Gaming Performance
...And after only a few moments of attempting to run games on the X3100, we were left very disappointed. So disappointed, in fact, that there will be no charts on this page -- and you know how much we love charts! Driver support is definitely lacking right now, and Intel is apparently only now reaching the beta level with their drivers, at least in terms of gaming support. The latest nonpublic drivers apparently support Battlefield 2 among other things, but with the public drivers on pretty much every game we loaded we had to reduce the detail levels to the absolute minimum in order to get acceptable performance. Once that was done, though, quite a few games became playable.
Company of Heroes was one of the surprises, as we could enable all of the graphics options and the game still worked. It averaged about 3 FPS at 1280x800 (and as much as 7 FPS at 800x600) but with many of the more recent titles refusing to run at all we were surprised we got that far. Dropping Company of Heroes to minimum details allowed barely acceptable performance at 1024x768 (24 FPS).
We also managed to run Quake 4, even at high detail settings... but with average frame rates hovering around 2 FPS. Setting all detail levels to the minimum and running at 640x480 resulted in the game almost being playable -- frame rates reached 15 FPS! The same goes for Far Cry: we could run it at all of the various detail settings, but performance was terrible unless we used minimum detail levels. At minimum details, however, frame rates reached almost 25 FPS (even at 1280x800) and you could at least struggle through the game that way if you were desperate.
The list of titles that didn't work properly is quite a bit longer. Oblivion, Supreme Commander, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, F.E.A.R. all failed to run at all. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. actually worked, and at minimum details it could choke out frame rates in the low teens, but it didn't appear to be fully stable and it certainly wasn't what we would consider playable. The Half-Life 2 engine games had some strange behavior where they defaulted to software-based DX9 rendering and they wouldn't let us change the rendering mode.
Long story short, the drivers definitely need more work to even run many games at very low detail settings. Titles that don't leverage any pixel/vertex shaders generally fared better, and of course Windows Vista did manage to run the Aero Glass theme without any difficulties. The bottom line, however, is that the graphics are more suited to business work than anything else. And, honestly, there's nothing wrong with that; as long as people don't go into the purchase expecting GMA X3100 graphics to provide a great DirectX 9 experience, they should be okay. If you want even basic gaming support, you really should spend the extra money for the GeForce 8400M upgrade.
...And after only a few moments of attempting to run games on the X3100, we were left very disappointed. So disappointed, in fact, that there will be no charts on this page -- and you know how much we love charts! Driver support is definitely lacking right now, and Intel is apparently only now reaching the beta level with their drivers, at least in terms of gaming support. The latest nonpublic drivers apparently support Battlefield 2 among other things, but with the public drivers on pretty much every game we loaded we had to reduce the detail levels to the absolute minimum in order to get acceptable performance. Once that was done, though, quite a few games became playable.
Company of Heroes was one of the surprises, as we could enable all of the graphics options and the game still worked. It averaged about 3 FPS at 1280x800 (and as much as 7 FPS at 800x600) but with many of the more recent titles refusing to run at all we were surprised we got that far. Dropping Company of Heroes to minimum details allowed barely acceptable performance at 1024x768 (24 FPS).
We also managed to run Quake 4, even at high detail settings... but with average frame rates hovering around 2 FPS. Setting all detail levels to the minimum and running at 640x480 resulted in the game almost being playable -- frame rates reached 15 FPS! The same goes for Far Cry: we could run it at all of the various detail settings, but performance was terrible unless we used minimum detail levels. At minimum details, however, frame rates reached almost 25 FPS (even at 1280x800) and you could at least struggle through the game that way if you were desperate.
The list of titles that didn't work properly is quite a bit longer. Oblivion, Supreme Commander, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, F.E.A.R. all failed to run at all. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. actually worked, and at minimum details it could choke out frame rates in the low teens, but it didn't appear to be fully stable and it certainly wasn't what we would consider playable. The Half-Life 2 engine games had some strange behavior where they defaulted to software-based DX9 rendering and they wouldn't let us change the rendering mode.
Long story short, the drivers definitely need more work to even run many games at very low detail settings. Titles that don't leverage any pixel/vertex shaders generally fared better, and of course Windows Vista did manage to run the Aero Glass theme without any difficulties. The bottom line, however, is that the graphics are more suited to business work than anything else. And, honestly, there's nothing wrong with that; as long as people don't go into the purchase expecting GMA X3100 graphics to provide a great DirectX 9 experience, they should be okay. If you want even basic gaming support, you really should spend the extra money for the GeForce 8400M upgrade.
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Procurion - Sunday, June 24, 2007 - link
Having bought a Sager after a LOT of research(and an RMA'd Ferrari-Acer, lol, not the car) I question the quest for extreme resolution. My laptop has a native 1900x1200 screen which I consider unuseable on a 17" screen....1024x768 puts a LOT of info on screens and I wonder why the preoccupation with "ultra resolution"? If this is a casual use/business use type of laptop, those high rez settings aren't necessary at all. Either that or my 40-something bespectacled eyes just ain't cuttin' it anymore...:)strikeback03 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
Personally, I consider 1024x768 the bare minimum - I can't fit as much on the screen as I like. My Thinkpad has a 1400x1050 15" screen that I consider about perfect. As mentioned, the good thing is that both 1024x768 and 1600x1200 are available in the same screen size.On a side note, Lenovo still has T60s with Flexview IPS screens - we just bought one for work. They might not want to send one out for review though as word has it that the T61 will not be available with Flexview and will be hard to get with a 4:3 ration screen at all.
JarredWalton - Sunday, June 24, 2007 - link
I don't have a huge problem with the resolution - it's *okay* - but it would be nice to have options. Regardless, the quality of the display is not at all good compared to a lot of other recent laptops. Ideally, users should be able to choose from more than one screen config, but that's often limited to more expensive notebook models. Running Windows Vista, I feel 1280x800 is cramped, 1440x900 is passable, and 1680x1050 given enough room to make me happy. Then again, I run a 30" desktop LCD at 2560x1600.... :)Procurion - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link
Point taken about the need for some options rather than "one size fits all"-as a matter of fact my post was inspired because my needs/resolutions are different than, say, yours. As you and several other authors here have pointed out in the past, for the costs involved it is beyond me why the manufacturers put some really awful screens out there on their laptops....After opening a laptop up and booting it, what is the first thing that makes an impression? And you have to look at it every time you use the damn thing? LOL...legoman666 - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
You know... you could get rid of all the problems with your benchmarking programs not working on Vista by simply uninstalling it and installing Windows XP instead. My sister (not a big computer person) just bought a new laptop. The FIRST thing she and I did when it arrived was uninstall Vista and put XP on it.JarredWalton - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
Which requires finding drivers for the chipset and slipstreaming them onto an XP CD. There's no floppy drive with this laptop. Anyway, like it or not, 95% of new PCs are going to be coming with Vista installed most likely, and I would say the number of people that plan on wiping the drive and installing XP instead is going to be very limited.legoman666 - Sunday, June 24, 2007 - link
What do you mean you'd have to slipstream the chipset drivers into the windows installation? I've isntalled windows countless times on many different machines and I have never had to do such a thing. I just isntall windows normally, then once it's installed, I install all the drivers. It really isn't difficult... Nor would you need a floppy drive unless you plan on installing windows onto a RAID array. I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but neither of those arguments are really valid. Although, the bit about people not uninstalling Vista in favor of XP is probably true...JarredWalton - Sunday, June 24, 2007 - link
I booted up off of the XP CD (see, I really did try to install XP), but because the hard drive is SATA XP apparently wasn't able to see it. I got the dreaded "No hard drives detected" error message, and that was pretty much it for my XP attempt.See, the BIOS lacks any options to set/change the SATA mode and so it appears to be running as an AHCI SATA drive. That setting generally requires drivers on a floppy in order to work (in my experience). HP isn't selling the laptop with XP, and they don't intend to support such a configuration. That being the case, why spend time trying to work around a limitation in order to test something most people aren't planning on using?
If you want a laptop with XP, you'd be far better off purchasing a laptop that comes that way. There are still plenty of those available.
NoGodForMe - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link
Jarred is correct about slip streaming the drivers to boot XP. I have created a guide with step by step instructions to installing XP on the DV6500T. I can run XP or Vista. This laptop is a good all around performer. Not the fastest, but does everything needed and is really great with XP on it. I installed Tribes2 and UT2K4 and I've got the integrated X3100, plays both of them great.Here's my guide. This would be a good idea for the Macbook Pro, or the Asus G1S.
http://www.nogodforme.com/HPDV6500T.htm">http://www.nogodforme.com/HPDV6500T.htm
The key to my guide is that it's step by step with links to all drivers. Would be nice if someone did this for VMWare player, parallels, and bootcamp.
Vidmar - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link
Jarred,I just purchased a number of Gateway 155C convertibles (tablet pc) for my office. As you said XP won't install because of the lack of an appropriate SATA driver. But it's so easy to slipstream these SATA drivers into your XP build using nLite. I had a working XP install CD in less than 10 mins!
In any case as other have said a look at lower weight laptops and tablet PCs would be nice to see. Take a close look at the Gateway 155C; it's a very good design.