New laptop, need some advice

[scalelokt]

Hi all, havent posted in a long time, hope everyone is doing well...

I just got a new laptop. The specs are:

Satellite P205D Detailed Product Specification

1

Model Name

: P205D-S8804
Operating System C1 2

•

Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (32-bit version)

Processor and Chipset

3

•

AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60

o

2.0 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, HyperTransport™ Technology @ up
to 1600MHz

•

AMD M690V chipset

Memory

4

•

Configured with 2048MB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM (both memory slots
may be occupied). Maximum capacity 4096MB

Hard Disk Drive

5

•

200GB (5400 RPM) Serial ATA hard disk drive

Fixed Optical Disk Drive

6

•

DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) with Labelflash™ drive supporting
11 formats

o

Maximum speed and compatibility: CD-ROM (24x), CD-R (24x),
CD-RW (16x), DVD-ROM (8x), DVD-R (Single Layer, (8x)),
DVD-R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD-RW (6x), DVD+R (Single
Layer, (8x)), DVD+R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD+RW (8x), DVDRAM
(5x)

o

Supports Labelflash™ media to burn high quality labels directly
on the disk

Display

7

•

17.0” diagonal widescreen TruBrite®TFT LCD display at 1440x900
native resolution (WXGA+)

o

Native support for 720p content

Graphics

8

•

ATI Radeon® X1200 128MB-319MB dynamically allocated shared
graphics memory

Sound

•

Built-in stereo speakers

• Sound Volume Control Dial

Not a beast of a computer by any means, but I would think plenty for SH3. I did get the game to run, but its pretty choppy, even out of port and in the middle of the Atlantic. So I'm wondering if anyone has some advice to shape up performance a bit. I guess the video and sound are pretty much set being a laptop. I could upgrade RAM, however doesnt seem like I should have to, 2 gig should be plenty. Is it the video card that is causing the lack of performance?

Also I imagine Vista may be a culprit, however from what I hear, this laptop wouldnt have compatible drivers in XP so that isnt an option. Though I havent actually tried it yet so for now I'm leaving that as last resort.

I love this computer, its for work more than anything else and its been great so far. However I was surprised it couldnt run an older game like SH3 smoothly. By the way, I'm talking stock, 1.4 SH3. I havent tried GWX yet, I figured it would just slow it down more. I can still play SH3 on the other computer, but it would be sweet to get it on the laptop! Any suggestions are welcome, maybe there are some settings I can tweak that I'm not aware of. Thanks all!

[NealT]

My guess would be that the video memory is shared with the other memory and that is slowing performance and causing the choppiness. That, plus the fact it is Vista...

Might want to make sure all the stuff in the 'system tray' is shut down as much as you can...that MAY help a bit.

[scalelokt]

You are correct, video and system memory are shared. Perhaps a RAM upgrade would make a reasonable difference? I have no problem upgrading it to 4 gig, it actually wouldnt be that expensive. As far as the system tray, I have bare minimum running. This computer came out of the box with a ton of crap on it, but at this point I have it completely clean.

[TomcatMVD]

I've got a PIV 3.2Ghz but with only 1GB of RAM, but my vid card is an NVIDIA GeForce 6200LE 256MB. Windows Vista too. So it might be the vid card.
BTW... that's stock SHIII

[johnno74]

Your videochipset might just not have the horsepower

Either that or the drivers are crap.

Try and hunt out some more recent video drivers... this can be tricky though, as the manufacturers don't release drivers for laptop chipsets. I have a Dell latitude D820 with an nvidia 7400 go chipset, and I get my video drivers from laptopvideo2go.com - they hack the INI files of nvidia drivers so they will install on any (nvidia video) laptop, not just one make/model.
Sorry no idea where you could find the same thing for ATI chipsets.

[irish1958]

you might try some omega drivers for ATI cards
I doubt that more memory will help as I think that the most your config can use is 2Gb. You might try another gig as it is cheap, but it probably won't help. i don't know if FSautostart will work with vista; if not some other utility might free up RAM and get rid of crap processes that slow your machine.

[scalelokt]

Thanks for the advice everyone, I appreciate it!

I'll let you know if I get it running, for now I'll just stick to the desktop for SH3

[Badger Finn]

I run a toshiba satilite pro T2500@ 200GHZ

2.00 Gb of ram Duel core this that blah blah

Streamline all the garbage windows stuff ditch vista and go xp pro perhaps

I use END IT ALL tool when running this sim.

Defrag regularly helps

SH can run sweet on a laptop but a big difference i guess is that none of my stuff shares resources