...that is the question.

So my new laptop is vastly superior to the old one, it's superior to my desktop in theory. In practice, it's have a hard time with Age of Conan. I'm wondering if it's Vista or something else.

Desktop PC - Athlon 64 3000+ clocked at 2gig, 2gb of ram, nvidia 7600gs (1680x1050), sata hard drive. 25-30 FPS in conan.

Laptop - Core2Duo 2 gig, 3gb ram, nvidia 8400m gs (1440x900), sata drive. 6-7 FPS in conan.

I've tried all the tweeks from the AOC forums and get no improvement. I've got the latest 8400 drivers from Dell for vista and everything else seems to run fine. Anyone have any thoughts? Is it worth reinstalling with XP pro, or am I missing something in my configuration that means this laptop is never going to live up to the potential I think it has?

You accidently get a shared memory video card by chance? Can't be sure just looking at the type of card. There are 8400 GS with entirely discrete memory and 8400 GS with mixed memory.

Oh and make sure your laptop specific type things are inline. Like high performance options. Laptops have throttles.

You consider driver updates? There is a site that hacks nvidia desktop drivers into laptop drivers. I forget the name or I would post it.

Edit: this site http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

Technically speaking every laptop manufacturer is supposed to release its own graphics card ini (technically called a driver). Some companies even major ones have bigger issues with this than others.

I have a dell and I used that site for a little gain back when I bought it.


Consider using a standard benchmark like 3dmark 05 so we can all relate.

im not video card expert but id also guess that the video card in the laptop is not as powerful as the Desktop.

Ruccus may have some more insight

I am almost positive this is due to the worse video card in the laptop.

The last three numbers (400) are worse than the 7600, which is a quick way to tell with nVidia cards... although there is an exception or two.

AoC gets slightly higher FPS in Vista, I believe (like 5-10% performance increase), so I am pretty sure Vista is out of the equation on this one.

so yea the new mobile card looks to be signifigantly better than the old PC card according to

this link: nVidia desktop GPU Chart

and this link: Mobile GPU chart

I would look at the processor speed while you are playing. Speed stepping could be playing a role. Check under your power settings to make sure while you are plugged into he wall that the processor doesn't clock itself down at all.

But 8 is > 7!

I strongly dislike the version numbering shenanigans that go on with the video card industry.

(not that there was another option for the laptop that was better)

edit: Doh! the 8400 is equal or greater than the 7600 on everything except...wait for it...the frickin memory bus is 64 bit. That still doesn't explain the HUGE performance hit I'm taking with it. drivers maybe.

I know of at least 4 people who run AoC on Vista. Of those 4 only 1 is having severe problems, but he is known for having the luck of a albatross killing sailor. My experience with vista tends to be if it's effing up, its more than one game thats effed up. Also to consider is if you can find the drivers for XP for all your hardware in a easy and timely fashion. I've rolled quite a few notebooks back on campus for faculty, and lost some functionality due to software or drivers not being available (most commonly m1330 media functions or sony vaio proprietary stuff).

"Doh! the 8400 is equal or greater than the 7600 on everything except...wait for it...the frickin memory bus is 64 bit. That still doesn't explain the HUGE performance hit I'm taking with it"

Oh yes it does.
The memory bus width is one of the most important stats on a video card--if not the most important outside of noncomparable across designs intrinsics like architecture and pipelines.

Also, there is a checkbox in your video settings of AoC specifically for shared video on laptops. Supposedly increases performance somehow, but as I play on a desktop...

May or may not help you, but the option is there!

Have you tried the general vista tweaks, like disabling Aero theme and whatnot?

Also try changing the shaders from 3.0 to 2.0 in AoC if you haven't.

If you're running fullscreen then Aero is automatically disabled during games, so that shouldn't have an effect. The problem is most likely the 64-bit memory interface, especially if the graphics core is sharing the system memory. Looking at the FutureMark Online Results Browser there's one entry for an 8400M GS, and it's scoring 1100 marks in 3DMark06. Doing a search for 7600GS results gives me scores in the 2000 to 2200 range (with default graphics card clocks).

Guess I should have waited for the 8600m to be available. live and learn.

Yeah I feel your pain. Thats a tough part of laptops. No matter how you play it you get tied to an out of date graphics card (give it a month) that you cant change =/

Though side note they removed the 8600m GT line from the non-XPS dells as a marketing move. Dell decided it was better to try to push people into low end XPS laptops instead of allowing them to have the 8600m GT on the 1520.

I got one of the last 8600m GTs on a 1520 when I bought mine in December =).

One thing you can do btw when you purchase a laptop is run 3dmark05 on your desktop then check your graphics card here (assuming discrete memory and other comparables of course):
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-...ist.844.0.html

That atleast gives you a sense of what your in for.