Vaio SR ATI HD 3470 Gaming Thread

The CPU thing is maybe true buit I don't notice difference when I am plugged in or on battery after I've putted performance to high for the gpu. But when I'm on Vaio optimised plan I do notice difference, Iget 7 FPS and it's very slow.(barely playable)

 

I played the first level of the new Prince of Persia game and unfortunately, Ubisoft doesn't give you a lot to play with in terms of graphical settings.

These are the settings I'm currently using:
- resolution: 1280x720
- widescreen option checked
- vertical sync option unchecked
- no AA
- graphics quality: low (there are no individual options, only 3 of them: low, medium, high)
- high resolution textures option checked

- performance: the fps ranges greatly in the game, depending on the environment but generally it's between high 20s to low 30s, fully playable
- if you put the graphics quality to medium, fps drops to a low of 15 fps to mid 20s, high yields 9 fps
- I didn't notice any performance drop for the high resolution textures option, so I left it checked.

Despite the low graphics quality option in order to play the game, I still think it looks pretty good. I will take some screenshots once I finish my school exams and I have a bit more free time on my hands.

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EDIT: So, I installed GTA IV today only to realize that not only does it run like crap but it looks like it too. Settings were at an absolute minimum and I barely passed the 20 fps mark. That's not the problem, the problem is that it also looked bad. I mean Crysis and Call of Duty look better at minimum settings and run better too.

Either way, I realized the game was a complete waste of 14 gigs and I immediately uninstalled and delete it off my harddrive.

 

I have installed GTA IV, it runs smooth at lowest settings, 800x600. Can be played with 800x600 low-medium or 1024x768 lowest, but these two won't run smoothly.

Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz, 4Gb ram, 3470hd 256mb vram, 5400rpm HDD (thought i should mention these)

 

CPU plays a BIG part in this game. Should be montioned for anyone wanting to try it with the 3470 and a lower clocked processor.

 

is there a thread like this for the integrated card?

 

Thanks for this info. Was seriously thinking of getting the game and installing it (been playing GTA San Andreas for awhile and I thought an "upgrade" was in order), but after your comments and Saruss's, I won't be playing GTA IV on my SR13GN.

Again, many thanks!

 

Does any1 know how I can play in FULL SCREEN on games that don't have wide screen function? I have a lot of games like Battle for middle Earth, DIablo, Quake, etc, that cannot run in full screen... it's basically a screen with 2 black bars running from each side.

 

For quake3 (and games that use id tech 3), and quake 4, you can set a custom resolution in the console or autoexec. It will look like full screen, but wont be true widescreen:

edit: also check with widescreengaming.com for info on setting games to run widescreen, if they support it.

 

Just go to ATi Catalyst>Notebook panel properties>Attributes and change the Scaling option to FullScreen

 

word. I just installed the Battlefield2 demo, set all settings to low, except for textures to medium and raised distance back to 100%. started it up with the custom res of 1280x800, and I was getting around 85fps (max) in single player vs bots. I'll up the quality when i have time and report back, and I'll try online multiplayer.

 

DreamFall: If I crank up all the details, I have lower the resolution to 640x480 in order to maintain 60 fps.

 

Hey gamers,
thought you might help. Just followed the semi clean install for my SR. The ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 driver was installed once windows completed its final bootup (version 8.513.1.0). Nevertheless, for some reason the Catalyst Control Panel is missing. I looked through the vaio recovery center software and it is nowhere to be seen. I also looked at the ATI website and there are no downloads for this specific card! Any idea where it is? I assume it has to be somewhere in the vaio recovery center...
thanks!

 

Just download the latest version of the ATI Catalyst software for HD 3400 series cards from www.ati.com then download Mobility Modder from http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php

Extract the drivers, cancel the installation, run Mobility Modder against the extracted driver, then run the installation again. (This time completing it...)

 

what is mobility modder for

 

It's a site designed to modify the gfx drivers to work for laptops, since installing the normal stand alone driver will not work on a laptop.

 

Hey Sodaboy, I did what you suggested. Now I have the Catalyst control panel! But it identifies my card as being 3450 instead of 3470. Is this normal?
Thanks!

 

Yeah, don't worry about it unless it really bothers you. That's because the drivers are meant for desktop computers and there are no HD3470 cards for the desktop, so it identifies the cars as the next closest thing, an HD3450. Don't worry, performance won't suffer.

Well actually my performance on a benchmark fell by an average of 1 FPS after updating the drivers from the factory ones. I don't know if that had something to do with it.

 

Thanks Wolf. Im not that picky about performance, I was just concerned it would burn my card or something lol.

 

Burn your card? Most definitely not, though I have experienced some rare crashes in Vista under intense gaming, which the source were the ATI drivers. That was scary to be honest but they haven't occurred lately.

 

So, I tried Assassin's Creed (loving it so far ). What accounts for the massive slowdown with DX10? There's almost a second lag between video and sound.

 

You are playing in DX9 right?? Although your card does have DX10.1 support so it might do a little better than my 8400m GT

Try defragmenting your hard drive. What settings are you playing on?

 

Hey Guys, I would like to ask you a question...

I will have a notebook with this specifications:

Notebook: Sony Vaio VGN FW21E
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P8400
RAM : DDR2 SDRAM, (2x2048) 4096
Graphics Adapter: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 with DDR3 RAM : 256 MB
Display: 16,4" WXGA++ (1600x900) Xblack LCD, 16:9
Weight: 3 kg

Could I possibly run GRAND THEFT AUTO IV or GTA IV on let's say... lowest details with an average 20-30 FPS? Thanx for your replies. Please do not be angry at me if someone posted a comment like this before me.

Edit: And I would like to ask on Splinter Cell : Double Agent, too please. Would it go on highest details? :O

 

I was playing at 1024x768 with 2/4 settings allround. I noticed that it runs much better at the same resolution if i set everything to 1/4 and that dx10 runs smoother/faster than dx9.

The graphics are still good with the low settings though .

 

Hi there, just found this thread resently and was surprised to see that you guys were only only getting ~2000 3d marks on 3DMark 06, I got 2555 3d marks on stock drivers and a heavily bloated vista home premium (98 processes is way to high )
I have played far cry 2 on my FW11E and i can play at 1024x768 with mostly medium, some high some low settings at an ok framerate, with everything set at low to med it runs flawlessly.
Another thing i was wondering is if the vista semi clean install works on this laptop cos the bloatware is really annoying me now.

 

The 3470 on the SR-2xx and the FW1xx are both 256mb... the 3470 on the SR190 is only 128mb, so we are getting a weaker 3d mark score as a result

 

In the process of acquiring Mirror's Edge:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/mirrorsedge/index.html?tag=result;title;0

Will update when I get it installed and played around with it.

 

Mirror's Edge runs well on 1200x800 with everything low, and still looks great. you could probably turn the textures up, but the AA is what kills it

 

Yeah, I'm playing at a resolution of 1280x720 with settings on low, AA and PhysX off and I'm getting around mid 20s to 30 fps. Definitely playable and doesn't look bad at all. High-paced game.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that during the tutorial, performance did drop to 20 fps when the other girl was on-screen.

 

The new ATI driver (9.1: I presume 9 for 2009 and 1 for January ) is available for download here:
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=vista32/common-vista32

Release Notes:
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/gamesite/Catalyst_91_release_notes.pdf

So far, Mobility Modder worked and I'm currently installing it now (Vista did give me a warning pop-up saying it could not verify the signature but I clicked "continue" anyways).

EDIT: Rebooted and everything seems fine. I haven't tried any games to see if there is any performance difference though.

 

So dude, what about now? Do games go faster?

 

I don't know. I'm swamped with exams right now and I won't be able to test or play any games for about a month at least. Any improvements in performance should be detailed in the release notes for the driver from ATI.

 

Interesting benchmarks with the new 9.1 catalyst on mobile GPUs:
http://www.co2-solid.ro/the-best-ati-driver-for-your-notebook/



CONCLUSION:

From the point of view of a mobile user which possesses a notebook with a ATI mGPU… we cannot talk about performance improvements. Thus, if this aspect bothers you, we recommend that you stick with the old Catalyst version for a little more time, because the OpenGL support doesn’t justify itself, taking into consideration that very few games use this graphical API.

 

What is this new driver? Where exactly can you get it for the Vaio SR? Since it's not a desktop driver...you cant mobility mod it. Since it looks like Sony didnt release a specific one for our machines...how exactly could we take advantage of this new 9.x generation of drivers?

 

It is a normal desktop driver, check here:
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=vista32/common-vista32 or check the previous page (page 28) where I posted the link.

 

Are you going to make it for the Mobility cards like you did with previous versions?

 

Well, first of all, I didn't make this. I only downloaded the desktop drivers and modded them using Mobility Modder and this is for my FW laptop, so I don't quite get what you're trying to ask.

 

So guys, I've recieved my new Sony Vaio FW21E yesterday and installed GTA IV as fast as I could
Installed, added "commandline.txt" (with things like norestrictions, bla bla) in the game directory and set graphic options like this:
Resolution : 800x600 (75Hz) [The shadows look like ants when 60Hz are on -.-]
Textures : High
Rendering : Very High
Draw distance and other stuff : 5-5-5-2

And what do I see? The game goes smoothly! It's super playable and the graphics are awesome! It's funny because first, I had my textures on low and then I said: " What about making it look better?", so I put my textures on high and NO DIFFERENCE in performance... So I was really happy =)

 

I was reading the post and i saw that no one really said much on fallout 3, well
on my sr290 i could run fallout 3 on medium setting really nicely, no lag.
my specs are in my sig

 

Despite me being swamped with school work, I couldn't resist getting Burnout Paradise for the PC and trying it out and I have good news, EA and Criterion have done an excellent port, unlike Rockstar with GTA IV.

Burnout plays nicely on medium settings with AA off and a resolution of 1280x720. I'm getting fps in the low 30s to low 40s. I'll play around with the settings more when I have time and try to get higher settings and see how high I can go. Fun game by the way, too. I recommend buying it since it's an excellent, optimized port of a great game.

 

What is your 3DMark 06 score? I got 2641 with original driver. 2943 with newer driver for FW290. Everything at default. The only thing is my screen resolution is now limited to 1600, 1024 and 800. With the original driver I got a lot more choices.

 

I haven't tried 3DMark yet, will try it soon for curiosity.

It's weird that you have less resolution options with the modded drivers. I mean, for me it was the complete opposite. With the original factory drivers I would get only those 3 options and with any of the modded drivers, I got a whole lot more options. I usually use 1280x720 (720p) for games. It's the minimum wide-screen resolution I find acceptable.

Also, doesn't your FW290 have the HD3650 card?

 

It's not modded driver. It's official driver from Sony but posted at FW290 section. I have FW190 with HD 3470. The inf file from FW290 has HD 3470 so I know it would work.

 

I tried playing Titan's Quest yesterday (3470 on FW) but not matter what settings (low/medium/high) or resolution I only get about 20fps. Seems fluid enough, but I also have a decent amount of stuttering when walking around. Anyone know how to fix this?

 

wow 2900 in 3dmark06 is good. Does that mean that Vaio SR will get similar scores ? How does dedicated GPU on VAIO SR compare to the one on VAIO Z which is 9300m ? Thank you

 

Hi guys, sorry to be wasting thread space not posting on any games ( I don't own an SR laptop YET! yes.. YET!!) I wanted to know what the battery life is like on the Vaio SR with HD 3470. Real world performance, not off the brochure.

I'm darn set on buying one and it was basically the one with integrated graphics. But now i'm tempted to go for something which can play games with decent framerates and quality graphics.. does having a dedicated graphic card reduce the batt life per cycle?

too bad it doesn't come with that hybrid live switching between integrated and dedicated.

 

If your on battery power and just browsing the net on wifi, messing around..playing music, etc (read: not watching a movie or playing a game).. and you set everything to high battery or maximize battery life and lower the screen brightness you'll get 3 hours + (in my experience). I can probably get around 2 hours out of my computer if im watching itunes movies...not sure about dvd's or blurays(if you have a bluray drive in there) i'm sure you could finish a full movie...

 

anyone tried overclocking Ati 3470 256mb ? with catalyst 8.8 it gets 2200points in 3dmar06 and apparently cooling in sr is quite good so u think its possible to overclock to around 2800points ? I don't have sr yes, just wanted to know if anyone tried it yet. THX

 

Hi!

I'd like to report the following games on a a Vaio FW with the ATI 3470 256mb:

- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: All settings Maximum, 4xAA 1600x900 30fps consistent (sometimes dips into the low 20s in high detail areas)

- Microsoft Flight Simulator X: 1024x768, 2xAA, default settings, 25fps (again, goes down on high detail areas)

- EA Sports F1 2002: Old game, runs at maximum settings at 1600x900 at very high framerates (no fps counter in the game).

- Civilization IV: Very smooth animations, no lag, default settings, 4xAA

I'll keep you updated when I get time to game a bit more.

 

bydus, i think you need to brough vaio z or sr from us
this link will help you

http://www.borderlinx.com/en/

 

Catalyst 9.2 has been released a few days ago:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownlo...px?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.15&lang=English

EDIT: Hmm weird, the Control Center still displays 9.1 under Catalyst Version and 8.573 under Driver Version, even though it updated without any errors and I know it installed because when I run the 9.2 setup again, it says Catalyst is up-to-date.

EDIT 2: For some reason, the newest Catalyst + Driver will not install on my laptop, even after numerous tries. I don't know what's wrong, so I reverted back to 9.1