Vaio SR ATI HD 3470 Gaming Thread

The cooling systems on vaios are considered excellent overall (despite the isolated tz issues...which may have to do with lack of internal space for air flow or something). For example, the SZ and FZ's that had geforce 8400 and 8600 were not breaking down, or very few people have been reporting it, but on the other hand, dell,hp,apple computers that had those geforce cards were all breaking down at alarming rates...

but..since you are worried about how loud the fan is, i will give you examples of LOUDER fans... on notebooks:

- Thinkpad R52
- Core 2 Duo 2.6ghz Macbook Pro
- Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz Macbook
- Any Toshiba notebook
- Dell XPS M1330

This is just for reference...but i have either owned, or am close to owners of all of the above.

Most places, with the exception of a law/med school library are not quiet enough for the fan to be any kind of distraction or even really noticeable...

 

Ok, I ran 3dmark06... Painfully. xDDD

I ran it on High Performance and stuff like that.

Original drivers that came here with the laptop.


Oh yeah, Sony Vaio SR VGN-129E/B with the ATI, 250gb HD, 2Gb Ram, and so on.

 

So we can certainly conclude, seeing as me and you(Ilovemoogles) have the exact same spec'd hardware, that the modded drivers increase your 3dmark score by 50 points. So this may translate to a +1 fps in games...but thats just speculation.

Also, I have added the Original vs. Modded 3dMark06 Scores to the first page.

Thanks!

 

ILoveMoogles, Thanks for running the test and posting the score

Well I just ran the test (this time with iTunes 8 closed ), and I got a 2277 on the 3dmark06 test!! thats a big improvement!

For some reason my school blocked the 3dmark06 web site so I couldnt upload the score... but I took a screenshot.. here ya go

 

Hey, i get no thanks...no appreciation... AFTER ALL I'VE DONE FOR THIS THREAD!

Anyways, haha, yeah, that concluded my prediction that itunes sucks up resources. So with more ram and a faster gpu, one can expect a roughly 135 point increase... will update front page with this info

 

Sorry

You are awesome!! I really appreciate you starting this thread!

btw my hard drive is 320GB not 350GB

 

Oh and did you notice ILoveMoogles's GPU is shown as Generic VGA too?
so it's not really the modded driver's problem

 

Yeah, I noticed the Generic thing as well. I guess it doesn't recognize the hardware, as it is an older program.

Well, the free version. I wonder if someone who has paid for one could run it and see if they get updates for the hardware or not. It's just too new is my guess. Heh.

But yeah, sure, you are welcome. Now I need to mod it and put the newer drivers to see if I get any gain of performance. xD

 

I have the Professional version... don't ask how i got it lol ... but yeah it recognized my video card

ok, please keep us posted

 

Well, seeing as me and you(Ilovemoogles) have the same specs, i doubt you will see gains past what i saw. But, we shall see!

 

Yeah, I'm not sure.... I do have a 250gb hard drive though, so it might be slightly higher, or not. I'm not sure. Probably not though. xD

Hey, anything helps though... I think?

Yeah, I'll get to it eventually... Meh, I say that a lot. I still need to post a thoughts/review of the SR... Gah.

 

I really want to post a review as well, but have not gotten around to it yet...

(ashamed)

 

Also, someone should attempt to download AMD GPU Clock Tool and Overclock their 3470 and see what kinda 3dMark scores they get!

I will try doing so when i leave work/get a chance, but if anyone wants to try it out, it would be appreciated!

 

So I went ahead and went through the updating process and it went without a hitch.

Drivers before: 3/12/2008: 8.474.0.0
Drivers after: 7/31/2008: 8.522.0.0

I did my own little benchmark with Trackmania Nations Forever. At a resolution of 1280x768 and tweaked video settings, the benchmark averaged 24.2 fps with the stock driver.

After installing, rebooting the laptop and running the benchmark again with the same exact settings, I averaged 23.2 fps, a full frame per second slower! I closed any open applications, tried it again and still 23.2 fps.

I lowered the resolution to 1280x720 and I was able to get 23.9 fps in the benchmark. Still no improvement.

Despite that it says that it's a Mobility Radeon 3450, skeptics should be assured that if you check the core and memory clocks in the catalyst center, they match those of the 3470 (slightly higher than that of 3450).

I'm still debating whether I should keep the updated drivers or revert back to the factory ones. One perk of the new drivers is that I am given many more options in terms of widescreen resolutions. I was very limited with the factory drivers.

 

testing out company of heroes (+opposing fronts). will post performance in a bit...

 

Well I just bought spore on Direct2Drive, pretty fun so far! The graphics are not exactly DX10.1 Next-Gen graphics, but it runs perfectly at the highest settings.

 

AMD GPU Clock Tool does not seem to run! Anyone else experiencing any success with it?

 

World Of Warcraft , max resolution and max everything i could find

around 25fps

my SR specs are in sig

 

Added, thanks!

 

i get average 17 fps on company of heroes with all settings high and 1280x800 res

 

added, thanks!

 

any body can tell me if I upgrade the ram from 2gb to 3 gb this will increase the performance and specially for games ??

 

hey thebigpants

somebody got 25avg fps playing battlefield 2 on medium settings with integrated graphics..(pretty impressive)
u might wanna add that too

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3918223&postcount=706

nevermind... i forgot this is a thread for the HD3470.. lol

 

Hmm, I'd test BF2, but I keep pretty much everything but Geometries at low in the first place, so I would probably do no good (Most settings low, Effects @ Medium, Geometries @ High, 4x AA, 800x600 :|). I can try later on to see how far I can push it though. Although BF2 still has no widescreen support.

 

Smithereens, to get widescreen on ANY game, you simply need to change the setting in the Catalyst Control Panel from "Preserve Aspect Ratio" to "Full Screen" in "Atributes". It upscaled No One Lives Forever 2 to widescreen and it looks perfect, no stretching!

Also, i added BF2... even though it was with integrated, just so people know it will run on their system since it runs on integrated...

 

I didn't even know that! Well all of the games I have played so far support widescreen ratio..
anyways, thanks for the info, that might come in handy someday

 

Ah, well, I guess that was the answer I was looking for. xD Thank you. ^^

I've been playing a couple of older games that would preserve the aspect ratio, but they would be very glitchy and would crash a couple of times before I could get it stable. Maybe that'll help.

Darn stupid Korean MMO's. lol! Most of my other games don't do that, but there are two older ones that do. >.>

 

Hmm, didn't know that. At any rate, I tried it and ran BF2, the image is stretched for sure, but I think I could live with it. Not bad. Wish EA/Dice would enable widescreen support.

 

Are there any good combat flight simulators out there?

 

check out this thread for Combat Flight Sims:

http://acecombatskies.com/PC-combat-sims-t6372.html&pid=325653

It has some suggestions, I'd also look for the JetFighter series...it used to be pretty good way back when i had a sidewider joystick and a joystick port on my Compaq Presario Pentium III, 550mhz, SD Ram... the works, haha, it had a Savage3D GPU

 

***Bump***

 

Has anyone tried playing Assassin's Creed, Spore or Bioshock?

I was comparing my new SR190 CTO (8600, 2GB Ram, ATI HD) to my friend's Thinkpad T61p thinking I could pull off close if not better than his performance in the game, but after reading a notebook gpu review, the 3470 is rated a whole lot lower than his Quadro 570M. This has got me a bit worried, as I was really hoping to try out some of the newer games (Fallout 3, Gears of War, Bioshock) tuned down at about 30 fps ATLEAST... (45 FPS would be wonderful)

Although the SR is not a gaming laptop by gpu standards the internal components and size are excellent! My desktop is still a single core agp system that I can't bring back and forth from college to home. Mobility > Gaming, however in all honesty I wouldn't buy a laptop unless it could at least game slightly. Medium settings are all i am dreaming for...

 

Would getting the 200GB 7200rpm HDD show a noticeable boost in performance over the 320 5400? Not even just for gaming, but generally? The extra 120 GB on the actual machine could be nice, but I do have an external that I'll use either way...

 

I also wanna know this. Which of these is faster in the SR? Ignoring completely price and space differences. I still hear mixed opinions about it.

Also, will increasing the RAM from 3GB to 4GB (is it dual-channel?) benefit in anything with Windows 32bit generally?

 

Please check the the first page...you can in fact run bioshock on low settings on the 3470... (this is pre 8.9 mobility modder drivers...so it may run on medium with these!) and Spore on Medium Settings

 

As PhilFlow mentions quite often and as you can find extensive literature on... On the 320gb 5400 RPM HD, each 160gb portion is on a seperate platter, giving similiar to 7200rpm speeds.

None the less, a 7200 rpm HD really only lets programs load faster... it doesnt actual increase gaming performance... so if you want itunes to pop up faster...then yes go for the 7200 rpm, but its not worht the upgrade from a 320gb hd... in terms of performance/space at all.

 

Other than getting the Dual-Channel benefit, windows can physically address 4gb MAX of ram, but because other things such as your GPUs vRam take up some of that, plus other things, windows will only utilize like 3gb...max.

So 3gb will be adressed if you have 3gb running or 4gb running. The benefit of the 4gb is the dual-channel...which in synthetics gives a 5-10% percent increase in performance...over single channel applications(like 2gb+1gb of ram vs. 2gb + 2gb of ram). So i guess if your looking for Max performance, the 4gb will be 5-10% more powerful than the 3gb...despite both setups only utlizing 3gb...

 

By the way, forgot to mention that my benchmark of Trackmania Nations Forever a while back was done on medium settings and a resolution of 1280x720 and I was getting on average of 24 fps.

 

I've had a lot of success with some of the free older games... and even some of the newer ones (well, kinda.)

I'm too poor to afford games that you have to pay for, so I end up playing games like Fiesta, Flyff, Maplestory *when I am incredibly bored*, and ROSE Online.

I can pretty much turn the graphics options all the way up on all of these games and have excellent framerates and smoothness (I only know the actual framerates on Maplestory I'm afraid though.) I have seen a slight slowdown on Fiesta in some of the more crowded areas in Roumen, but it's not really enough to be extremely noticed. (It's painful watching the screens on my friends' integrated graphics laptops.)

On Maplestory I can average about 160-200 frames per second at any time, and the log-in screen gets around 300 frames per second. xD It's a very ancient game though, so that's to be expected.

If that's any useful. I only use laptops to play free games... I am not really into most of the actual games you buy, like FPS games or some of the subscription MMO's....

 

I encountered a major problem while playing UT2004 today. My game stopped responding for a while and under Vista Reports I got the following problem listed:

Product
Windows

Problem
Video hardware error

Date
9/23/2008 22:23

Status
Not Reported

Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Files that help describe the problem
WD-20080923-2223-01.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 117
BCP1: 87AB6008
BCP2: 8F40FF6E
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 00000000
OS Version: 6_0_6001
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

I'm thinking this might be due to the desktop drivers.

EDIT: After searching on the Internet, the problem is definitely related to the ATI Graphics Driver so at this point, I reverted back to the stock factory driver

 

hmmm.. which version of the desktop drivers are you using? 8.8 or 8.9, if your using 8.8...trying upgrading to 8.9.

If your using 8.9, try changing UT2004 to "XP Compatibility mode" in the games properties(right click the icon and choose properties). Also set the game so you run it as an administrator, this can also be done in properties...

If non of the above work, try adding -dx9 to the games extension. (this may or may not fix the issue)

You can also, simply uninstall the new drivers and reinstall the original drivers from the sonystyle webpage. Let me know if any of this solves the problem...

Also, i know you prob wont do it right now, but can you when UT2004 works again post some FPS/Settings/Performance info on the game...

Good luck!

 

I was using the 8.9 drivers that were released just a few days ago. I checked the compatibility box to run under XP (SP2). However, the "run as an administrator" box is grayed out and I can't change it.

After the issue, I reinstalled the factory drivers but I didn't uninstall the old drivers (which kind of resulted in a mess because the drivers are the factory ones but the Catalyst Control Center is still 8.9).

UT2004 worked without problems, except during gameplay, it froze twice for a few seconds, then was ok again (then I noticed the two error reports in windows coinciding with the 2 freezes).

To be honest, I don't know if it's a problem with the new drivers or in general because before, I usually wouldn't play more than 20 minutes but when this happened, I was already playing for a good hour.

As for the settings, all the settings are maxxed out with a forced resolution of 1360x768 (this might also be the problem since it's not a standard resolution of the game?) and I am getting an average of about 50 fps but can dip to low 30s in busy areas where there are a lot of people shooting. The game is also playable at maxxed settings and 1600x900 resolution but in busy areas, it dips to mid 20s which is kind of inconvenient in a fast-paced game like UT.

 

Try using a regular resolution(non-forced) and in the Catalyst Control Center choosing "Full Screen" instead of "Preserve Original Size" or something like that.

The drivers will scale it very well, it worked wonders on No One Lives Forever 2, which had no widescreen support at all...

See if that solves the issue, thanks for the performance update, i shall add it to the front page index...

I also suggest uninstalling the old CCC, just to make sure the new/old drivers dont conflict...

 

Thanks a lot for the quick replies and useful tips. I shall post again after I tweak around with the settings and seeing how the game runs.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I also tried these games on my laptop:

- Unreal Tournament 3 Demo: 1024x768, both general settings set at 2/5 (if you play the game, you'll know what I mean, basically mid-low settings), low 30s fps (you can up to the resolution to 1280x768 but fps will drop to high 20fps and it feels kind of jerky sometimes).

- Need for Speed: ProStreet: 1024x768 (high car detail, low world detail, 30s to low 40 fps)

 

That's why the thread is here! Feel free to give rep points

 

I'll also mention about my Maplestory test is that I used it in windowed mode. (It shows the FPS in the top right corner.)

I'll try my best to get a screen shot of it when I play it next time and post it.

I always love how the log-in screen gives so many fps. xD But in game, I notice it is usually about 200fps even in crowded marketplace areas.

 

What is maplestory anyway?

*** Note: Newcomers to the thread...please see the first page for a list of games that run on the SR/FW

 

Maplestory was created in 2003 in south Korea by a company called Wizet. It was published by Nexon, in order to be a cash cow. Supposedly in the year 2006 or 2007 they earned almost $2 million in their "Cash Shop" virtual limited time item shop. (Well, kinda... )

It's basically a free Korean MMO that uses that stupid gameguard stuff, and yeah. It used to be alright........... back in 2004/5, but now it sucks. Since the really small kids have joined it and ruined it with their immaturity.

It was great, when I used to play it. I was just checking out most of the new content, and haven't really played since I installed it.


Most of the other games I listed are Free Japanese/Korean MMO's. I prefer the Japanese, as they use XTRAP instead.

 

Can this run Crysis warhead anyone and on what settings?

thx,
Ahsan

 

Please refer to the first page before asking if it can run a game in the future.

It can run crysis with low settings, full resolution, at 20fps. So warhead should run the same or similiar. Granted it depends on your specific setup, ram, hdd speed, and cpu all change the performance to varying degrees of a system.