Pentium 4 mobile processors

(Blackrock) #1

I just got a laptop with a P4 mobile 2.8GHz processor and a mobility radion 9200 to replace a laptop with a P3 mobile 1.13 processor and everything being equal I hardly see any difference when playing ET (I’ve made sure both are running at the rated speed while I’m playing). Choppy and choking every once in a while.

I have another P4 2.6 Ghz laptop (not mobile) and it screams. Is it that “mobile” processors suck for games? I’ve tried updating the graphics cards and everything but the choppyness and choking seem to be processor based. I don’t get it. :???:

(Domipheus) #2

you cant really say everything else is equal, its totally differebnt. giving us all three systems full spec would give us more insight.

(pgh) #3

Colin \o/

(DarkangelUK) #4

Domi: I think he means all the graphics settings are equal, i.e. the same.

I only know one person that games on a laptop, but she uses an Alienware and it runs ET and RTCW no problem at all.

(Domipheus) #5

well, laptop hardware != desktop hardware. they may have the same names, but no. i want the full specs please.

hoi pig \o :slight_smile:

(fledsbo) #6

Not sure what you mean by a “Pentium 4 mobile 2.8Ghz”. If you’re talking about the Pentium-M processors (sometimes called “centrino”), I think they only go up to 2.1Ghz. A Pentium-M 2.0Ghz should be faster than a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz for ET, according to this:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2129&p=10

(Blackrock) #7

OK, here’s more info:
They are both HP Pavilions

The Fast one:
HP Pavilion zd7010us
Intel Pentium 4 (2.66GHz, 512K L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB) - 512 MB
64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go
More info: http://www.exactchoice.com/profile_1514.aspx
This one has a 17" wide screen display and is as fast at ET as any desktop I’ve played on. My nephew, who also plays ET on a fast desktop, saw me playing on this one and ran out an bought one. It has a standard Pentium 4 and which runs a one speed and power draw wich i can confirm because the fan is always going and when I run it off my car battery it kills the battery in about an hour.

The slow one:
HP Pavilion ZX5040
Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.8 GHz, 533 MHz / 512KB (L2 cache)
64MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9200
More info: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00058330
This has a 15.4" wide screen and the fan is much quieter, the processor runs at 1.6 and 2.8 Ghz and can run for several hours on my car battery. When I play ET, I make sure it’s running at 2.8Ghz by using a utility called SpeedSwitchXP.

The zx5040 gets pretty good frame rates (40 - 50 fps) but I can see like, frames dropped. And then when the guy comes on and says something like “come on, 2 minutes” it chokes - sort of skips 3 times like a broken record, or might freeze for a half second, then rejoins the action and usually I’m dead then. These things could be caused by other apps running, but I usually quit everything else, and even when I had a bunch of web pages open and Outlook open, I don’t notice anything on the zd7010.

Maybe the Radeon is not as good as the NVIDIA?

(bani) #8

the skipping would be due to et reading the wav file out of the pk3. means you have your drives or OS disk caching poorly configured.

(Blackrock) #9

disk caching poorly configured? It is configured as from the factory… I can’t find any configuration changes in Device Manager… just write caching. Anyway, I just installed an additional 256MB of system memory bringing it up to 768MB and though it’s playing more smoothly,…it still SKIPS LIKE A BROKEN RECORD! Maybe I need to uninstall ET and reinstall from scratch…

(eq-Shrike) #10

I had a similar problem when I was running Zonealarm. Ditching ZA solved it …

(Cyber-Knight) #11

You should’ve bought a Centrino or Pentium-M processor. they’re far superior to those pieces of garbage Pentium 4s.

The Gigahertz numbers don’t tell the entire story.

(Blackrock) #12

quote]
You should’ve bought a Centrino or Pentium-M processor. they’re far superior to those pieces of garbage Pentium 4s.

The Gigahertz numbers don’t tell the entire story.
[/quote]

Its the one with the pentum-m that is the promlem. The P4 one works great.[

(Domipheus) #13

um, from those specs you posted, you DO NOT have a centrino cpu.

(Blackrock) #14

I noticed last night that when it skips, the hard disk light comes one for about 3/4 of a second, and I hear the hard disk whirl up to speed. I have it set to NEVER spin down, but it seems to be spinning down after a short period of time. Then when the game requests an audio file that is not in memory, the hard drive has to spin up and it puts the system on hold until it is ready. I just updated the bios to the latest and it didn’t fix the problem. If ther is no bios setting that I can change, I don’t think I can fix it. I had this same problem with a Compaq Laptop and send it to HP 3 times and all they did was replace the hard disk! I think it might be a bug in the bios and Windows.

(Blackrock) #15

I think I fixed the skipping problem caused by the hard disk having to spin up during a read. (For some reason, the hard drive spins down after 1 minute without any requests, and it won’t obey Power Options settings. I’ve seen this on Compaq and HP laptops) So I wrote a little program that updates a tiny file every 30 seconds. I start that up before I start ET, and it seems to solve the problem! No more skipping in the middle of a fire fight!

(Ragnar_40k) #16

Try incrase com_soundmegs to a higher value like 128, this will enable ET to cache all sounds in memory. You still may have skipping at the begining of a map (when the sounds are loaded), but it should only happen when the sounds play for the first time.
Another reason can be a poorly configured sound driver, you should check for new drivers or tweak the settings (e.g. change to 11kHZ in ET etc.)

(KT) #17