Gaming performance on T42s

[modemrat]

I am looking to a 2373-3UU model that has a 1.7 735 Processor and a ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600 graphics card. I play Unreal Tournament 2004 and Warcraft 3 a lot. Would this handle these games well? Does anyone have any first hand experience playing games that demand a descent amount of power to run smoothly?

[csv96]

Haven't tried Unreal Tournament, but Unreal II, Quake 3 Arena, and Half Life were very playable at 800x600 on my T40p (1.6ghz, 64mb FireGL 9000). Starts to choke at 1024x768, but still mostly playable.

[G-Man]

Have 32MB ATI. Played Medal of Honor, Half-Life, Quake III on 1024x768 with every details set to max, run smoothly. Call of Duty on 800x600, same, but needs at least 512MB RAM. Played Warcraft a little on 800x600, with no problem. Your 9600 64MB ATI will easily handle these games. Don't worry.

Regards,
G-Man

[ED!]

Oh I dunno about Unreal 2004. Probably gonna have to set a few of those settings a little low. Make sure you at least come away with 513 megs of ddr ram. Unreal takes up dang near 300megs by itself. It is nothing short of a beast.

[Chun-Yu]

Nah, UT2004 should run just fine on there. On my 32 MB Radeon 9000, it runs ok with the default settings at 1024x768. On a FireGL T2, it was "playable" with everything maxed out and 4X anti-aliasing at 1400x1050.

[Nabeel]

I was playing Vice City, no problems at all at 1024x768, no problems at all. But it's a little dated. I'm trying to find my copy of NFS Underground..my friend has a T40 with the Radeon 9000 and he plays it perfectly fine, I'm sure it'll run on my T42 with the 9600

[NecessaryEvil]

my T42P does great in FarCry at 1024x768.

UT is nothing.

[darrenf]

NE,

seriously? sweet!

FarCry won't run on my T41, presumably because of the 32M VidRAM.

What drivers do you use with the FireGL? Will all/most games work on it?

-darren

[darrenf]

NE,

One other question. I assume that you have a FlexView screen. Is the ghosting really a distration? Sounds terrible from what I've read and makes me want to stay with the T41!

-darren

[NecessaryEvil]

I use the latest ATI drivers.

I then use the DH mobility modder on the latest ATI drivers to create Mobility-compatible drivers. These work on my T42P (Mobility FireGL T2) & my X31 (Mobility Radeon)


FYI: once you do the mod, the drivers don't work on regular cards. Therefore, I need to have the original drivers for the 9800XT, and a copy of the drivers for the Mobility Mod.


Also, Omega drivers support both standard cards (9800XT) and mobility cards (FireGL T2).



The only issue I've run into as far as games go is that CS requires DirectX. The OpenGL won't work on it. (Although it does work with Q3A...not sure if I have tried any other OGL-only games).

Flexview indeed.

Ghosting only occurred in HL based games (CS). However, I only play CS @ LANs...and it's not terribly annoying. Just affect textures, not the players themselves (from what I noticed, at least).

I came from a T41P which had no ghosting. The T42P has a little more, but certainly isn't something that is a distraction to me.

UT2004, FarCry, BF42, Q3A all work and look great.


Of course...I'm used to working on a miriad of displays(Dell 2000FP UXGA @ LANs, dual Dell 2001FP UXGA at home, the T42P UXGA Flexview, and the X31's XGA 12.1)...so I can tune out ghosting pretty well.

[darrenf]

The shame of it is that the T42 with SXGA+ screen at 14.1" & 64M VidRAM would be my perfect laptop if not for the ghosting issue and battery usage associated with its FlexView screen. That laptop with the traditional SXGA+ screen would be awesome. The T41P is the only other option that gets me the vidRAM and non-FlexView screen, but that cost $800 more and I don't see the value in that.

-darren

[benz]

Just to clear things up darrenf, all T42 models with 14.1" screen do NOT have Flexview.

[darrenf]

Now I'm confused. Last night, this screen:

http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/store ... logId=-840

said FlexView. Today it doesn't. I know it said FlexView because I looked at the page from the normal website, the visa Site and the contractor's pricing site. All said FlexView. Weird.

The customize-it screen screen here:

http://www.ibm.com/pc/ecim/ibm_us/Confi ... cntrfnbr=1

still shows the display as "14.1 inch SXGA+ (1400x1050) TFT Display with wide viewing angle and high density," verbage that is only used in descriptions of FlexView screens.

Has anyone here ordered and received a 2378FVU? Is it FlexView?

-darren

[fred]

will the fire gl w/ 128 mb be able to play these games? im thinking about buyung a geu

[benz]

I know for a fact that the descriptions on IBM's website have been in flux lately, and are likely plagued with minor errors. But AFAIK, no 14.1" screens are Flexview, no matter what the TABOOK or other sources say. There was a debate about this a while back in another thread, search for it.

[darrenf]

OK, thanks - that's good news!

-darren

[Nabeel]

Yup, I have the FVU, there's no noticeable ghosting at all. Games run great on it

[jpresto]

Same here - 15" uxga no ghosting that I notice -

BTW, I tried installing the omega drivers with no luck - said incompatible with my system. Anyone have any luck with these? I've got the firegl2..

Thanks - joe

[csv96]

Try uninstalling your current drivers first (revert back to basic VGA driver). Then install the Omega Drivers. Worked fine on mine.