T61p and Gaming

Will the T61p run games as well as a Sager or Asus G1s? If not, will it still run them well?


Thanks!

 

The video card in the T61p is pretty much a 8600GT.

 

Wait a minute! Don't think the Quadro 570M is an 8600 GT even though it is from the 8M family. Come on, do your research!

According to "Odin 243":
"The Quadro card on the T61p is actually a better card than the 8600M-GT on the 1520. It uses higher clocked GDDR3 video memory, and the entire card is tested much more rigourously, at much higher levels of usage. However, the Quadro drivers may encounter some incompatibility errors, especially with older games. Therefore, if you get the T61p for gaming, it's highly recommended that you install the Geforce drivers on it. That will give you a gaming experience rivaled by only
the Asus G1s in the 15.4" sector."


Check the 3D score of the card:
http://www.tt-hardware.com/img/news5/news200707_11.gif
http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20030622679910.html

WEARETHEBORG SAYS:
"The 570M is offended that its being compared to a 8600M"

COME ON!

WUXGA Nvidia Quadro 570M?! Now that is some killer combination!

 

that kinda makes me wonder, how do you get it to run geforce drivers if it thinks it's a quadro, won't it get upset and not install the drivers?

 

You just need to mod the INF.

 

will that be difficult?

 

Good, looks like we are getting somewhere in this thread.

Here:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10561

Nothing is difficult!

 

Awesome!

Which driver should i replace it with? The 8 series one?

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

 

Razz, the 8600GT on the Dell is GDDR2 memory. I'm pretty sure the 570M uses GDDR3

 

the INF? what's an INF?

 

the driver file

 

LOL!

No, it is NOT the driver file!!!!

Ok, here is what you need to do and what .inf file you need to edit.

In this case, we talk about the graphics card/chip driver.

Every driver package, has vendor/manufacturer and type driver associated with different set of dynamic library links, executables, setting schemes etc etc.

When you download a driver from nvidia and extract it, you can get maybe 2-4 different packages in different directories. The directory names can be either version numbers or type numbers of the driver packages.

The .inf file is usually called like nv4_disp.inf, and it contains a lot of entries for tagging different files needed for a specific vendor/product.

The lines that are the most interesting here to "force" a driver to install can look something like this:

%NVIDIA_G86.DEV_0421.1% = nv_G86_0, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0421

NVIDIA_G86.DEV_0421.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT"

Change the .DEV_421 to the figures shown in the device manager so it matches you hardware and...

.. You figure out the rest yourself! ;-)

 

yes, you are correct. Dell has misinformed its customers of the reality of their card.

 

which driver and INF should i download?

 

The .inf I mentioned earlier is in the driver package. When you unpack the driver package, you will see the files.

Which driver to use? Well, for example, I run Windows Server 2003 x64 Enterprise on my T61p, and there are no drivers for that OS, so, the most compatible driver in this case would be the Quadro v91.85 for Win XP x64.

 

i'm looking for a gaming driver like the one in the 8600

 

can i download it form nvidea's site?

 

Yepp.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/partner_certified_drivers.html

and click on one of the links under "Quadro FX"

Tested those drivers during the weekend (Vista and Windows Server 2003, x64 versions) and they work fine.

But maybe you should use the drivers on Lenovos page. I do the above since my OS (Win Server 2003 x64) is not supported by Lenovos drivers.

 

nVidia doesn't provide drivers for their mobile stuff. What you downloaded was probably their desktop workstation card drivers.

 

Yepp, since they have this agreement with their partners.

 

Try these drivers
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showforum=72

They should work on your lappy

 

Will the T61p run Crysis decently with those drivers? I know the game isn't out yet, but just curious what everyone thinks

 

Ok so this laptop rocks for gaming? Nobody said.how well it works. I love the 1600x1200. It should be great for HD video. And the battery life is good for at least a 2+hr movie. But is the gfx card a 8 series for directX10 gaming? I dont know much about Quatro cards.
In 3dmark06, At 3700+ its better than my 2300+ card in my G1 and just about 100marks lower than the g1s. So sounds like a great system? Anybody actually done heavy gaming?

 

Well first off, it's 1920x1200. It will be great for HD video. The battery life should be 3-4 hours, hopefully. I get 3 from my T60p and it's got the ATI mongerer of power(FireGL v5200) The card is, basically, an 8600. So yes, it's DX10.

 

Just noticed this was a 15in monster(well not monster but big) is there a 14in configuration that has that 256mb video card? I noticed you said paying for in your sig.

 

Kevin posted up his T61p review here: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3889

Battery

Off the grid users would be strongly recommended to look into the 9 cell battery for the T61p. With its beefier configuration, it has a tendency to suck down power at a greater rate compared the standard T61 or T60. While my old 15” t60 w/ t7400, x1400, 2gb, and 120gb 7200.2 can string out more than 5 hours on the 9 cell, the T61p comes in below 4 hours running in balanced mode with 50% backlight. It hit 5% on the battery gauge after running for 3 hours and 33 minutes.

 

No I'm praying for a 14.1" 1400x1050 with 256MB of vram.

 

Yeah I thought I was reading about the 14in(the review listed above) but it was the 15in. I wonder how much slower is the 128(which sounds little when my g1 comes with 512mb didicated ram) vs the 256mb card.

 

G1 has 256mb card, not 512mb (that's turbocache bs).

 

No, its 512mb. G1, NOT the G1s. That one has less. I don't have the G1s.

 

it won't be slower...as i'm sure the memory is clocked the same, but it'll run out of the memory faster (obviously) and at higher resolutions...that's where the memory matters.

 

stay on topic! CRYSIS! lol

 

Hmm that would hurt when running at 1680x1050?

 

I thought I heard that the real difference between the 512 vs 256 wasn't all that big.

 

Oye...first off, the 512 dedicated GPU ram that guy is talking about is in his old G1 Asus laptop. It has nothing to do with this thread.

Second, the difference we're talking about here is 128 vs 256 mb on the Quadro FX. I've 'heard' (don't quote me on this) the latest MBPs run 128mb 8600 GT GDDR3 (so a smaller Quadro 570m), so we could perhaps garner some performance information based on that system and it's similar resolution. However it's probably too early/different to say.

As an aside, the reason there isn't much of a difference in performance between 256 and 512mb of GPU ram is because games today simply don't use that much GPU memory yet. However, you will probably see a difference between 128 and 256 on new games.

 

yeah...that's pushing it. depends how high you want your settings to run.

 

Just look up 128mb vs 256mb MBP. There's some differences between the two gfx cards especially at higher resolutions.

 

Ah phew so I wasn't crazy. Yeah I figured there would be a noticeable difference between 128 and 256, but I was far too tired to go hunting to make sure I was right