Why such poor performance?

Hello all. Sweet forum, first post. I just recieved my Dell 1505.
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7200 (2.00GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 667MHz FSB)
1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm
15.4 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen SXGA+ Display with TrueLife™
80GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive
256MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory
Running on A/C and performance setting 3Dmark 03 only gave it 1100.
According to my latest laptop magazine their tested 1505 was given 1995 with a lesser setup:
I think this screen: 15.4 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen WXGA+ Display with TrueLife not sure.
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5500 (1.6GHz) Not sure of FSB, but has to be less.
1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM. Not sure of the RAM speed, but probably less then the 667 mine has.
80GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive. Definately slower
128MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1300 HyperMemory. 128mb less. I understand the hyperMemeory. 64 dedicated vs my 128 dedicated.

I could not bench using 3d mark 06 because it was less than 1FPS.
I'm using the free demo verson of 3Dmark 03. Not sure of their settings, but they did use 3Dmark 03 also.
Magazine said "with x1300 you can even play 3D , FEAR was 85 fps with auto detect settings with some eye candy turned off.
I under stand its shared memory and "play 3D" is a loose term probably meaning old 3D games. Its not a nice 256 dedicated card. I'm wondering why mine did so poorly.
They were running Windows XP Media Center Edition 05
I'm using Vista home Preimum.
Thanks all. I'm trying to decide to keep or send back for 1705 w/256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS
I'm not a gamer. I play older stuff one or twice per month and battery performance is of high concern as is portablitlity. Don't really care a 17" screen and paying more for the 1705, but my 1505 is pathetic.

 

Well, first off, with Dell computers it is always a good idea to do a clean install. There is a lot of bloatware that runs in the background taking up resources. As for the GPU, are you doing this test with the laptop plugged in? If not, powerplay is enabled and it will downclock your GPU making it not perform well. So make sure you are plugged in, or have disabled powerplay when you are benching. Last, try deleting your old GPU drivers and reinstalling them. If you are playing old games, that card will be plenty powerful for you. I play new games on an x300 and it isn't bad at all. That is a very nice machine , and if you are not a gamer there is no need for the 7900GS. So, in summary...

1) Bloatware may causes some hangup, but I doubt it is the main problem
2) Make sure you laptop is plugged in when you are benching
3) Try reinstalling drivers

Also, it could just be that the drivers suck right now for Vista, this doesn't seem to be an uncommon issue. In addition, someone posted about the aero glass GUI maybe hogging a lot of resources as well and makes gaming poor. I am not familiar with Vista, I don't know if there is a way you can turn that off when gaming (I am thinking how you could turn the XP GUI off and make it look like 98). Hope something in here helps. Good luck!

 

I can turn off the vista look. Its been plugged in every time. I uninstalle all that JUNK! Defragged also. I'll try downloading latest drivers and tuning off vista. Ram always seems to be running at 50-70 used with the system Idle. I think it may be vista. I may load my XP off my desktop and try if the above doesn't help. Thanks for the tips.

 

you should go to the Sager/Clevo thread, apply the multi-core tweak there, install the newest driver (i'm using 97.94 from laptopvideo2go.com)
yes, if possible, you should get E1705, E1505 is not a gaming laptop, i can't understand why Dell doesn't put something like Go7600 or X1600 in their 15.4"

 

As posted, you're on Vista so that explains a lot of the performance loss.

A note about 3DMark - it is supposed to strain your system to the max. '06 should be running in the single-digit FPS range; 1FPS is fine.

Laptop Magazine is exaggerating. They do two FEAR tests from what I recall - one on low settings and resolution and one on high. They got 85FPS on the low test. The framerates were probably in the lower 20s on the high, or less.
The X1400 is capable of playing all the latest games but you can't expect the best settings. It's not a high-end video card. By the way, even if it had 256MB of dedicated video memory, it wouldn't make any difference because the card is not powerful enough to use it all. 128MB is about the limit. So, no loss.

 

Something worked!!!
Updated drivers and turned off the fancy display.
Setup the ATI stuff to all max performane.
Now at 3804!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll look at the other tweak mentioned above. Thanks. I'll probably keep this now. I dont game much, but did want some 3D performance.

 

multi-core tweak
Before I go reading tonight on this. What is it?

 

Also note that Vista drivers are still in their infancy and it'll be a while before the bugs are worked out of both Vista and the drivers. Heck, XP has been out for years and they're still working the bugs out of both the OS and drivers...