tx1000z and gaming?

I'm considering purchasing a new tx1000z from HP's website but I hope that a few tx1000z owners in this forum can answer a question of mine:

Can the tx1000z with intergrated graphics handle "average" gaming?

Yes, I've seen the low 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 numbers, but I would like to hear from people with real world experience using the tx1000z.

For example, what games play perfectly fine on the tx1000z and which games were so slow they were unplayable?

 

Avg gaming like sims yes but games like BF2 and heavy graphics it will not be able to. What games are you planning on playing?

 

This article might help you out with regards to gaming capabilities of the Geforce 6150...
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3591

 

About once every few months I like to play FEAR, Vampire Bloodlines, KOTOR and KOTOR2. I'm also thinking about finally picking up a copy of Guild Wars Factions.

I want to be able to play at least at 800x600 with reasonable fps ... even if it means running at lower texture/shadow quality.

Is the tx1000z capable of this, or would I need to move up to the bulkier dv2500t with 8400M GS garphics?

I really want the tx1000z but I still want to be able to play some games every once and a while.

 

You might want to think about the 2500t with the 8400m chipset if those are the games you're looking to play. I doubt the 6150 will be very capable at those. Check up the link above. That should help your decision.

 

I have the TX1138EA and have loaded four games on it with varying results:
Medieval 2 Total War - Plays fine on low to medium settings except for large built up levels such as citadels.
Panzers Phase 1 - Plays fine on default settings.
Imperial Glory - Runs fine on max settings
Starship Troopers FPS version - low settings - barely playable.

Its a nice small machine for strategy games hen the screen is folded flat and using a mini wireless mouse I find it very good and a lot better than my full blown laptop but I wouldnt use it for FPS such as FEAR.

 

A quick update on this. I just installed the latest graphics drivers from HP and my windows experience score went up from 2.4 to 3.0. Does anyone else here have a tx1000z series laptop? If so what kind of gaming experience are you getting?

 

I have one but not planning to play games with it. The best way of playing games is to make it XPSP2 compatible. Maple Story works with this setting.

 

I installed Colin Mcrae Rally 04 last night, runs on max settings without a hitch. I was surprised by this, also surprised by how good it looks. I may have to go back to my other games now I have the new drivers and see if there is any improvement, particularly Starship Troopers, the only other fast action game I tried in the past.

 

I read the 6150 review link.

With the comment that it can't handle BF2, does that still stand? Anyone tried it?

 

i think one issue is nVidia drivers in Vista. Until they get a LOT better, I don't see how you can get the max performance out of this card. The Go 6150 vista drivers are downright spartan.

 

Is Vista the general problem with the 6150?

 

For general Vista use there is going to be no issues. Aero and all of the GUI goodies are not a problem. But the default drivers included by HP and the one available from Windows Update are just basic stable drivers. They havent been updated ever since Vista was released back in January/February. Older games work fine but newer ones will have some difficulty. If you decide to go with XP, there shouldnt be any issues with the drivers.

 

That's the third time you made a post about this same subject. Cross posting is against the forum rules so please keep them in mind next time.

 

Apologies.

Just trying to broaden the chances of an answer.

I'll ensure I keep to the rules.

Thanks.

 

Are there alternative drivers available in the same way you can get them for ATI?

Or is it still a Vista issue regardless?

Looking at the HP Pavilion TX1250ea (in the UK), as my travelling entertainment centre, and wondered if it's up to the job as it's tiny and will pack into my bags nicely, but able to do all the tings it can, including hopefully, play decent-ish games.

 

And just one other thing, sorry....... , I'd need to up the system RAM to 2GB, as I can only buy one pre built variation here in the UK of the TX1000 as per above, which comes with 2 x 512Mb RAM sticks.

The 2GB of RAM in my Lenovo Z61M have identical characteristics as the recommended ones by Crucial for the TX1250. Even though the part numbers are different, surely they'll be identical????

 

Laptopvideo2go has lots of drivers available for you to try. be sure to use the modded inf along with the driver otherwise it wont recognise mobile graphics cards. I havent tried the newer Vista drivers but the latest ones should give you the full performance the GPU is capable of. Its a good integrated GPU but you will have to accept the fact that it was not built for performance but rather for cost effectiveness and battery life. If you are happy with gaming on low resolutions & turn down the details it should pass.

To be honest I wouldnt call it 'decent'. Decent would be something like the 8400M GS.

Well, you can use any 200pin DDR2 SODIMM.It doesnt have to be crucial recommended. There can be differences with the memory chips used between your lenovo and the Crucial recommended memory. They still might be the same spec so you can interchange memory between your Z61M and the tx1000.

 

Thanks very much.

 

Vista isn't the issue, nVidia got late in the game on making Vista drivers. That is why ATI has superior Vista drivers. I'm still waiting for this to change because nVidia typically has better drivers.

 

I found this review (specific as it relates directly to BF2), on the 6150 from last year (so XP drivers), which looks promising -

http://www.planetx64.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=175&Itemid=14

 

Right, an update.

I now have my HP.

It's the UK model tx1250ea-

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/21675-38187-38191-38191-38191-80246425-80539889.html

I have some Kingston memory (2x 2Gb RAM) to max it out, arriving next week, (and yes I know it's overkill as the system will only see 3.2Gb, but what the hell )-

http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/config/modelsinfo.asp

But as it stands today I still have the standard 1Gb of RAM installed.

I set the NVidia graphics card to the performance settings as per one of the reviews and have usd the HP stock drivers as per their internet downloads. No tweaked drivers just yet. The idea was to see what the "off the shelf" system could do. I also set its memory to 128Mb in the bios.

No reformat with a fresh Vista O/S, just removed the bloatware etc.

I used Ashampoo WinOptimiser 2008 to optimise the system and give it a clean out. Using its own benchmarks my system indexed at 40069. For comparison, an Intel E6300 C2D WinXP Pro + 2Gb RAM indexed at 53300 and an Intel Celeron 2.53GHz WinXP Pro + 512Mb RAM indexed at 35660.

My systems Windows Experience score is 2.4 due to the NVidia 6150.

I've installed Battlefield 2, 2142, Far Cry and Halo. Patched them also.

I've so far played BF2 and Far Cry.

BF2 is set at 800 x 600 and low in all the settings. In singleplayer mode it runs smoothly with no problems. In multiplayer mode (online) it runs fine, but I've been disconnected a few times which I suspect is due to the lack of system RAM when in very busy battles. It doesn't look stunning, but it does play fine, which is exactly what I want. When I have the RAM installed I'll tweak the settings up a bit to see how far it'll go. Overall it runs and is very playable.

Far Cry. Never played it before. Everyone talks about how a good card is needed etc. Well it's loaded and plays fine also. Set the game to auto detect settings for my system and went on the play it quite well. For a notebook that isn't supposed to be a 'gaming rig', it does fine by my books.

No idea how well it would do with modern games, but as I play BF2 99% of the time I'm happy.

It doesn't run hot or noisy and I'm very happy with this little pc. Occasionally the fan vents some heat build up, but only in the same way and to the same extent my older IBM Z61M vented heat in normal use.

When I read other people's reviews on how good or bad systems are in their opinion, it's sometimes very difficult to quantify 'true' performance.

Some people may slate AMD and the NVidia 6150 for limited performance (and reading those reviews made me sceptical), and yes, the Intel C2D processors are better, but..................this set up runs very well in its own right and is still very capable and rewarding.

It's by no means a powerhouse, we all accept that. It knows its place in the food chain. However, if you asked me to swap this 'wee beastie' for a 17" monster gaming machine, you probably wouldn't get the answer you'd be expecting!