nc8430 Gaming

So I finally got my nc8430 the other day. I really like it. It's well-built and gets 3-4 hours of battery life, so I can actually bring it to class and otherwise around campus.

I finally was done with real work for the week last night and I went about installing BF2 on it. This game ran servicably on my P4 3.4/MR9700 on my XPS, so I figured it'd run pretty sweet on my new 8430.

Not so. It topped out at ~28fps, no matter the settings which makes me think it's something beyond the graphics card.

I haven't touched the drivers (except for swapping ATI CCC for Tray Tools) and I thought I'd kepy bloat-ware to a minumum. I've got 52 processes running right now, including firefox, outlook and a couple for winamp.

I also booted up Rome-Total War and that seemed to run well, at native res, no less. I was somewhat underwhelmed by the performance of that, even.

I had been running the free copy of Symantec (Corporate Ed.) that my university gave me, but I swapped that out for Avast and there's been no obvious change.

Is there some secret I'm missing to unlocking the potential of my 8430? Omega Drivers? I've had bad luck with them in the past; random, frequent BSOD's on my XPS.

Aside from any suggestions as to my predicament, what games/settings are you nc8430 owners out there running?

By the end of the weekend I should have UT2004 and HL2 installed so I can see how those'll run.

 

Only thing I know to recommend is to make sure you have the latest ATI catalyst driver. I believe it is catalyst 6.9. Maybe that will help.

 

I've been running BF2 without any problems in performance except for network lag which has nothing to do the laptop. I admit I don't run it at the highest screen settings but then again niether is my LCD as the higher resolution kills my eyes.

 

Read the gaming section of the review I posted...Oblivion and Need For Speed settings there.

I'm considering picking up UT 2004. If I do I'll get back to you on that one.
BF2 might have a software conflict affecting it, much like WOW does with multi-core CPUs (limits at 59 I believe).

The first thing I would do is install HP's X1600 drivers. The Catalyst suite has one or two bugs on the nc8430...such as screen res changing on the fly when you turn off and back on the LCD when the computer is on screen saver or standby. I've reverted back to HP drivers, and had less than a 50 pt impact on 3dMark05 so you're not really going to lose anything.

 

Luar, what are all your settings?

 

I don't recall and you have to wait til I get home, however, my question to Beltonius is whether he's upgraded BF2 with the 1.4 patch?

 

yes, Luar I did.

I rebooted and tried BF2 again and it was playable ++. I was getting 30-40 FPS running at 1025x768 (I don't think it was any higher) and with other settings at med-high (no FSAA).
It still wasn't as impressive as I'd hoped (is the max res of BF2 1280x1024? Nothing higher is listed), but at least I could play.

 

Might be worthwhile running 3DMark just to make sure the performance on your particular machine jives with what the reviewers have found.

 

OK I checked and it looks like I'm playing at 800x600 with medium settings. Since I installed the game, I have not had a chance to experiment with these settings but will do so on Monday. But to be honest, these settings are good enough for me.

 

People who run ATI Tray Tools on their nc8430, did you have to do anything other than uninstalling CCC to get it to run properly? It looks like it's unable to read GPU/Mem clock speeds and I don't think it's actually over/underclocking it at all.

I'll try and uninstall/reinstall and see if that helps, but any suggestions?

 

What are your Vsync settings? If you have Vsync on it will lock your framerate to the refresh rate or a multiple of the refresh rate.

For example, it will run at either 60 FPS or 30 FPS with your refresh rate at 60Hz with Vsync on. Of course if you can't stand "screen tearing", then you'll want to run Vsync

Are you overclocking your GPU? I ran mine at 460/450 for 8 hours straight playing Toca Racing 3 at 1680 x 1050 with most settings on high, so there is a lot of usable headroom if you overclock. Toca 3 is NOT the most demanding game though.

The X1600 is a strong laptop GPU, but it's nothing close to the strongest desktop GPUs. It only has 12 pipes and a 128bit memory memory interface. ALL of the best GPUs have a 256bit memory interface (including the R9700). The X1600 is a midrange GPU by todays' standards, don't expect it to run games maxxed out, especially at 1680 x 1050.

Run some benchmarks, 3Dmark'05 is free.

Oh, and I never installed CCC, I opted out. I only run ATT and have no problems over/underclocking with it.

 

One more thing, do you have "ATI Hot key" service running? I think ATT has a problem if that service is running.

 

I am using Ati Tray Tools even with CCC installed, so you should not need to uninstall it.

 

how do you guys get your advanced options back in the display properties after uninstalling CCC?

i don't like CCC, but I don't want to upgrade to the normal catalyst drivers if they've got some lcd issues...

 

I don't see my advance settings without CCC, but all options are available by right clicking the ATT icon. I don't use CCC because it's a lot of junk that I don't really need. I set up overclocking profiles in ATT and switcxh between them with hot keys.

 

Minor correction here - Vsync will *cap* your framerate at your refresh (so maximum 60fps for most LCDs) but below that it can be anything - it's not limited to a factor (not multiple ) of your refresh rate.

All Vsync does is it makes the card wait for a screen refresh before flipping draw buffers; if the card can push 53 frames per second it'll be able to display all of them even with Vsync on.

I used to have vsync forced off on my CRT, but with this laptop LCD I find tearing to be noticeably more pronounced; I've got vsync on by default now.

 

Vertical Sync

"Games that use double buffering but cannot keep up with the refresh frequency are usually limited in frame rate to a divisor of the refresh rate"

Maybe triple buffering has solved this, but I don't get anything but 30/60 FPS with Vsync and triple buffering on while running BF2142.

 

That's wrong. Trust me. Wikipedia articles are sometimes written by people who don't know enough about what they're writing about; actually, thanks for showing me that, I'll go fix the entry.

Leaving aside triple buffering for now, in ordinary double buffered situations there are two things happening - the graphics card is rendering to the back buffer, and the monitor is displaying from the front buffer. When the GPU is done drawing, it performs a buffer flip, which makes the draw buffer and the render buffer switch. When Vsync is on, the buffer flips only happen at the same time as the display refresh; when vsync is off the buffers flip when as soon as possible, even if the monitor is halfway through drawing a screen - that's what causes the tearing.

Now, just because they're synchronized doesn't mean it's locked to a divisor - that would only happen if the graphics card wanted to maintain 'even' timing, such that if it couldn't draw a frame at every refresh, it would suddenly drop to every *other* refresh - going straight from 60 to 30fps.
In reality, what happens is the card flips buffers whenever it's able to (synchronized with the refresh), which means supposing your card can manage 59fps on a 60Hz display: it would simply not flip the buffers during ONE of the refreshes every second, but the other 59 frames would come out just fine.

I suppose there might be some wonky vsync implementations that do the 'divisor' thing, but in general that is definitely not the case...

Anyone can test this one, it's really easy: just force Vsync on in your drivers, load up fraps, and turn on the game of your choice - I guarantee you'll see framerates other than 10, 15, 30 and 60.
EDIT: whoops, okay, didn't notice your bf2142 comment - that's really odd. I don't notice that in any of the games I have on hand - q3a, civ4, oblivion, bfme2, or doom3. That's just bad coding, if they did it that way.

 

To elaborate a bit on triple buffering - the third buffer is useful basically because when vsync is on, after the GPU is done rendering to the back buffer it can't do anything while waiting for the refresh so it can swap buffers and get started again. If it completes a frame a nanosecond after the display refresh, it'll basically waste the whole next refresh interval. This is where the triple buffering comes in: instead of sitting on its ass, the card can start drawing into the *third* buffer, so it never has to be idle.

 

It doesn't jump back and forth instantly, 30-60-30-60. I see framerates in between but only for a VERY short amount of time, like it's ramping back and forth. It's a definite 30 or 60 though. It never stays at anything like "38" for longer than a fraction of a second, according to Fraps.

For the heck of it I checked Far Cry out. I can actually get the framerate to stay something other than 30/60. It usually tries to stay at 30 95% of the time though.

This is on my desktop PC (A64 @ 2.5 ghz/7800GT) I don't have BF2142 on my laptop so I can't tell you how it runs.

 

Update: I uninstalled, cleaned the registry, reinstalled and ATT is now reading clock speeds and overclocking options are no longer grayed out.

How do I actually overclock/underclock using ATT? Ideally I'd like some mild overclocking while on AC power, for all applications, and significant underclocking (if possible) on battery power to extend battery life.

Similarly, what GPU clocking settings do people use with the x1600's in HP laptops?

 

I noticed the 30 / 60 FPS cap vsync on it HL2 as well.. it's very noticable. turning on net_graph 1 solidifies my claim.. it's not just somethin i'm seeing

 

1) right click tray icon, select hardware > overclocking settings

2) for underclocking, I use 160core/170mem. I have found that there is a point where you go so low that you will crash. It doesn't take much to draw 2D on the screen.

3) for overclocking, use the "find max for GPU" and "find max for mem" to get a feel for what you can do. I have found that this function won't stop increasing until it crashes, watch the artifact count (be sure to open the 3D renderer which will give you an artifact count). I started testing 460/460 and "scanned for artifacts" (which is a core and mem test) from there to test those settings. Be sure to hit "apply" every time to enforce the clock changes. I use 466/460 as my gaming settings

4) If those setting run for a while with no artifacts, increase either the core or mem settings if you want to go higher. As soon as you start getting artifacts, lower that setting accordingly.

5) when you find a happy spot, run the artifact scanner with an instance of Prime95 for an hour to get everything nice and hot, if still no artifacts, you are probably stable as long as changes in air temp don't drive up your computer's temps to a crashing point.

6) save your high and low clocked profiles. Select a profile to load at startup. Remember to apply something first if you are going to save it. I set hotkeys (right click ATT icon, hotkeys) to switch from my underclocked to overclocked profile by clicking ctrl-F1 or ctrl-F2

 

Neat! I've created some profiles and I'll have to boot up UT and HL2 with/without the overclocking and see the effect.

Hopefully the underclocking (280:270 (DDR)) will give a nice boost to battery life, as well (the primary reason I wanted to mess with GPU clock speeds).

 

I've found letting PowerPlay do its thing is far more effective for battery-preservation than manually underclocking with ATT ... of course, ymmv.