Vaio SR ATI HD 3470 Gaming Thread

Quite suprised sony hasnt gotten into the gaming laptop business. A good graphics card or at least an option for one, for some of their models would probably be quite profitable for them.

Also, The AW seems good but a bit too big for me

 

all settings were default.

 

Yeah on default I think 3DMARK06 is set to use the native resolution

try to run again with 1024x768
thats the resolution most people run the test with

 

really? the scores on notebookcheck.net use 1280 x 1024, but I will install the new drivers (are they on the ati site?) and rerun the test again on 1280x1024 and 1024x768.

btw I guess I should opt for the 64 bit drivers seeing as I have 64 bit vista. In addition would 64 bit vista lower the score when compared to 32 bit vista? my gut feeling is that it will not.

 

ok I re-ran the test at 1024x768 and the results are 3898 for 3dmarks06

I will not install the new catalyst driver and rerun the test. stay tuned.

 

Any idea if the 3470 (128MB) will run Assassins Creed? How do you guys measure the FPS and doesn't that affects the maximum FPS you can get? Thanks.

 

It'll run but make sure to run it in DX9 because DX10 will kill performance with your card. You should be able to bump graphic detail to 2\4 @ 1024 x 768\640 but leave shadows off. Play with the texture setting yourself as your immediate framerate mightn't drop but when your looking over a large area gameplay might get "jittery".

 

Which laptops have the 9600GT and aTi 3640?. You mean the new ones, any links please.

 

The Sony AW series have the 9600GT
the Sony FW series have the HD3650

 

Game update

Need for Speed: Undercover

- resolution: 1280x720
- anisotropic texture filtering
- world detail: all high, shadows off
- car detail: all high, smoke off
- no AA

Performance: mid 20s to low 30s fps

 

Hi all, pardon the question: how does one find out the fps? Is there a software I should be using to check that out? I play GTA San Andreas and NFS Underground 2.

Many thanks!

 

Try using FRAPS: http://www.fraps.com/

 

What are your graphics setting? Like overall....?

 

What is the Geforce equivalent of 3650?

 

9600m GT
but the 9600M GT is slightly more powerful

 

Sucks how come the UK FW with the Ati 3650 is over $2k while in the states its $999.99

That really bites, does Sony have international warranty?

 

Fot those of you who play WoW on your SR, is it playable in raids?

 

Not if u want to buy it in the States & bring it back to the UK (works the other way round though if you buy in Europe/Asia & pay extra for international warranty)

Either way, the £'s value against the $ has been rapidly falling in the past few weeks, therefore buying from abroad w/o warranty isn't as justifiable as it was in the summer

 

What do you mean by overall? Those are the exact settings I use for playing the game. They're the settings I think people will get the most out of the videocard.

 

how does an ATI 3470 compare with the mac 9400 intergrated nvidia gpu? Also do you guys think a p8600, 4gb of 800mhz ram, ATI 3470 mobility can compare to the new macbook pro?

 

From the 3DMark scores I've seen posted, the 9400 and the 3470 perform at about the same level.

 

hm... but the nvidia one is an intergratd gpu which should consume less energy... hm... perhaps for the first time ever the new macbooks alluminum ($1300) one isn't such a bad deal...

 

Yeah, I think for the price and the features, this is one of the few times I found the Macbook not to be too horribly overpriced. The only things against it in my opinion are the heavier weight and the screen.

 

with a FW11E (256mb version HD3470):

COD: World at War - 1360 x 768 no AA no AF automatic texture levels (extra, high, high or something like that), all graphics options off except water and bullet impact, fps from 18-28 (18 when there's smoke/fire, mid-high 20s otherwise)

 

Someone test GTA IV?

 

Logic dictates that when someone tests out a game, they will put up the information, no? Therefore, since nobody has posted anything about GTA, it must mean nobody has tested it yet or not thorough enough.

Personally, I'm waiting a few weeks until I get GTA IV. I have final exams until the 17th and I already have enough games distracting me for the moment. However, by the end of the month, I will have information on GTA IV and Prince of Persia.

 

No, someone might have tested it and did not feel the need to post it. But now that someone is requesting information maybe they will.

Logic dictates there was no need for your post because it came off rude.

 

Thanks for the information. I will wait, don't worry!

 

No one has posted on GTA IV, i try my best to post the performance on games as soon as people publish it on the forum. But...IMHO... GTA IV is not a graphical powerhouse and should run just fine.

The graphics on it are okay, what makes GTA IV so awesome is the sheer scale of things...but im sure it will run on low settings...and perhaps medium settings. People have run more demanding games then GTA IV with success on here... check the first page.....

 

I found some more info on the 3470 here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3470.9594.0.html

hopefully not a repost.

 

the spec of the HD3470s they used are not the same as the one in the SR
the memory clock speed is only 400MHz, the SR's HD3470 memory clock speed is 800MHz
and those 3470s use DDR2 ram, the HD3470 in the SR uses DDR3

 

Thanks Tony!

 

I'm confused. It says:

Core Speed * 680 MHz
Shader Speed * 680 MHz
Memory Speed * 800 MHz
Memory Bus Width 64 Bit
Memory Type DDR2/GDDR3

Where do they mention 400 MHz?

 

I don't know, San Andreas runs about 25 fps on about native resolution and med settings on my sr190.

 

hey S. Prime did you order your 290 on the web? If so, how long is it taking it to ship to your house? I have to wait 3 freaking weeks, which is kinda pissing me off. (wait until 14th)

And Tony, are you saying that the SR gpu 3470 is faster than the one posted on te website? How much are the average fps for the newer games in maximum graphics.

 

different games get different framerates
check the first page of this thread for what we know so far

 

Can someone fill me on what framerate is needed for accetable gameplay? As in, no lagging or stuttering etc.

Will COD5 world at war work???

 

30fps is all you need for a smooth gameplay
but sometimes some games run very smooth even at around 20fps or even lower (such as crysis)

not sure about COD5 thought
it will probably run on minimum or medium settings

 

I have a post on that in the SR owners thread:

I ordered mine the night of Tue, Nov 25th and being the holiday week here, not much happened. It was listed as 'pending' with a ship date of 12/3, then changed to 12/4 . I logged back in to sonystyle Monday morning and it said it was being 'built', then later that day it had shipped from Sandiego, CA with a delivery date of 12/5.
So 10 days from order to delivery including sat/sun and a holiday.

It should be here tomorrow. cant wait!

 

Placed my order for a SR290CTO on Nov 21st. Got it on Dec 2nd.

 

i got my yesterday, placed it on 11-26

 

Catalyst 8.12 should be available today, which should provide fixes for GTA IV and give a major performance boost on all ATI cards.

 

GTA IV works fine with 15 fps.(Used Fraps)
I tweaked the game with commandline and I play the game without SECUROM. Because it's slows down the pc! Settings I used are 800x600 and everything on low. It's fully playable after the commandline has been added!
I have the Vaio SR with P8600 HD3470 and 4GB RAM.

PS: don' forget to set graphic card to maximum performance when on battery.

 

thanks for the heads up

thanks for the info!
have you tried playing the game in widescreen mode?

 

Jebuz, 15 fps?! Oh, I may know the reason for such low performance.

IGN: We've been receiving emails from players saying the game isn't running with minimum hardware configurations. You say you've future-proofed it to a degree, but what's your reaction to that?

Kevin Hoare: We've found that definitely with old drivers you'd have major performance problems. Throughout our development cycle we've seen variants in performance and we've had to work with mainly beta drivers mainly to this day with some of the hardware…There's power management issues where your CPU isn't running at the clock frequency that you purchased that can cause major slowdowns. We were able to reproduce that one. We've basically been trying to reproduce any kind of slowdown but when we were testing we were on fairly clean machines and we hadn't seen these kinds of problems…

So for best performance, run the game on high performance, plugged in. Do NOT run the game on battery and I can tell you, even if you are running on high performance battery, it's still not maximum performance. I tried this with Unreal Tournament 2004 and I was getting about 20 fps less.

 

Wrong!! You can play any game when on battery.
You just have to change the power options. Go to control panel>Hardware and Sound>Power options. Change plan settings for power management off(for example).
Change advanced power settings> Ati graphics power settings and set here to maximum performance. But be careful it reduces your battery life! Don't say things when you aren't sure!

I didn't try fullscreen mode because my desktop has a better graphic card and my desktop isn't able to get a higher resolution. You need a graphic card with 512MB if you really want to play GTA IV with good graphics. I know 15 fps is not much but I don't notice that when i'm playing. It's fully playable.

 

Usually when uplugged from the ac adapter the cpu multiplier will half, meaning your processor will run at half the speed.
This would affect most games performance to varying degrees even if your gpu is not downclocking too.
AMD processors might be a different story.

 

Yeah, you can play any game on battery. I never said you couldn't play them but performance will suffer, even on the default high performance setting. And if you notice, I wasn't even talking about the video card, the bolded words clearly state it's talking about the CPU.

Yep, exactly the problem. You could always manually change the settings for CPU frequency and set it to 100% though.

EDIT: I got Prince of Persia and it's installing as we speak. I will update on how it performs once I have a change to play around with the game. I am also in the process of acquiring GTA IV.