Need more consistent fps...

[therealnickdanger]

I currently am running a Dell e1705 with the following specs:

T2300 Core Duo (1.66GHz)
2GB DDR2-667
GeForce GO 7800 (non-GTX)

My primary game is Halo PC and my chosen resolution is 1920x1200 to get a 1:1 on my screen and my HDTV (when I play via the home theater). For the most part, getting over 60fps on Halo, BF2, and Source games is easy, even with all the eye-candy, but I still get frequent dips.

Turning off specular lighting or particles in HaloPC results in a pretty nice gain in frames, but then it just doesn't look as nice. I have OC'ed my GPU via hacked nVidia drivers (core: 250-->375, mem: 400-->890) and noticed a nice boost in performance. I'm thinking that its Halo's particle and physics calculations that cause the performance drops.

I bought this laptop because it was an ultra-bargain brand new ($1050) and I knew I could upgrade the CPU and GPU at a later date, albeit a difficult and rather expensive task. So now I'm facing two upgrade paths: a Core 2 Duo (Merom) or a 7900GTX GO. I figure going from the lowest-end CD to the highest-end C2D with remove any CPU limitations, but the T7600 is ~$630. I also believe that the 7900GTX (~$500) would be CPU limited with my E6300. In a perfect world, I would have $1200 to get both items or just buy a whole new laptop, but perhaps there's a middle ground?

Merom pricing is as follows:
C2D T7600 2.33GHz 667MHz 4MB $637
C2D T7400 2.16GHz 667MHz 4MB $423
C2D T7200 2.00GHz 667MHz 4MB $294
C2D 5600 1.83GHz 667MHz 2MB $240
C2D 5500 1.66GHz 667MHz 2MB $209

I know that an upgrade to any one of those will be better than what I've got now, but let's say that I'm not ever going to upgrade my GPU... which CPU would match up best with my 7800 GO?

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: therealnickdanger
I know that an upgrade to any one of those will be better than what I've got now, but let's say that I'm not ever going to upgrade my GPU... which CPU would match up best with my 7800 GO?

My thought was the opposite. At your playing resolution, you are more GPU-limited than CPU. Though, I admit, I am not as familiar with laptop component performance as I am with desktop.

In general (with few exceptions), at 1900x1200, you'll see all CPUs on equal ground. I'm not sure a C2D (even the 7600) will help you much with gaming. OTOH, there are a lot of cards out there that will boost you quite a bit over that 7800.

 

[nitromullet]

you have answered your own question:

Turning off specular lighting or particles in HaloPC results in a pretty nice gain in frames, but then it just doesn't look as nice. I have OC'ed my GPU via hacked nVidia drivers (core: 250-->375, mem: 400-->890) and noticed a nice boost in performance. I'm thinking that its Halo's particle and physics calculations that cause the performance drops.

If reducing eye candy effects (or resolution) and gpu/mem overclocking increase framerates, then the gpu upgrade would help you the most. If you really want to test this out, reduce your resolution to something ridiculously low like 800x600 and turn off all the eye candy... If you still get dips, then your cpu or possibly RAM is the culprit. I know that HL2 runs fine with 512MB of RAM, but I think that BF2 runs best with over 1GB. In some games RAM plays a huge role. World of Warcraft is like that, the difference in smoothness (or lack thereof) between 512MB and 1GB is huge.

 

[therealnickdanger]

OK, I was under the impression that the CPU played a really big role in HaloPC calculations... I dunno. I see what you mean. If I had OC'd my GPU and not gotten an improvement, that would mean I'm CPU-limited, the chances are better that my GPU is the bad link. Now that I think harder, CPU-throttling may be culprit. I suppose one other culprit could be my 5400RPM HDD, but with 2GB RAM, I'd like to think that all necessary data is loaded to the memory anyway. I've done memory tests and my RAM checks out OK.

Dang, I don't want to spend $500 for a GPU... I suppose I could try being patient and wait for the line of DX10 laptops to come out, then splurge on one of those...

Is there a good tool for logging CPU/GPU usage that could keep track of system resources while I game for review afterward?

 

[nitromullet]

With 2GB of RAM, you shouldn't have any swapping, so that's not an issue. I was going by the 512MB you have in your sig. You can still check to see if it's CPU throttling by reducing the rez and killing all the eye candy. I'm pretty sure that it's your GPU though, as 1920x1200 is a really big rez to push for the 7800Go.

 

[therealnickdanger]

Yeah, for some reason whenever I go to my profile page to edit my sig, it never saves my changes... It may just be a testament to how poorly Halo was ported to the PC, considering I get more consistant framerates that are just as high (if not better in some cases) in Half-Life 2: Episode 1 while running at 1920x1200 with maxed settings. I think HaloPC might just be buggy... I dunno. It's not like it isn't playable.

Thanks for the input.