Thinkpads Forum

Hi, I got a Thinkpad T61p with nvidia quadro fx 570m display adapter. As far as I know this card is most optimized for using in 2D graphics. But I think it is obvious to get at least 100fps (constant) in a few year old Counter Strike 1.6. The problem is, while playing at 1280x1024 (or any other) resolution there are some short fps falls to around of 60-70 or even 40-50 (so this is sth serious). Of course those are not completely random, I think caused by some rendering overload when a lot of 3d models are displayed, but why so high? I mean, game is too old to get the GPU to slow down - I think. Even a bit.
For a comparision, on my PC:

*Sempron 2800+ 64,
*GeForce 6600GE 128MB/128bit,
*1 GB RAM 333MHz,

the game runs 100FPS constantly. I tried to run the GeForce 8600GT drivers, but nothing significant happens. I don't want to overclock it, because I think this is not the solution. GPU-Z during the playing shows the highest frequencies of GPU and memory of the quadro. Does anyone had that kind of performance falls?

thanks for replies in advance

I've seen you post this in 3 different places. Do you really thing this is that big of a problem?

Yes, I do. I do not like to have any unexplainable performance problems with my personal computer. So I ask if any one ever have such an issue?

Yes, I know is annoying sometimes to get a 'bad' machine if you had pay a premium price for it.

Which operating system do you have on your machine. Could you post your machine type, etc.

It could be some process running on the background that eats CPU power. Or it could be some virus/spyware nagging on your laptop.

The way I would deal with it is simply wiping Vista and installing XP. I still can't handle what a memory hog Vista is. Is such a complicated OS with so many functions that eat up too much RAM.

I can't imagine people who are not so tech-savvy buying a new computer with Vista on it (at least with 1GB of RAM or less). It just runs sluggish.

I'm very happy clean installing XP on my new T61 as I type this message.

Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 Ghz 4MB
4GB OCZ RAM @ 3GB (cause of 32 bit system)
NVIDIA QUADRO FX 570M 256MB (clocks: gpu:475MHz / mem:702MHz)
Already have clean XP SP2, no spyware, nothing else that could slow down the game, but I think even if there was a firefox with couple of tabs in it and steam running in background it wont affect it so much with this ammount of RAM.

Is the CPU running at full speed and not low power mode? Have you run any other benchmarks on the machine? 3dMark perhaps?

yes, results in 3dmark03 are good, even better than online benchmarks of quadro m570, I use RMClock to maintain my CPU power profiles, and with "performance on demand" profile I get always 2GHz CPU clock when >50% load.

It is possible that Counterstrike tries to read the graphics card model and set its mode of operation accordingly and that it just doesn't recognize a quadro. Is it just this one game?

remember, hl1 is based on quake1. the graphics are mostly done in ogl immediate mode since at the time there weren't too many gfx cards that did hw t&l. you wouldn't see this problem if it was using fbo's to send the data out in chunks at a time.

the other thing to check is that your hdd isn't set to spindown mode. it could be caching data, then spinning down. when you encounter a new area that needs data loaded, the disk has to spin up again, causing a hiccup.

also, a lot of people play with these 3rd party add-on model packs and stuff... get rid of that if you're using it and just go back to the original models shipped with cs.

it sounds like we might be making a mountain out of a molehill on this one.

Also at least in mine Quadro 570M, the memory controller is 64bit, while your 6600 had 128 bit, resulting in twice the memory bandwidth..

I have similar FPS drops in my 570m on my T61p gaming rig.... I have been trying a few driver versions thinking that this may be driver related. I want to HIGHLY DOUBT its a serious hardware issue as CS is years old and this video card is crazy advanced.

BTW I use Vista Ultimate x64 with nvidia drivers about a month old.

MovingAverage wrote:Also at least in mine Quadro 570M, the memory controller is 64bit

No way.

For the guys with the FPS drops, try putting the CPU in performance mode so that it always stays at the highest frequency. Also check the HD spindown mode as suggested.

MovingAverage wrote: For the guys with the FPS drops, try putting the CPU in performance mode so that it always stays at the highest frequency. Also check the HD spindown mode as suggested.

I don't have any spin-down mode turned on, or I don't know about something. To maintain my CPU performance, as I said before I use RMClock which lets me to have my full 2GHz when load. When gaming 2GHz mode is lasting constantly.
btw, Quadro FX 570M has a 128-bit memory bandwidth.

Have you by chance tried one of the cutting edge driver releases by the LaptopVideo2Go forum community? This is where I get all my Quadro/nvidia drivers for laptops and always had good success. However, I suffer from your same problem on my T61p but ONLY in counter strike source! BF2 and BioShock and COD4 have none of this issue.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/ind ... owforum=94

They have both XP and Vista drivers in x86/x64 flavors. Remember to download the MODDED INF file from the respective driver posting and replace the INF that gets extracted with the driver release. This allows the installation to recognize the Quadro card and enable the gaming specifics tweaks that normal nvidia cards get.

minc3d: Yeah, I've been even trying various versions of those drivers, and still the same...

Just posting in this thread to clarify one point of apparent confusion. The quadro fx 570 has either 128 or 64 memory bandwidth depending on whether you machine has a 14" display or the bigger 15. The smaller machines (at least the non wide ones) have the lower memory bandwidth. If I had understood that before I bought mine, I might have gone for the bigger widescreen model. Oh well. . .

The only game I've been playing is COD4. I'm now using the stock Lenovo current driver (which seems to be working better for me than any of the several LVTG drivers I tried), undervolting the CPU with RMClock and overclocking the GPU (a little) with RivaTuner (set to overclock only when gaming), and I have to say the performance is pretty darn good. I haven't run any fancy tests and don't know the FPS or whatever, but I can run COD4 on fairly high settings without stuttering or overheating (although it gets moderately hot, in the 70's C). FWIMBW, I think my windows experience index gaming performance is 4.5 which went up a couple of points after I overclocked the GPU.

One of these days I'd like to do the heatsink/GPU mod that's been discussed in another thread, but I'm a little afraid of voiding my warranty atm.