Confused by graphics settings

[Count_de_Monet]

Through my many years of PC gaming I can only claim to have been on the cutting edge a handful of times. Most of my gaming has rested within the medium to low setting range or well behind the curve of current-generation gaming. When everyone else was playing Company of Heroes I was still fiddling with Warhammer 40K and it's siblings, when CoD 2 (and later 3) was popular I was still playing around in CS 1.6 and as Civilization 4 hit the market I was still trying to figure out how to play Civ 3. Given this history I've become comfortable dumbing down my graphics to play games and it really doesn't bother me when I play a game at medium or low settings if the game play or community are worth it.

About nine months ago I invested in an Asus G1 which is a very decent gaming rig. I can play Company of Heroes on high settings without a hitch, Supreme Commander on high and it only slows down when I zoom all the way in on a big battle, CS:Source on high and the only thing that drops my FPS is a smoke grenade, and every iteration of Half-Life 2 on high without any problems (and all of these at 1680X1050). Then comes the next generation and suddenly I'm forced into low settings and ridiculously low resolutions.

Bioshock stuck me with 800X600 on low with all the bells and whistles turned off and I still couldn't play it smoothly. Forged Alliance is unplayable even with lowered settings, though I keep the resolution higher because I can't play an RTS at 800X600, even though I can't tell the difference between it and Supreme Commander. Crysis was just barely playable with low settings at 1024X768; I could handle the jungles and the towns fairly well, however, any big battle and my FPS dipped immediately and given the ease with which you can get drawn into a big battle in Crysis I just gave up on it.

That brings me to my biggest disappointment of the bunch: Call of Duty 4. I love the game and for the first time in years a FPS has replaced Counter-Strike in my heart, however, it's really starting to get on my nerves that I can't up the resolution. I'm stuck at 800X600 with low settings and all the pretty effects turned off just to give me a steady frame rate and I can't see what it is that makes the game so much more demanding than CS:S!

That brings me to my questions: is there any point to having low/medium/high settings in games? Are developers even paying attention to backwards compatibility or are they just bad at implementing it? And given the great exodus toward console gaming in recent years can PC game developers continue to ignore the mid-range gamer and expect to make any money?

 

[Melaisis]

I could handle the jungles and the towns fairly well, however, any big battle and my FPS dipped immediately and given the ease with which you can get drawn into a big battle in Crysis I just gave up on it.

Sounds like a lack of processing speed than lack of actual graphical power to me.

 

[Terramax]

Is there any way you could go to 'run' on windows, type dxdiag and paste your computer settings on here?

 

[neems]

Doing a quick google, I came up with -

"ASUS G1S-AK005C - Core 2 Duo T7500 / 2.2 GHz - Centrino Duo - RAM 2 GB - GF 8600M GT - Vista Home Premium - 15.4" Widescreen TFT 1680 x 1050"

That is somewhat edited, but does that sound about right?


I don't know much about laptop graphic cards, but they are generally (always?) less powerful than the equivalent desktop model. For the 8600m GT I found this -

"NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT is the DirectX 10 capable successor of the GeForce Go 7600 GT for laptops. Depending on the used graphic memory and the clock speed, the performance is between the 7600 GT and 7900 GS video card. Therefore current games like Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, or F.E.A.R can be played fluently with high details in a resolution of 1024 or similar. Gamers, who every time expect supreme frame rates, should wait for the 8800 series of NVidia."

Taken from http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8600M-GT.3986.0.html

That page goes on to list various specs, including the clocks - core 475 MHz, memory 700 MHz (I hope to God that is 700 x 2), shader clock 950 MHz.

Basically, those are quite low speeds, you might benefit from overclocking, using Rivatuner or something similar. Mind you I know nothing about overclocking in relation to laptops, I don't know how much of a problem the extra heat will be, so do some research first. I accept no liability...

However, some of your performance results are puzzling, particularly COD4. You should be able to run at 800x600 on low with a geforce 6600 - the 8600m should be streets ahead of that. I know for a fact that the standard 8600 GTS can run COD4 maxed out at 1280 x 1024 with 30+ fps. Bioshock should run better than that as well. Are you using Vista - and if so, do you have a copy of XP that you could dual boot? For me, I found COD4 performance was terrible under Vista - terrible stuttering being the main culprit. Are you running Bioshock in dx10 (dx10, in theory, does not suffer from Vista's video memory virtualisation bug)? Try the opposite renderer to whichever one you are using.

As a matter of interest, what are your settings / frame rates in Counter Strike Source? I find CSS an easy way to gauge system performance.

As to your question, by the sounds of it, it's lucky for you that games do have medium / low settings, although clearly some developers scale their games better than others - Valve are probably the best, although COD4 is generally regarded as being extremely well optimised. There are still an awful lot of pc gamers out there who just buy older games, that cost less and run perfectly on less powerful machines (as you yourself used to).

Apologies for wall of text.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

Sounds like a lack of processing speed than lack of actual graphical power to me.

I think it's an all-around lack since I'm brought down to the minimum game settings right from the beginning and then that one little extra makes the game unplayable even at the lowest settings. I should say up front, however, that I didn't really expect to be able to run Crysis on my laptop in the first place and was amazed that I could even get it to run.

My main gripes exclude Crysis for the most part because it was designed specifically to tax the highest end graphics systems. My belief is that the other games I mentioned (such as CoD4 and Forged Alliance) should ideally market themselves to a larger range of PC gamers and give some amount of backwards compatibility and yet they don't seem to. The only reason I bring it up is because I remember being able to play newer games on older machines in the past just by turning down the settings.

Is there any way you could go to 'run' on windows, type dxdiag and paste your computer settings on here?

I'm not on my computer at the moment but the specs are easy enough to find.

Processor: ASUS G1 Intel® Core?2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHz)
RAM: 2048M DDR2 667
Hard Disk: 80GB HD 7200 RPM (Originally a 160GB HD 5400 RPM)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForceGo 7700 GPU 512 MB

And just because I can't let it go... Your post had a definite condescending tone which I don't feel is justified on a board such as this. I doubt there are many here who don't know what dxdiag is and I would be surprised if there is a single person who couldn't rattle off their hardware specs without even needing to look at it.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

That is somewhat edited, but does that sound about right?

Close, that's the generation after mine. The graphics card is comparable in power, I believe, just dx10 enabled not dx9. See my above post for exactly what I've got.

Basically, those are quite low speeds, you might benefit from overclocking, using Rivatuner or something similar. Mind you I know nothing about overclocking in relation to laptops, I don't know how much of a problem the extra heat will be, so do some research first. I accept no liability...

I have overclocked in the past, specifically to try and get some bump in performance with Crysis and Bioshock but without much success. I also tried applying some custom drivers which helped a bit more but only giving me an extra 5-10ish FPS on average and didn't really help during parts where there was a graphics crunch.

However, some of your performance results are puzzling, particularly COD4. You should be able to run at 800x600 on low with a geforce 6600 - the 8600m should be streets ahead of that. I know for a fact that the standard 8600 GTS can run COD4 maxed out at 1280 x 1024 with 30+ fps. Bioshock should run better than that as well. Are you using Vista - and if so, do you have a copy of XP that you could dual boot? For me, I found COD4 performance was terrible under Vista - terrible stuttering being the main culprit. Are you running Bioshock in dx10 (dx10, in theory, does not suffer from Vista's video memory virtualisation bug)? Try the opposite renderer to whichever one you are using.

I'm running XP Media Center Edition (what came with the laptop). None of my hardware is dx10 capable but I don't think it should really be shooting me in the foot quite this much. I recently did a reformat to get the laptop ready for CoD4 hoping that it would clear up whatever problems were destroying my Bioshock performance but it didn't help.

As a matter of interest, what are your settings / frame rates in Counter Strike Source? I find CSS an easy way to gauge system performance.

The only thing that dips me below 60FPS is a smoke grenade and very infrequently longer range but even standing at one end of cs_assault and staring at the opposite end it won't dip below 40FPS. Generally I stay in the 90-110 range without much bounce in either direction.

As to your question, by the sounds of it, it's lucky for you that games do have medium / low settings, although clearly some developers scale their games better than others - Valve are probably the best, although COD4 is generally regarded as being extremely well optimised. There are still an awful lot of pc gamers out there who just buy older games, that cost less and run perfectly on less powerful machines (as you yourself used to).

That's why I'm confused when it comes to CoD4 because I thought it was better optimized for a computers with less power. I expected Bioshock to run better and was disappointed, I didn't even expect to be able to run Crysis and was surprised I could, but CoD4 shouldn't have been much of a strain for my machine by all accounts and yet it's kicking my ass.

And I love a wall of text, I see it as an indication you actually thought about what you posted.

 

[neems]

Hmm, it's a strange one alright. I was really hoping you were running Vista, so we could do an Archimedes and jump out of the bath.

Looking around a bit it doesn't seem like the 7700go is all that powerful (nobody seems to do benchmarks for mobile cards), but I would still think that it would have better performance than you've got. Mind you...

I'm a bit vague on this, so bear with me. My previous graphics card was a geforce 7800 GS (AGP) - on CSS I would get anywhere from 60 to 80 fps out in the open at 1280 x 1024. I never played COD4 on it, but Rainbow 6 Vegas (uses Unreal Engine 3, so in theory it's vaguely analogous to Bioshock) basically ran like a POS. I had most settings turned down at 800 x 600; I could go a bit higher, but the mouse seemed a bit laggy.

Your card sounds like it's a bit faster than my old 78GS. The Bioshock performance is maybe about right - UE3 uses deferred shading, and is pretty hardware intensive - but COD4 I think should have a bit more.

One of my clan mates runs COD4 on a geforce 6800 - apparently he struggles to play the single player campaign (he gets about as far as the TV station level in THE MIDDLE EAST and the lighting effects just kill him completely) but he gets better performance online (more streamlined engine for online play I think). That may be slightly worrying, as the 6800 was a very good card in it's day - not far behind the 7600. It's annoying I know when you want to play the single player, but see what it's like online if you haven't already - it's great.

Gamespot have a COD4 hardware guide at http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6183967/index.html?tag=result;title;0 Not that great I'm afraid, but it is Gamespot after all. Interestingly, it looks like processor speed does make a difference, even between different dual cores. Looking at the quoted specs for the G1, it's not entirely clear if it's a genuine core 2 duo, or a dual core centrino, which you would expect to be slower I think.

Most of the cod4 benchmarks I've been able to find have been terrible (65 fps at 1280x1024 with an 8800 ultra? You're having a laff). Yougamers have an interesting little bit on performance in their review - it seems that the publishers stated minimum (geforce 6800, 2.4 GHz Pentium 4) is to run the game at 640 x 480 on minimum settings.

They go on to list their system recommendations against the publishers - the page is here

http://www.yougamers.com/reviews/14695_call_of_duty_4_modern_warfare-page6/

but the gist of it is they suggest the minimum you want is a GeForce 7900 GT 256 MB or Radeon x1950, which is actually pretty steep. Yougamers also have a system test thingy (requires an Active X download) that uses a very basic 3d mark 06 analysis to rate your system against a given game. That is here -

http://www.yougamers.com/gameometer/10214/

You'll also get an idea of the general 3d mark score for your system (only takes a minute or two).


Hmm, supposedly some people are seeing better performance by enabling the 'dual video card' option in the settings, even on single card systems.

Try googling for a frame rate config. I had a quick look, but there's a lot of stuff to wade through, and I've been on this for quite a while now, and I need a break. Went a bit insane over it.

Hope something helps you out, really is a good game.