GeForce FX Go 5200

[asimovx]

GeForce FX Go 5200 Inconsistancies

I am running a P4 3.0GhzHT Toshiba laptop with 512Mb DDR SDRAM, a GeForce FX Go 5200 and Windows XP, and I've been experiencing strange inconsitancies in the performance of the videocard, especially during gaming.

Halo - Incredibly horrible framerates (I'd estimate in the mid to low 20s, FPS wise) especially in open areas and in areas with several other moving entities. This is is in 640x480 with all settings set to off or low, depending on the setting.

System Shock II - This may not be related to the video card, but SSII crashes after a variable amount of time never exceeding about 30 seconds and the crash usually occurs upon the triggering of some sort of automated motion (door opening, etc) but will still occur when doing nothing.

Step Mania - Every so often this app will stutter, pausing for about 2 or 3 seconds and then starts again. This surprises me, because from my experience, SM is a very low-overhead app, due to the nature of the game.

nVidia Dawn Demo - This is the strange thing, this app runs perfectly fine, with all of the anti-aitliasing all the way up and with all of the varying detail settings as far as they will go. Since this was optimised for the chipset, I can understand it running a bit smoother than an app that wasn't, but the difference is too huge for that alone to be the cause.

I have gone through all of the settings in the advanced properties, but nothing seems to improve preformance. I have the most recent nVidia Drivers and DirectX v9.0. Is there a reasonable explanation for these massive differences in speed?

 

[Sazar]

your cards shader performance is not very strong so any games requiring ps2.0 shader performance of any degree will not play well.. I have not played system shock or step mania so I don't know about that but halo itself is a dx9 game and has a decent sprinkling of shaders...

halo runs like pants on most high end systems so I would not worry about it too much..

that you are able to run dawn smoothly is surprising

the stuttering and the like may be related to somethng else... all i can suggest is to try out differnet nvidia driver sets and see which one yields the better performance for you... the latest betas or the latest WHQL official ones from nvidia's site or perhaps something a little older...

just don't expect any shader intensive games to run smooth... even some dx8 games that are strenuous will not run that great...

-edit-

try out this site...

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

 

[asimovx]

I realize that the more advanced features in Halo, such as the pixel shading and such, are probably the issue, but on my older system (Althlon XP 1900 1.47Ghz, 512Mb RAM, and 64Mb Radeon 6800) Halo runs much smoother, which leads me to believe that Halp was automatically turning off whatever features my card didn't support in order to avoid issue. Is there any way to force Halo to do this with my GeForce setup? Perhaps by making Halo think that my card is worse than it actually is, I could get better framerates? At this point the game is unplayable on this system, whereas it runs perfectly well (If without some of the better eye-candy settings) on a signifigantly inferior system.

 

[Sazar]

radeon 6800 ?

if its a radeon 8500 and higher it has ps1.4

the problem is your card can't do ps1.4... afaik it has a fallback to ps 1.1 from ps 2.0... this does not help much if at all since it is probable your card is already using the fallback...

ps 1.4 does more in fewer passes than ps1.1

I dont know if you can do much else...

keep in mind that the version of the card in the laptop is inferior to the version of the card in a desktion... normally fewer pipes and vertex shaders and likely lower clocks...

run 3dmark2001SE and 3dmark03 and post your numbers if you can...

 

[asimovx]

Due to my current setup I can only get 3DMark2001SE at the moment and I don't have access to my desktop until approx 16:00 (CST -6). I will be posting the nubers for my laptop shortly.

And oops, not 6800. I think that's the number for my printer, actually. What I have on my desktop is a Radeon 64. Yep... Much older.

 

[Sazar]

did a little more reading up on your gpu... it appears to be either a 2x1 or a 2x2 layout (I reckon its probably a 2x2 since it pushes 4 pixels per pass)...

the radeon64 should not be outperforming your card but by the same token your card is not that powerful from the looks of it... might be around 1/2 the performance of a desktop 5200...

the radeon card is a dx7 generation product... I don't see how it is able to pull those frames or even run halo decently (if at all)

you sure you have the right card?

 

[asimovx]

I will double check when I get home, but I believe that is correct...

According to Microsoft they should both be able to run. (There is a list of supported cards down the page some.) According to them, there's a whole passel of older cards that it will run on. I'm assuming it dumbs the engine down for a greater compatability on older systems?

 

[LeeJend]

Two other things to look for that are lapotp related:

1). The pentium laptops throttle down their clock speed if the unit gets too hot to protect the CPU. See if the game plays better with the laptop cold (right after boot). This check may not prove anything since a video game will heat a system up fast.

2). Is the laptop putting your HD into sleep mode for battery conservation and having to spin it up to get data? 1 gig RAM might help with this, 512 meg is low for the latest generation games.

Aside from the limited graphics laptops just aren't mechanized for hot, power hungry applications like games.

 

[asimovx]

As far as I can tell, there is no difference with temperature, and I've not seen any sort of setting that would indicate that it has that sort of automatic compensation. As for harddrive access and such, I'm running it in full power/high performance mode off of the adapter, so if it's trying to conserve the battery, then it's not very well designed...

 

[asimovx]

Ah... I was wrong again. My desktop vc is a Radeon 7500, 64Mb. And due to network problems at work and my home connection being dialup, I won't be able to run any benchmarks until tomorrow.

 

[Sazar]

its ok you don't have to run benchmarks... I think we can gauge the rough performance of both products..

have you tried any of teh driver set from the site I linked you up with?

they recommend various things for different requirements....

 

[asimovx]

Tried them. I think they help some, but still not good. It runs fine if i look at the ground, but the instant I look up at somehting in the distance or something moving it sends my speed down the toilet.

 

[asimovx]

I got it... If I use the -ff option to run Halo, it treats my card as a fixed function card, thus diabling pixel shading and all of the other things that slows it down. Everything is running fine now. Thanks to everyone for your help.

 

[w00kiec00kie]

JUST out of curiosity, doesnt your 5200Go have some "power saving" features as well? (ATI has PowerPlay thing)
if that's turned on, it probably works same as the processor throttling down..?
well 5200 isnt exactly good for ps2 work anyhow :/