Gaming performance with my P-6860FX

I'm curious if I need to tweak out anything to get the good performance everyone seems to be getting with their 6860's. When I got the laptop, I loaded up UT3 and Oblivion to test things out. UT3 I set at 1440x900 with all settings max and Oblivion is using the same res, with most options on, most sliders at about 75%. I was getting pretty decent performance with UT3, except at times it would get very choppy. Oblivion seemed decent, except I was getting very bad mouse lag. I set the sensitivity up on the mouse in the game, plus I installed software for my Logitech MX518 and set the sensitivity up on it as well. Once that was done, the mouse lag was greatly reduced, but now the screen sort of "jitters". Not sure how else to explain it. Moving forward or back it seems to be pretty good, but any movement to the sides makes everything jerky and it's hard to determine what's going on. I did just update to the latest 177.79 drivers, thinking the drivers that came preinstalled might be the issue. I haven't had time to play around with things much, since I'm now at work, but I thought I'd see if anyone had any ideas...

 

I believe the stock T5550 cpu (1.83 ghz) is a bottleneck for many high-end games. I haven't tried to run Oblivion on my 6860FX, but in UT3 I can enjoy a nice bot match on Deck while running at 1440x900 res, all detail settings maxed, vsync on and maintain generally about 26-30 fps.

In counter-strike source I can run maxed settings and vsync on without a hitch, and the framerate comes down to how many bots I shove into the map. With 15 bots it stays 95% buttery smooth, any more and the framerate starts to show hitches.

Edit: I used to run the stock drivers (had no problems with any games), and I've since upgraded to the 175.19 WHQL's (and also no problems thusfar).

 

Well, other people with the same CPU have posted they have smooth gameplay at default res, everything turned up in both of these games. I was just hoping there was something simple I might have overlooked, or something I could easily do to get better performance. I'll play around with it tonight and see what I can figure out and post more info if needed.

 

Well, found out what I did in Oblivion I think. I pushed the mouse sensitivity too high. Once I lowered that, I got it to the point where some of the jittery feeling went away, but it was still sensitive enough I didn't have that feeling of mouse lag. Still not as smooth as I was hoping it would be, but Oblivion and UT3 are definitely playable. I might turn down some of the settings and see if things get even smoother.

 

I installed FEAR Combat and have it setup and running, plus I retested Oblivion and UT3 and they seem pretty good. Not as smooth as on my desktop, but pretty darn good for a laptop. I need to tweak the sensitivity on UT3, as it just feels off, but I was playing Oblivion for about 30 minutes this morning and it seemed pretty smooth.

 

For some reason UT3 runs smoother on my 6860 than it does on my desktop with an Athlon X2 5000+ 2.6ghz, which had a 8800GTS640 and now a Radeon HD4850. *shrug*

For UT3, I found the default mouse aiming to be... "off" so in one of its ini files there's a setting called "capturemouse" which I changed to "false" and that made mouse smoothness better.

 

I'll have to check that out, thanks madmook!

 

I had the exact same jittery mouse problem in CoD4. I enabled "smoothe mouse" in the options menu and it went away completely. Now I've never played Oblivion so I don't know if it has that option, but if it does, definately enable it.

 

I don't have the gateway but I have the same cpu and did bottle neck gears of war a little still can run it on high but it would run better if I had a better cpu other wise it runs my games just fine!

 

Yeah, I'll look into the mouse smoothing option. I believe I'd already had that set, but if not I'll do so.

Yeah, I know I need to update the CPU. Just trying to wait 6 months or the wife'll kill me...lol!

 

The small cache in CPU makes ti lag also FSB.
These are the main reasons why the games might lag but it fine and i am looking forward changing it when the prices will drop cause i work in visual studio and i need a good CPU except for gaming.

 

look at the benchmark links in my sig, down below, the first ones are with a T5450, and the second ones are with an OCed X7800, there not a ton of difference in most games, usually raises the min and max FPS, only RTS's are going to see a huge benefit.

That CPU is more then enough for everything, clockspeed really means nothing.

 

Well, it looks like Crysis benefited, as well as ME and Oblivion (inside). Considering I want to play all of those on this laptop, it seems that an upgrade of the CPU would actually provide me with smoother experience overall. Of course, I'm very tempted to plug in my 19" LCD and G11 and play some of these games at 1280x1024 and see how it tears them up...lol!

 

Yeah, my CPU in my 6831 (I got the 1.6Ghz, version yay) seriously bottlenecks things for me. In Oblivion once there's more than 1 or 2 AI's running around my FPS drops bad. Crysis runs great until it has to do any kind of physics calculations then it comes to a screeching halt. Really wish I could afford to upgrade it.

On a side note, how is that 177.79 driver working for you. I had a lot of weird problems and crashes in every game (Crysis, Oblivion, even the original Halo ran like crap and was unplayable) with it and had to go back to 169.09. You may want to try an older driver and see if it helps any.

 

im on 177.83 right now, working just great, PhysX enabled and everything.

As for ME and Crysis, they are written for multi-core processors, so they will see an advantage for sure. As for Oblivion, the AI killed my T5450, just couldnt cut it at the settings I had it at.

 

Well, so far the 177.79 drivers (PhysX not enabled) seem to be working fine for me. I've done a little playing around in FEAR Combat, played an hour or so in Oblivion and a couple bot matches in UT3 with no problems. I actually have a high end, full sized desktop that I do most of my gaming on, so I don't game on the 6860 much, but I try to get on for 30 minutes or so every day to test things out and make sure things are setup in case I need to go mobile. I'll keep my eye out for any problems with the drivers.

So far, Oblivion is fairly smooth for me. Not like it is on my desktop, but it plays better then I expected from a laptop and looks beautiful. I get some slight chugging when I'm indoors and I haven't had to fight with more then 1 or 2 enemies onscreen yet, so things may change when I get into larger battles. I have most of my settings on high, but most of the sliders are only set at about 75%. I also turned off most of the shadows, since they hurt performance while not looking all that great. I've played Oblivion many, many times through, so I'm not interested in playing it for hours at a time anymore, but I still try to get on for a bit every other day or so. Still a fun game.