Thinkpads Forum

OK, here is my question. From what I have read, the Firegl V5200 in T60P is optimized for CAD instead of gaming, but is there a chance that it can handle the recent games at acceptable performance? I tried google but no luck.

I am going to buy a T60P with Core 2 Duo when it is available. And I do plan gaming sometimes on the machine. So for all the T60P users who do play games on it, please post what games u play and how well it runs.

Your feedback is highly appreciated!!!

I dont have a T60P but I am planning on getting one soon and have been looking into this for a while. From what I understan the V5200 is roughly equivalent to the x1600, some of have said it is the same chip. The core and memory seemed to be clocked lower than the X1600s in other laptops. Given this it seems to be on par with the better graphics chips you would find in the 15.4 and smaller laptops. The really good graphics cards though are in the 17 wide screens.

I think it will be able to play all the current games and some future ones but you arent going to be able to max out the setting on the real high end FPS.

Yes, the Firegl V5200 is equivalent to the X1600, but underclocked as far as I know. It scores about 3500 in the 3Dmark2005. The score indicates a high graphic capability. But the problem is that it often seems to run into compatibility issues when comes to gaming. Take a look at this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthr ... regl+v5200

For what it is worth, I replaced the "CAD/Workstation" optimized Lenovo drivers with Omega drivers and found the performance to be about the same. I've read varying reports and it seems people with older versions of the Lenovo drivers saw more improvement with Omega. Later versions seems to have closed the gap.

There were a few bugs with the Omega drivers that annoyed me so I went back to Lenovo.

I don't really game but tried out a few and they work great. I have Civ IV and Company of Heroes installed. Civ IV I can run at almost max settings. COH I have at about Medium settings and average FPS of about 20-25 which still looks great.

Hi,

I've played some games on my T60P (with the original drivers from Lenovo):

- Titan Quest
- Tomb Raider - Legend
- The Settlers - The new Generation
- Spellforce

They all work just fine. Titan Quest, for example, in full resoultion, and medium to max details.

Netnose

Just to say Tomb Raider Legend scales really well. I am able to play it on a T30 with an old ATI 7500 chip and 16MB. There is severe slowdown in some locations on that machine, but overall it's playable at XGA and looks good. While more or less of the first person variety, it appears to be more forgiving than other new games.

Well, I'm not much of a gamer, but every once in a while something comes along and I do like it.

I've got a T2500 in mine, as well as 2GB RAM and the V5200.

So far; Gothic 2 has worked perfectly. Same goes for Dungeon Siege I/II, Arcanum, Fallout 2, Mercedes Benz World Racing, and Silent Hill 2/3. Those run flawlessly, but they aren't really the newest games around.

I just finished Call of Juarez, which is quite new, running it at 1600x1200 and I'd say most settings in the middle, depending what shader model you pick. I was very pleased!

I would not use this as a primary gaming rig, nor is it capable of running high FPS at high settings. But for all else...works for me

First of all, thank you for your kindly reply!!

As most of you, I would not use this machine as a gaming rig either.
However I wanna play some games on it once in a while, knowing the machine is able to run the games u guys posted certainly makes me feel much better before I buy it.

Anyone got more T60P's gaming experience? Post it here and share with us! THX!!

SuperNova+ wrote:
Anyone got more T60P's gaming experience? Post it here and share with us! THX!!

FYI:
I do not play any game in my T60P,but I can show you a famous game 'FF11 official bench mark site' as follows,
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/downlo ... geID=media

After you download a benchmark soft, then install it.
You can get your machine score and compare to the score shown in the site.

Mine(T60P) was : Low Res. 6310, high res. 3970.

I am running omega drivers, and running a nice O/C. I can run most new games with no problem at high settings.

I am running omega drivers, and running a nice O/C. I can run most new games with no problem at high settings.

Would u please list what games u play?
And regarding the O/C, how much do you overclock from the stock core/memory speed, does it heat up? Thx!

Thank you for all your input, guys!

Anyone got more experience on this? I don't think I am not the only few who do wanna occasional gaming on TP.

Bump to see more opinions!!

A friend of mine says he plays World of Warcraft on his T60P with no problems. (For what it's worth, he hasn't noticed any FlexView blurring, although I suppose that's kind of moot since the T60P only comes with a 14" screen now...)

i hope i will be adding something and it is not only my problem, or a problem occuring only with my laptop.
i have a t60p and just upgraded it to 2 gb. but the problem is due even before the upgrade so it is not the problem of two sticks of memory discussed in earlier threads
the problem i face only occurs when i am playing a high resolution (1400x1050). some graphics ar just didtorted it is strange, a mountain for example will be distorted, in some spots i will see some strange colors that do not fit in the image. and in some other games there will be lines connecting to whatever i am moving (tank) to some point in the map. the funny thing is that this happens even with old games that i was able to play with when there was no pentium three yet. (Drakan form Psygnosis) and some more recent games such as (Generals)
some other times the game just stops and i am out of the game.
sorry for the bad news, but i hope it is usefull for you and i hoipe someone will be able to help me...
yours

What games do u have problems with? What drivers do you use?
If it happened to many games u play, u are most likely to have problems with drivers. Because many people reported gaming on the Firegl cards is definitely possible, although not perfect. Moreover, I have seen somewhere before that the people complain Firegl v5200 cards have problems with opengl games, one of them is Call of duty. I have no idea what games are opengl based, perhaps someone could enlighten us why the card performs poorly with Opengl games? Anyway, as stated the card is not ideal for gaming.

i do not also know what are opengl games and what are directx games.
and as i before the problem hapened to several games i can not recall the names now but i do recall "Drakan", "Generals", "fantastic Four", ...
as i said the problem occurs only when resolution is set to full (1400x1050) whenever i lower the resolution i do not get those problem.
when a picture is distorted like when i see a mountain where it is not the same colors (the mountain is here and it has the correct colors but some spots are miscolored all over the mountain it also happens to the ground this happened to Drakan) in Generals and Fanastic four there are lines that appear tat connect places or objects together like a tank is connected to the base in Generals.
i am using the drivers of lenovo, i did not change to omega, i tried updating it through ATI but in the middle of it the updater told me it did not recognize my Graphic card.
it seems ati drivers do not work on V5200 supplied to lenovo it has to be modified by lenovo
anyway i am usually solving this problem by switching to a lower resolution, not a very nice solution but it works

Why don't try to switch to the omega drivers? They are known for the better optimization for games. It might not completely resolve the all the issues, but, hey, there is still a chance that the games could run better with omega drivers. So, go ahead and try it.

And regarding the workable drivers for the Firegl V5200, I suppose there are only two options: either the Lenovo drivers or the Omega. ATI drivers couldn't be installed on the card for some reason based on my readings. I came across a thread in another forum today, someone mentioned that the ATI catalyst drivers can be forced to be installed on the Firegl cards, thus provides much better gaming performance. However, the solution has been only tested on the old firegl cards like Firegl V3200/3100.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33781435

There are 2 people already inquiring how it could be done to the Firegl V5200, let's hope it could be answered by the poster of the thread soon. Looks like we are not the only people seeking better gaming performance on the T60P.

Now, here comes a little request, could u list the recent games u played and how good they run on your machine? Thank you!!

I searched for x1600 drivers and found these:

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/mobile/6-5- ... _32468.exe

After installing them, my T60P seems to be running much quicker. Loading programs a little faster than with the Omega drivers.

I do not have a T60P, but I do have a T60 with a Radeon X1300 with 64mb of video ram. I play Counter Strike Source at 1024 x 768 at medium to high settings. I do not get any blurring or ghosting effect. I have also played Guild Wars at medium to high settings with zero lagg and any problems.

I am sure games like Call of Duty, Prince of Persia, or any of those generation of games would work extremely well. Since you have a much more powerful graphics card in your T60P, you should be fine unless your running Oblivion at max settings! That would be sweet though.

I will be posting a detailed (14 page so far) review of the Z61p on Hothardware.com in the coming week with performance numbers from the FireGL v5200. The Z61p internals are pretty much identical to the T60p in just about every respect minus firewire and card reader which the T60p does not have.

The review uses the latest Lenovo supplied ATI driver and will compare against several other laptop models in 3 different gaming catagories. I did benchmark using the latest Omega drivers however those numbers will not be included in the review. I can provide those numbers once the review is published.

You all can also use the latest ATI Radeon Catalyst drivers using DHModTool to modify for usage. I use DHModtool4c.exe when modding my files.

That's really good news, INDEED!! Thank you very much for posting this. I will be eagerly looking forward to that!!!

About the driver modification for the Firegl card, how could that be done? Would you give some detailed info or link how to install the lastest catalyst drivers using DHMODTOOL?

NP at all. I will post here when the review is done. I plugged the site here at least once during the review Senoir editor expects a possible slashdot :O

Either way, the cards tested will give you an idea of where this chipset stands out in the croud.

I've got my T60p and I regularly play games on it.

Just cause :setting all maxed out, looks astonishing!
Company of heroes: settings about medium, still looks great!
Civilisation IV: settings maxed out, looks great to !

but this is with the laptop plugged in to the power.
Without a plug, the settings have to be a bit lower, but still all good.

Thank you for all the reply, I really appreciate it.

I am wondering now how the Firegl V5250 in the new T60P improves over the Firegl V5200.

I have a T60 with the 1300. It's not the greatest, but it bests my GeForce 5500

Thanks for all the input!!

Anyone tried Oblivion on the T60p? considering it's probably the most demanding game, does it run smoothly at reasonable settings?

Hi,
I have a T60 with the x1300 videocard and 1024x768 resolution. Do you think I could run Company of Heroes on this machine? Requirements call for an ATI Radeon 8500, 64 Meg, which I believe is a fairly old graphics card. But reviews say that it's a technically demanding game. So, what to believe?

In case you're wondering why I didn't get a T60p... I didn't buy the machine. So I can't complain.

I have a t60p with 2.33GHz core 2 duo, 2Gb, and the 5250, and when I'm not working very very hard on it, I do occasionally play the odd game

Under windows, I've played counter strike source, Civ 4 and Neverwinter Nights 2. Counter strike runs very smoothly at 1440x1050 on virtually max settings (everything on, including HDR, except for antialiasing). Civ 4 runs perfectly at max settings at the same resolution. NWN2, which has to be the biggest resource hog in this or any other universe, runs fine at 1440x1050 on about medium settings. By 'fine', I mean >30fps.

If I run 3dmark2005 at stock settings then I get about 3900.

Now, thats all fine, but I ALSO run linux on this machine, and just for fun, I downloaded the doom 3 LINUX demo and tried it out. So this is opengl, not directx. To my surprise, it ran pretty [censored] well. I set the resolution to 800x600 and video settings to 'high' and it ran pretty smoothly.

Sorry, forgot to add - Obliviion runs very nicely on my machine, though I cant check the exact settings until I get home tonight...

Jazzar -

That sounds like either a lack of power problem, or an overheating problem. Do you play games when plugged in? And how hot does the base of the laptop get?