Why is my ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 playing at 5 FPS?

What the hell Sony Tech support is no help at all, why is red Alert 3 playing at 5 measly frames per second on my FW 2.4 Ghz computer with this gaming card?

 

what settings are you using in the game?

 

Graphics on Ultra High, when i put them at low it plays at 30FPS but the graphics are bad

 

Ultra High ist too much for that gpu You`ll have to reduce the settings or the resolution, or live with 5 frames per second.

 

Can anyone with similar settings as mine confirm if their games are playing well?

 

I installed Fallout 3 on my FW (2.26ghz, 4gb ram, hd 3650) a couple of days ago and am playing it on "high" quality settings with AA and AF off at 1920x1080 with no noticeable hiccups...not sure of the exact fps's (haven't tested in-game), but I have so far not experienced any appreciable lag or slow downs -

Fallout 3 system requirements -

Red Alert 3 system requirements -

What kind of fps's do you get when you ratchet down the settings just a tad? Do you have AA and AF enabled? What resolution are you playing on? Do you have "performance" enabled in your control center and not have it set it to "high quality?

 

Dont know what AA and AF mean.

When i put the setting on ultra high it was moving at a snails pace, and was unplayable but it did look gorgeous. when i lowered it to medium it didnt look as good but played fine.

 

AF = anisotropic filtering
AA = anti-aliasing

These settings are adjustable through one of the game menus (I couldn't imagine red alert 3 wouldn't aa and af - I haven't played a game in 4-5 years that hasn't) and are basically just quality settings...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filtering

The higher the multiplier the more taxing on your gpu, but the better the quality - you can though still set your overall quality setting to "high" and turn both AA and AF off.

...look in the game menus and turn those 2 off and report back.

 

AA i turned off dont remember about AF though.

but 5 FPS what the hell?

is that really normal?

i would love for you to try Red Alert and let me know how that went

 

maybe the powerplay setting (in the catalyst control panel) is on max battery life.

 

Yes, it's normal, the Mobile HD3650 is a mid-level laptop GPU. Only a few laptops have the ATI Mobile HD 3870 (the Alienware M17 comes to mind) but they cost twice as much (or more) than the FW290 and most don't even have Blu-Ray. I bought this Sony just for games when I am on the road and it works well as long as you don't get too crazy with the graphics settings. I find mid-high works well for most. I also do not enable AA or AF. So you get a few little jaggies; in the heat of battle I don't notice.

When I want full graphics power, I use a full desktop with a full desktop ATI HD 4870. -- Can't carry that around with me tho!

Cheers,

 

hey ... i recently bought a sony fw21z with similar specs like you

(Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 (2.53 GHz) - 4096 MB DDR2 - 500 GB - 16.4" WUXGA (1920x1080) - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 - Blu-ray writer - 32-bit vista - etc.)

i also get low fps when trying to play games (nfs undercover runs @ ca. 7-12 fps while playing at 1024x768 at low settings) .. i even went as far as trying the good old nfs underground 2 and cant make it run well at 800x600, still choppy as hell ...

ive looked around the forums and all the advices go on about updating drivers, checking catalyst settings or defragmenting the hdd ... ive only had the computer for a couple of weeks, have the latest drivers and have tried everything i could think of ... still hanging on, tho, i bet its just some trivial thing - as people with the same graphics card but different manufacturer/model dont seem to be experiencing any problems ... maybe its got something to do with vista, anyone tried installing XP on their machine to see if the performance improves??

other than that, the computer is just amazing ...

 

I don't know why you are seeing these issues. I have a FW290 CTO 2.26 version with 64bit Vista, 4GB Ram (Kingston HyperX) and 320GB 5400 HD. I have the following games installed:

Company of Heroes
Civ IV
AOE 3
Red Alert 3
Titan's Quest Immortal Throne
Lord of the Rings BFME2

All work well @ 1920x1080 with Med-High (depends on the game) settings. No jumpiness at all. I understand none of these are FPS games and don't require massive GPU power. The Sony is much better than my Macbook Pro with the nVidia 8600 running Vista 32bit.

Cheers,

 

Ha, the misconception of needing all the extras turned on strikes again. Let me tell you, I have literally played every popular game since Doom and have went back to replay some of these games occasionally. In some instances, filtering does not make anything better, but is just an addition "because you can."
I also notice another useless bar that increases the draw distance beyond anything you will ever need for any reason.
And lastly maybe it's my aging eyes, but stuff is easier to see (especially text and dialog) when the resolution is lower or 'no higher than' 1200x800.
I almost didn't buy a laptop with this card when I saw the title of the thread, but now I am breathing again.

 

Indeed, play with reasonable settings and you will be just fine.

BTW, which system did you or are you thinking of buying?

Cheers,

 

I don't know if there is anything wrong with the drivers or the hardware but on my HD 3470, C&C: Red Alert 3 plays around high 20s to low 30s fps with Medium settings on at a resolution of 1280x720 and no AA, so I don't see why the HD3650 couldn't handle the game at ultra high settings and the same resolution, though increasing the resolution and turning on AA is pushing it.

 

Without installing modded drivers my FW290 only has 1920x1080, 1024x768 & 800x600. I imagine others who do not wish to use modded drivers will stick with the native resolution, which at 1920x1080 will not handle Ultra high on any game I am aware of. The 3650 is good but not great. The mobile 3870 and the new mobile 4850 are supposed to provide significantly better performance. Perhaps a future FW will have one of these more powerful GPUs.

Cheers,