A couple of newbie questions about video of my computers

[GN48]

First question is; Just wandering how well the NG 7600GT (in a PCI-E x16 slot) will perform against the NG 7600GS in this, I got this car game called NFS Pro Street. I was wandering if my NG 7600GS runs this game at an average of 20fps with only all the car details up on max setting and only the world detail on high (so I could see the flags of when to start when the girls gives the signal, other wise, I'd have to guess when to press the "W" key on the keyboard to make the car run) , how well then do you think the NG 7600GT will get the fps up to? 25fps? 50fps? 500fps(LOL!) My game also tends to drop down to about 10 - 15fps when either in a drag race or in a race that has alot of good looking graphics. If you must know, I run my graphics card on a PCI-E x16 slot, if that's any help!

PS: My friend says my computer shouldn't lag at any game when mine's on a PCI-E x16 slot inteface!, he's wrong!

Second question: I don't really understand my laptop, It says I have 768MB of total graphics memory but it's only using 32MB out of that 768! Here look at this: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2521/4236543622_396698f985_o.png
Can you please make sense of this and explain in details so I can understand....
(The shop clerk where we talked to get this laptop said something about that there was alot of graphics memory available....)

 

[dustin_ds3000]

you cant change the video card in most laptops and most likely you can't on yours. your stuck with the crappy intel gpu

 

[GN48]

you cant change the video card is most laptops and most likely you can't on yours. your stuck with the crappy intel gpu

I'm going to assume that the word "is" typed by you is "in".
Anyway, my laptop, does not have a graphics card (Well, the last time I opened it up, it looked like a thin piece of metal on the laptop), secondly can you explain why I can't use the rest of the 750MB (this is also another question if you think you can answer for all you posters that I forgot to put in, and relates to this).Thirdly, you didn't answer my first question....lastly, I don't think there's a GPU core in my crappy Intel graphics Chip on my laptop.

thanks in advance

 

[GN48]

Sorry, but I have one more question to go with this: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100102001928AAlweLq&r=w

I seem a little pushy, aren't I, I'm trying not to, but is just I'm bit too Inquisitive.

 

[dustin_ds3000]

the GPU in your laptop is part of the motherboards chipset. Integrated Graphics Processing Unit which is what you have, uses the system ram for its GPU ram. 256MB of the system ram is being used in your case. i have never used PC Wizard 2008, but i do use cpuz alot. if you have some money ($1500-$3000) you can get a gaming laptop. your in luck i found something for you

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220639

or something cheaper

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115681

 

[GN48]

the GPU in your laptop is part of the motherboards chipset. Integrated Graphics Processing Unit which is what you have, uses the system ram for its GPU ram. 256MB of the system ram is being used in your case. i have never used PC Wizard 2008, but i do use cpuz alot.

You mean 750MB not 256MB of system RAM is being used for the Intel chipset anyways, then how come it shows only 32MB is dedicated then?

if you have some money ($1500-$3000) you can get a gaming laptop. your in luck i found something for you

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220639

or something cheaper

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115681

These are nice, but I'm not really a heavy gamer when it comes to laptops. When it comes to laptops, I'm more of a light gamer, you know CSCZ, Doom 3, Quake 3 Arena, Starcraft I, Diablo I, perhaps even Warcraft III and TFT if all is possible. Like those light games that don't really put much stress in your CPU or GPU of chipsets. Well, maybe not CSCZ but CS 1.6 or something like that. Well, basically, when i mean light, I mean games that can run on say atleast a $1000 laptop or less at atleast 60fps or more, and not less! Yes I know Diablo runs 20fps, but I can't help that, can't take of frame limiter okay? I want one that runs Windows XP 32-bit, I'm not really ready for Windows 7 yet....

 

[nismo91]

i do play NFSPS before and i know in drag race, you will have to set video setting to max in order to see the girl and the flag and etc. i used to play it on a laptop with 64MB ATI 9700, and laptops with 256MB 8600GT and 512MB 9600GT. i dont measure FPS but i do see the difference between the lag in the old laptop compared to the new one. the heaviest part of the game is the nevada highway.

i can say that the laptop with 256MB 8600GT can max out all the game settings and run fluently. so, a laptop 8600GT may be equivalent to a desktop's 7600GT. still, i recommend you to get something like the 9500GT which i bought last year. its pretty cheap for light usage and will definitely capable of playing NFSPS even the latest NFS Shift.

as for the second question. be aware that intel is using something called DVMT dynamic video memory technology (seen in BIOS). it reserves let say 16MB to 256MB of RAM in your system. when there is no video activity, the memory remains little i.e. 32MB so the RAM can be used for something else. when there is plenty of video usage, the memory will raise to let say 256MB.

if your laptop has this video option in BIOS, u can set it to DVMT or FIXED at certain MB. this also apply to some external graphic card like geforce and radeon. where an amount of RAM is reserved to be given to the graphic card. nvidia turbocache and ati hypermemory. in this case, its very slow compared to the dedicated memory of graphic card and actually useless.

perfect example would be my laptop:
nvidia geforce 9600GT DDR3
dedicated memory : 512MB
total memory: 1789MB

so it steals up to 1.2GB of my RAM when its used for heavy apps. pure junk.

 

[GN48]

Interesting.....

i do play NFSPS before and i know in drag race, you will have to set video setting to max in order to see the girl and the flag and etc. i used to play it on a laptop with 64MB ATI 9700, and laptops with 256MB 8600GT and 512MB 9600GT. i dont measure FPS but i do see the difference between the lag in the old laptop compared to the new one. the heaviest part of the game is the nevada highway.

i can say that the laptop with 256MB 8600GT can max out all the game settings and run fluently. so, a laptop 8600GT may be equivalent to a desktop's 7600GT. still, i recommend you to get something like the 9500GT which i bought last year. its pretty cheap for light usage and will definitely capable of playing NFSPS even the latest NFS Shift.

as for the second question. be aware that intel is using something called DVMT dynamic video memory technology (seen in BIOS). it reserves let say 16MB to 256MB of RAM in your system. when there is no video activity, the memory remains little i.e. 32MB so the RAM can be used for something else. when there is plenty of video usage, the memory will raise to let say 256MB.

if your laptop has this video option in BIOS, u can set it to DVMT or FIXED at certain MB. this also apply to some external graphic card like geforce and radeon. where an amount of RAM is reserved to be given to the graphic card. nvidia turbocache and ati hypermemory. in this case, its very slow compared to the dedicated memory of graphic card and actually useless.

perfect example would be my laptop:
nvidia geforce 9600GT DDR3
dedicated memory : 512MB
total memory: 1789MB

so it steals up to 1.2GB of my RAM when its used for heavy apps. pure junk.

hmf, to bad I can't get to the finish in NFSPS! No steering Wheel or foot pedals to control my actions more smoothly! You know that one showdown away from getting to them race kings? yes, there's a race event pass I can't even get passed! I'm horrible at drifting! I like need atleast like 3000 points to pass that race but all I got up to was 2000 to 2900 max. My keyboard is useless when it comes to racing! hehe!

So, I can set a fixed amount of RAM my Graphics chip can use, that's interesting! I might wan to do that and freeing atleast 500MB for that! Do you think I can set it to 0MB of RAM for my Graphics chip? And use that spare amount for games I play on my laptop?

 

[nismo91]

hmf, to bad I can't get to the finish in NFSPS! No steering Wheel or foot pedals to control my actions more smoothly! You know that one showdown away from getting to them race kings? yes, there's a race event pass I can't even get passed! I'm horrible at drifting! I like need atleast like 3000 points to pass that race but all I got up to was 2000 to 2900 max. My keyboard is useless when it comes to racing! hehe!

So, I can set a fixed amount of RAM my Graphics chip can use, that's interesting! I might wan to do that and freeing atleast 500MB for that! Do you think I can set it to 0MB of RAM for my Graphics chip? And use that spare amount for games I play on my laptop?

hell yeah i was unable to 100% finish the NFSPS. its because the first time playing was on a intel pentium M 1.70 ghz with 768MB RAM and 64MB ATI M9700. framerates around 20fps only unless i set all graphics to lowest.

RAM you're talking about, sadly u cant control the amount of RAM used in dedicated graphics. i've heard a ways to do it but i personally dont know. the nvidia / ati drivers control the turbocache and hypermemory craps.

or if you;re talking about the intel RAM thingy, yes in BIOS sometimes there's an option. but of course u cant set it to 0MB. i still prefer DVMT mode so it can go down to 32MB instead of fixed at 128MB.

 

[GN48]

I see....

So if I did managed to set a fixed amount of dedicated memory to my grahics card or chip, would there also be a performance increase (increased fixed Dedicated graphics memory to 1GB but would mean less RAM for other uses) or a performance decrease (decreased the fixed dedicated graphics memory to just 32MB which is good, because then you can use that extra 750MB for other programs)?

 

[nismo91]

i suppose you're talking about the intel integrated graphics... certainly there would be improvement setting it at 256MB rather than 32MB... too bad i don't really notice the improvement in performance in games, but it should, perhaps in HD movies decoding (youtube hd)? an 256MB intel X3100 or GMA3000 is still pawned by a 2005 laptop's ati 9700 64MB.

if it's about the nvidia / ati, extra gimmicks such as turbocache or hypermemory where RAM is supplied to the graphic card, it might boost performance but definitely not worth the trouble since the RAM is reduced thus system slows down a little.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-ram-4870,2428-10.html

More importantly, do not forget that the amount of RAM on a card does not indicate its relative performance--a 512MB Radeon HD 4870 or 896MB GeForce GTX 260 will always be faster than a 2GB Radeon HD 4670 or a 2GB GeForce 9600 GTS.

 

[GN48]

Well, thanks for that nismo91. I think I know what my new graphics card is going to be when I followed that link you got!

 

[GN48]

Forgot

Oh nismo91, I forgot to add in that there are other factors to the performance of graphics cards. Like the GPU clock speed and the memory speed and ROPS and the shaders and all those.

 

[nismo91]

yes im aware of that. im a laptop user so my thoughts are technically from the laptop experience.

used to over-clock my ati mobility radeon 9700 64MB on a 5-year-old laptop and it's great. it does give some fps but if i increase memory clock too high the video in wmp will produce artifact. generally the higher the clock the faster the card is. didnt know of fraps before, but im sure it can bump ~5fps in some games.

now im using nvidia based laptop. have read that it's complicated to overclock, decided to leave it at default speed. after all im pretty sure it wont raise up unplayable game to a playable one, dont you think?