help. Keep us updated. God Bless

 

Okay, installed Windows XP Pro 32-bit and ran Second Life. @ 1280x800 on low I was getting ~14FPS. Much better!

I'll try installing HL2DM tomorrow and see if it plays.

Oh, does anyone have a laptop with an Xpress X1250 that they want to test Second Life or HL2 on?

Also anyone want to test their GMA X3100 and/or GMA 900 with SL? I'll just take this laptop back if the GMA 900 tests better.

 

I have an Averatec 2575 with an AMD TL-60 @2.0GHz, 4GB RAM Memory, and an ATI X1270 which is pretty much like your X1250 and I am running Vista 32-bit. I can test it on mine and let you know. Is there a demo of HL2DM that I can download and try ?? Let me know. God Bless

 

http://www.steampowered.com/ati_offer1a/

Click there, download, create an account, and get the game for free.

That's the full game, I'm pretty sure this promotion is still going on..

 

I have the X1150 which is slower than the X1270 with AMD TL-52 @1.6ghz. I am able to get 20fps at CS:Source at 1024x768, though I don't know if this information is useful.

 

Okay thanks for your posts, I get from 28-70FPS in HL2DM @ 1024x768 with everything on low. (Windowed mode)

I think this is around what I'm supposed to be getting.

 

I bet in vista, you were probably in power saver mode.

 

Nah, I made sure to turn that off, and have the laptop plugged in.

Also, for reference, I had my graphics memory set to 64MB during those tests. But I didn't see any performance difference when I set it to 128MB or 256MB. So I'm going to guess I have a bit of a CPU bottleneck.

 

Yup, you only get as good of performance as the slowest part. Which could well be the CPU. My guess would be Vista was RAM-bottlenecked and was using virtual memory on the hard disk for everything - I don't know why else Flash would be lagging, especially since games started playing fine later with no hardware fiddling. XP can often get away with 1 GB, but Vista really can't with games. Usually it can for Internet browsing, but any OS without enough RAM will slow down on the Web after awhile.

Adding more graphics memory might actually reduce performance since it's really system memory. So when you go from 64 to 256 MB, you're going from 960 to 768 MB of available system RAM, and since that probably was your bottleneck before, it may well decrease performance.

 

With the price of RAM that is, do yourself a favour and get a 1GB (~$20) or 2GB (~$40) stick of DDR2-667 RAM.

You should check if you're running out of RAM while running games - play them in Windowed mode, then hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open up Task Manager. Look at the Physical Memory percentage - if it's at 100%, then you NEED to upgrade!

 

Before I uninstalled Vista I tried to see how many Firefox windows I could have open at one time. It turns out that I could have as many open as I pleased at Vista would let the RAM usage go up to 97-99% then dump that onto the hard drive leaving ~85% of physical memory left.

I think I will get another stick of RAM though as it does have an extra bay, though can only hold up to 1GB.

I was thinking of something on newegg that I can't post because I haven't made 15 posts.

Anyway, it's a 1GB, $12USD RAM dimm.

 

lol only 1gb? that will suffice for XP i guess

 

Well, as I've said in earlier posts; It can only take a maximum of 2GB 667MHz.

 

Then give me a different deal on a new laptop under $300.

Besides it has an Atheros wireless card, very nice.

I was downloading 4 different things at all very high speeds, the components are cheap but they're good quality.

 

I have a friend that snagged one of those up for a christmas gift for a relative ... it is a $300 laptop ... basic, plane jane laptop ... performance won't be its strong point.

It might run better on XP if you buy yourself a license for it.

 

Um, make sure you're not on powersaver mode? heh

 

its an e machine... what are you expecting!

plus those are horrible specs for vista and the games you mentioned I think.

 

You get what you pay for I guess. I've never used an e-machine, but I don't trust the logo product. You could try defragging & cleaning everything, see if it runs smoother.

 

Okay, update for everyone who didn't read the prior posts.

It has WinXP on it now.

Made sure it was never on power saver.

It's a fresh load so it shouldn't have any fragging issues.

HL2DM 1280x800 low = 22-70FPS (Depending on map)
Crysis (Yes!) 800x600 low = 14FPS
Second Life 1280x800 low = ~14.5FPS (In open area)

Not bad for $300, it's going to be even better when I get the extra RAM in the mail.

 

umm looking at the specs of your desktop in your sig i dont see why you cant afford a laptop with decent specs

 

Because I just needed one for class, plus my Dell D610's hard drive died so I figured I'd just get a new one. Was never meant for gaming but for note taking, I was just frustrated that I couldn't even play Flash games.

 

wow crysis reli?i just bought one emachine d620 with 3GB DDR2 800MHz.can i play sme descent games.