Gaming on the SZ

Hey Guys,

What's the quality of gaming like on the SZ?

Would it be much better on the new Sony VGN-SZ390?

I wish they had a 256mb video card, that's the only thing stopping me from buying it.

 

I have the sz260 and I get an avg of 25 fps in fear, on autodetect. It's not designed for games, but it does a decent job for a thin and light.


I wouldnt trade my sz for the world, games or not

 

Doom 3 demo looked pretty impressive. I don't own an SZ but I slipped a demo burned onto a CD into a display model and played it for about 5 minutes.

Why would gameplay be that much better on an SZ390 as compared with an SZ330?

 

I know I'm a bit behind the times, but Halflife 2 looks great on the SZ --- max settings, 1200x800.

 

As someone who isn't a gamer and at the risk of asking what will be a stupid question to many of you, in what way does the video card affect the way a game looks on the screen or plays?

I tried watching a DVD on an SZ in both stamina and speed mode but I really didn't notice a difference. That said, I realize DVDs aren't very intensive and that even lower end computers can play DVDs with no problem.

Thanks!

 

The quality of the GPU affects a lot of things. The better one you have: images will be crisper, more detailed textures will show up, the FPS will be faster, many other things too.

And as far asI know...the watching of DVDs has no influence on the GPU.

 

...I'm sure that there are at least a half dozen serious gamers sitting as slumped headless corpses at their computer station because their head exploded upon reading your question.


Real time 3D graphics is a pretty hard thing to do. The latest games have 3D rendering features that weren't present in older graphics chips... so newer games can simply fail to work on older gear because various techniques simply aren't supported.

As games try to render more and more in real time, the graphics chips have to work hard to keep up. All the basic math used in rendering the geometry become basic instructions, and are just a pipeline into the specific task of rendering 3D. Within this specific scenario, the chips are much faster than the intel chips running the rest of the system... it's just that they're not very good at generic stuff, like the boring instructions required to run the rest of the operating system



If you want a metaphor... take cars. The main processors like pentiums and such are say, the Porsche SUV. Can go pretty dang fast in a straight line, good enough in cornering, can go over mildly rough terrain, move the family, carry a canoe, and participate in a wedding parade.

...but your GPU's are like top fuel dragsters... good only at a very specific task, which is fast in a straight line. It does this really well, so well you can't do it better. But don't even think about taking it off a sweet smooth asphalt surface, turn it tight at all, think about going on a road trip, or simply get it road registered. You can't move house or carry groceries with it, and parking is a b-tch! ...but dang, it sure does go straight and fast really well.


GPU's, it's just about crunching 3D math in real time... mesh positioning, surface rendering, movement translations, z-buffering... and all the rest of that fun stuff.

 

Some GPU's today have mpeg4 decoders in them, so they can relieve some work from the mainprocessor.

 

Heeheehee. You sure love your cars. Vrroooooom!

 

Thanks for the explanations and analogies I think the last computer game I played aside from the ones that are usually already on the computer (Solitaire, pinball, etc.) was Roller Coaster Tycoon or something and that was many years ago.

 

i seem to need the gpu to play videos from itunes 7. something about the higher res. of the new videos. i'm trying to figure out why.