Thinkpads Forum

Given that the only Vista v5200 driver is the Lenovo one, would there be any gaming benefit of going to the v5200 from the x1400?

Most definitively!

Marin

Hmmm, well I had done some googling and saw that on gaming benchmarks the v5200 does no better than the x1400 (while the x1600 that the v5200 is based on typically has gaming bechmarks scores twice as high as either of those two cards). How sure are you about the v5200 being better than the x1400 for gaming? Would you say it's $275 (uh...and pretend the dollar isn't worthless against the euro).
Danke

You can use the catalyst drivers for the v5200 instead of the FirelGL ones...

Marlinspike, which benchmarks exactly?

Well, the v5200 3dmark scores should be around:
2k1: ~16,5k
2k3: Not sure i remember correctly, about 6,5k i think.
2k5: ~3,5k
2k6: ~1,6k

See http://www.notebookcheck.com/Mobile-Gra ... 735.0.html

for a comparison, alas the v5200 scores look very outdated, the drivers would need to be REALLY old if one should only get 1,2k in 3dmark2006, or running at lower clock speeds.
The v5250 looks more accurate of what the v5200 should perform like. It might be due to the fact that some notebook manufacturers downclock their cards permanently in order to cheapen out on the heatsink size and fan CFM performance.

It was that same website actually. I was looking at the 3DMark06 score. Either it's changed, or I just misread it. Still, the 5200 is not much better. As I understand it it's not that the driver for the test was old, but that the 5200 driver's in general are no good for gaming.

efrant wrote:You can use the catalyst drivers for the v5200 instead of the FirelGL ones...

Can you though? It seems like nobody with Vista can get that to work. That's part of the key, I'm on Vista, and it looks like that would force me to the lenovo driver (ATI doesn't even supply a vista driver for it).

marlinspike wrote:

efrant wrote:You can use the catalyst drivers for the v5200 instead of the FirelGL ones...

Can you though? It seems like nobody with Vista can get that to work. That's part of the key, I'm on Vista, and it looks like that would force me to the lenovo driver (ATI doesn't even supply a vista driver for it).

Oops. I should read the thread title before posting. I'm sorry, I missed the vista part.

Doesn't it work either with DH Mobility Modder.NET ?
http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/

With default resolution (1280x1024) my TP scores exactly 1600 marks on 3DMark06, and with max resolution (1920x1200) it reaches 1076 marks. You should also consider:
1. 3Dmark scores depend on cpu, system memory and HDD as well. That´s one of the reasons why the 3dmark score of ATI Mobility FireGL 5200 is so poor in the notebookcheck review (only 900 marks if I remember correctly).
2. Vista drivers for the ATI FireGL come from Lenovo and not from ATI (due to lack of Vista support for Mobility Radeon and Mobility FireGL for now) and they definitely have better gaming performance than the XP FireGL drivers (which are true FireGL drivers) (speaking from own experience). What is more, the ATI FireGL under Vista doesn´t behave much like FireGL (example CAD applications suffer from this). It seems to me that Lenovo has put some more gaming performance into it for Vista (against OpenGL and CAD performance).
3. The FireGL 5200 has 256MB VRAM plus up to 768 MB shared from system memory.
If you have X1400, just run 3dMark 2006 and see what happens and post back here. I´m curious too, but I´m pretty sure the FireGL would perform better
True, unfortunately there aren´t any modded drivers for ATI under Vista yet

Marin

Wow, that was disappointing. While that website shows computers with an x1400 getting 900 3dmarks and 1228 3dmarks, my system, which seems to have the same exact specs as yours except for the monitor and the graphics and HDD only got 718 3dmarks (at 1280x1024, the only option on the free 3dmark06 as far as I can tell). Unglaublich!

Am I correct in thinking that the difference between 718 and 1600 is large, and that it would be worth the $275?

Well, this is a little weird. The thinkpad service guy was out here to replace my mainboard (under warranty and my headphone jack died...if I had known it would require replacing the board I would have at least waited until what I decided to do.

I ran a 3D mark just to see if it changed anything (keep in mind, this is the same exact board model as my old one, should be no change). Now my 3D Mark score was 772.

Well, marlinspike, the difference between 718 and 1600 is quite the double , but I can´t really tell if it´s worth the money. You see, you should know this better than me, it depends on your preferences: if you wonna get significantly better graphic performance, then I suppose this upgrade is worth the money. But, as already said, it just depends on your demand on graphic performance
Are you sure you got the right mobo (the one with the Mobility FireGL 5200)?
And yes, I do have the full version of 3Dmark2006

Viel Erfolg!

Marin

P.S. Thanks to Troels! I´ll try this out when I have some spare time. It looks very promising.

I think I was unclear. I don't currently have the 5200 in the computer. This new board is still the x1400 (it was being replaced under warranty because the headphone jack stopped working).

Sry, misread your last post! True, that´s weird, difference from about 60 marks doesnt come from nothing. Probabely different apps running in background (e.g. firewall, AV etc.)? Did you try to run 3Dmark multiple times to verify the new score?

Marin

Same apps are running and I did verify it. The only difference I can think of is that the tech forget to put in the machine type and serial number into the bios, and maybe that's a secret boost lol.

...or a secret interference between the headphone jack and the video card Who knows... Anyway, you now have slightly better graphics, so just enjoy it And don´t forget to post here your impressions when you have the FireGL 5200

Marin

Well, this isn't exactly scientific because while the mobo was being swapped, the ram was also upgraded from 2 1gb sticks to 2 2gb sticks (though only 3gb are used since I'm in 32-bit vista) and the hard drive was changed from the 7k100 100gb hitachi to the 7k200 100gb hitachi (thanks Brad!), but the 3d mark score is now 1616. Quite an improvement. No time to game yet, but general stuff is noticeably faster (I guess because of the hard drive/ram)

Bootup time is now A LOT faster, which seems kind of weird since the hard drives are both 7200rpm.

So, you want to tell me that the additional GB of RAM and the better HD have more than doubled your 3DMark06 score (with X1400)? If so, that´s even more weird than your bootup time improvement (that is actually not that surprising since 7K200 has almost the double performance of 7K100 If I remember correctly and also has higher density ).
Now, thanks to Troels, I discovered driverheaven I´ve tried their tool and it works flawlessly both with ATI Desktop Catalyst driver and ATI Desktop FireGL driver With the first one my TP achieved stable 1614 3D-06-Marks and with the latter one it reached the stable 1619 points, which means it performs better with the FireGL driver (theoretically). However, as to practising the FireGL I noticed worse image quality when running some simple Matlab sample simulations or when rotating 3D objects and I don´t like it I´ll probabely stay either with Lenovo or ATI Desktop Catalyst drivers.

Oh, no, that's not what I'm saying. The mobo was swapped out for one with the v5200 at the same time. I was just saying that all of the improvement wasn't the v5200 since that other stuff was done as well.

Ah, ok, I see now, misunderstood you because of your signature. Have fun!

Marin

incidentally, you should look into Mobility Modder that will modify the official catalyst releases to work with mobility chipsets, including the firegl line..

In fact, I have my v5250 modded to run x1700 mobility drivers (as nearly as I can find out, the mobility versions of the x1700 and v5250 are identical) and I'm able to run crysis, bioshock, oblivion, et al very comfortably on my t60p 14", though I havent benched it. It 'feels' very similar to my old gaming desktop, x1950 pro 512.

Some newer stuff does still cripple it, such as NWN2, and the witcher, however :\