[TobiusMaximus]

Laptop- HP pavillion dv6736nr

Hi, I am used to old computers and BASH, but I just got a brand new laptop as part payment for a remodeling job.

It's sharp! I'm not used to something this nice.
So imagine my dismay-
Now everything on this system is top of the line, straight from best buy, so I put a game on it. Caesar 4. (What windows IS good for!!!) and was dumbfounded how slow it is. Caesar 4 is not even a very new game,
and I have to turn -all- graphics features to minimum with a 600x800 resolution to play reasonably.

WHAT GIVES?!?!?!?!?

It came with 2 gigs of RAM,(2-ddr2 sdram) turion 64x2@2000mhz (which I've read vista, even in the 32 bit mode uses both) and the on-board (I think) graphics chip is a G-force 7150M

All of this is ALREADY ridiculous next to what I'm used to.

I figured I would have a performance bottleneck with a 5400 rpm hard drive, but only in certain circumstances like installing etc, I looked around and it appeared that was standard for laptops. Everything else looks great.

This is like getting a new car to find it tops out at 50 mph.

What do I do? Suggestions?

Ryan

Edited by TobiusMaximus, 23 January 2008 - 08:47 AM.

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Im no pro at this but is ur computer running windows vista, i bought a new pc a while back that came with vista, it's an average system but it lagged like [bleep] when i was playing the sims, i downgraded to XP pro and i can run crysis on low graphics. i dunno but it may help if you load windows xp onto it.

~Lindsay

Edited by endstatus, 23 January 2008 - 08:51 AM.

[endstatus]

Im no pro at this but is ur computer running windows vista, i bought a new pc a while back that came with vista, it's an average system but it lagged like [bleep] when i was playing the sims, i downgraded to XP pro and i can run crysis on low graphics. i dunno but it may help if you load windows xp onto it.

~Lindsay

Edited by endstatus, 23 January 2008 - 08:51 AM.

[TobiusMaximus]

Being a linux geek, the first thing I did was ruthlessly weed out pre-installed crapware and unwanted services and features. I also set it for 'performance'.
Little tweaks like this are not the point. My point is this is a brand new computer with an almost obscene amount of resources. 2 gigs of ram. 2 processors, and some new super-bada$$ deal replacing FSB for insane processor bandwidth.
This is a nice computer. I should have my cake and eat it too. A few background processes and some eyecandy should be OK.
What can I do? I'm willing to put some money in it, but it -already- has anything I could think of. Besides the harddrive, what's the bottleneck here?

[droidack]

As a general rule the only good computer is the one that you have built yourself

But...

i don't know if a computer is a very good price with great features, they will have taken the price out of another component somewhere.

Maybe you could put in a faster HDD, I don't know how good or bad the graphics chip is. I've heard that running ok processors against better graphics chips can cause bottlenecks.

Edited by droidack, 23 January 2008 - 11:16 AM.

[TobiusMaximus]

I also turned up graphics chip dedicated RAM from 64 to 128 megs, the max. Reset the settings to 'average' in C4,
and still slooooow. Simply unplayable until I turn every feature to bare minimum.
C'mon yall, help me out here. I don't wanna put money into this thing also unless I am fairly certain it will have a dramatic impact. What do I need? Graphics card?
Decent reviews usually suggest specific improvements, can't find any for this model.
Caesar 4 is now my benchmark.
When it runs decent with high quality settings, I will be satisfied.

[stettybet0]

The 7150M is not meant for gaming. It's impossible on most laptops to replace the video card (only a small amount of super high end gaming laptops support this), so you seem to be in a bad situation unfortunately. I'm not quite sure what to tell you, because there is very little hope of getting any decent games to run on this computer.

[TobiusMaximus]

A dark cloud looms larger and creeping closer still...casting it's shadow like a drape over Vista's uh... vistas.
Only the desktop 'gadget' clock dared break the silence as it marked off seconds...well not really since it doesn't make any sound. A process streaks for cover. Always shielded by userspace Windows warnings how oh-so-broke networking would be without it, a new kind of fear sprang from the bottoms of it's allocated memory and ran up the spine of it's threads....

The dark cloud looming closer..starting to take form. Outlines now. The kind of sharp outlines Caesar 4 would sport if anti-aliasing worked.. it's a...

PENGUIN.

Edited by TobiusMaximus, 23 January 2008 - 08:27 PM.

[stettybet0]

If that very strange monologue is somehow a reference to how you think Linux is superior to Vista, consider that your game and most others wouldn't even run on Linux, and if they did it would require a lot of tinkering with a workaround using Windows APIs (like Wine or Cedega). And, of course, Linux wouldn't make your 7150M any better of a GPU.

Of course, I could be wrong and you could just be insane, and therefore you could disregard all I said above, though you have probably already gnawed through your monitor's power cable by now, so I guess that's irrelevant...

[TobiusMaximus]

Didn't intend to set anyone off. Just never found any use for a proprietary, non-transparent platform and all-around personal and social habit and behavior market-research vacuum cleaner forced on me to use my own hardware.
Past playing video games.
So if playtime is over, back to nix where I can put this thing to real use, not to mention account for every process and packet of data as sure as I ought to be able to account for anyone in my home.
Just my opinion, have fun with your MySpace and yahoo chat, or whatever it is you do with windows.

But thanks for the quick and honest answer about the gaming issue, which was all I intended to get into here.
I didn't look this gift horse in the mouth till I got it home, I would have went with a desktop had I had the choice.

Edited by TobiusMaximus, 23 January 2008 - 10:04 PM.