Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

[WishMaster3K]

Ok, these are the important parts of my laptop that should be coming in the mail in a few days.

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition
SYSTEM COLOR Ruby Red
DISPLAY Glossy, high contrast, widescreen 14.1 inch display (1280x800)
VIDEO CARD Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
HARD DRIVE 80GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)

What settings would I be able to run FFXI at, and would I be able to run fraps.

My POS Del, which is an Intel Celeron M @ 1.30Ghz, with 760MB of RAM and a 5400 RPM HD as well.

It runs FFXI fine, runs Windower fine, on average it's 12 frames a second. When I used to go to Dynamis, I just had to turn settings down, but it was ok. Got pretty hot, so I had to make it a Notebook, and not a Laptop. (Only half of you will understand).

Graphic intensive places chug it.. Like if I'm running in the Jungle, and I pan the camera down a path, the frame rate suffers hard. Same thing in places like the Temple, and I look down a hallway.

I leave Weather off, footsteps off, shadows off, but I leave the clipping plane at Max.

Anyway, all that is inconsequential. I just wanted to know what type of performance I should expect. I heard that while the game runs in Vista, the performance is bad compared to it running on the same system but with XP.

Hmmm, Dual Booting, anyone? :-D

[Mhurron]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

You should be able to pull off running at 1280x800, but FRAPS will most likely slow things down, possibly by a lot.

[Omni]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

I'd take off vista and load xp for starters. Vista is such a resource hog.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

I'm contemplating that, but transferring all my stuff is going to be a pain!!!

I mean, I only have about 7 (8?) GB of music, so that's a drop in the bucket.

(Oh, forgot to mention that I run FFXI at 800x600 for screen space, but I'm probably going to be Dual Screening anyway.)

So it remains to be seen... but I'll see what the computer runs with. I'm going to order a bigger hard drive from TigerDirect or NewEgg anyway.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...k=laptop%2bHDD
120GB. Going to put it in an enclosure, partition 20GB for Vista, 20GB for XP and the rest I'll use for storage. Or is that a bad Idea? Right now I have this hard drive on my laptop partitioned (80gb) and I set aside 10 for just the XP OS and program files, and I noticed I'm running low on space when I install things to the C Drive. (I installed FFXI to the D >_>;; ).

So is partitioning a Laptop HDD a bad idea?

Edit:
I honestly don't see any difference in performance..

[Mhurron]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

So is partitioning a Laptop HDD a bad idea?
Edit:
I honestly don't see any difference in performance..

No better or worse idea then partitioning a desktop drive.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

But is partitioning itself a bad idea?

[Feba]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

Route one of the PCs into the other one, use one to play the game and record with the other one? Not exactly sure how you do that though.

patitioning is fine, most OEM machines come with a partition anyway so you can reinstall windows by pressing a button during boot, so they don't have to give you actual disks. partitioning shouldn't harm your PC at all.

[Mhurron]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

It isn't really good or bad. If you are the type of person that frequently formats their OS, then maybe keeping all your data on a separate partition is a good idea. On the other hand you may find that you're partitioning scheme is too restrictive when your usage changes, ie your partition for movies fills up while you have a tonne of room on the partition where your OS sits.

Route one of the PCs into the other one, use one to play the game and record with the other one? Not exactly sure how you do that though.

Using TV out and capture cards in the machines. How is an exercise left up to the reader.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

Well I have a Linksys, so I'm trying to wrap my head around that.. Possibly run a program on my gaming PC that just outputs the data.. Maybe. I'll research it. Probably.

There are TV out PCI cards though, so maybe that'd be easier. Probably.

I'd have to get an input card on the other PC, and that's a lot of cables. So maybe not.

Thanks for the input!

[Feba]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

Using TV out and capture cards in the machines. How is an exercise left up to the reader.

well of course.

If you only want the video for your own purposes, Laptop's Svid cable -> VCR. Instant win.

[Kailea]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

Getting tired of the "uninstall Vista first" comments.....

Vista is not bad at all, its NEW, for god sakes cant anything be new anymore?

to fix the resource hog issue, just turn off all the visual effects Vista has in it, and you will be fine

it the compatibility options under properties of any shortcut or .exe file you can check the box "Disable Visual themes" and that will turn of all the RAM eating graphic stuff in Vista, untill you shut down the program, then it turns it all back on.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

I am an advocate of partitioning myself, having done it in many ways for multiple OSes for various reasons. It can actually be quite helpful to be able to restrict how much data can go in a given drive if you're trying to keep file accumulation under control, and it is extremely useful to be able to reinstall the OS at will without worrying about copying data files or installer executables. Leaving unpartitioned space for future expansion is also helpful at times.

The main downside of partitioning is that you really need to plan out ahead of time how you intend to use the drive, where you expect to see a need for growth, etc. This can be more effort than most people are prepared to put into a system install.

For multi-OS situations, I recommend restricting primary partitions to bootable system drives (you can have 3 of these, not counting extended partition, under the traditional DOS partition structure--I haven't messed with LVM as yet, hasn't seemed worth the bother), and leaving the Extended partition to hold data drives. Note that GNU/Linux, if you use or might experiment with it, can boot from a logical drive in the extended partition, but most OSes will need primary partitions.

[Omni]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

Getting tired of the "uninstall Vista first" comments.....
Vista is not bad at all, its NEW, for god sakes cant anything be new anymore?
to fix the resource hog issue, just turn off all the visual effects Vista has in it, and you will be fine
it the compatibility options under properties of any shortcut or .exe file you can check the box "Disable Visual themes" and that will turn of all the RAM eating graphic stuff in Vista, untill you shut down the program, then it turns it all back on.

uh oh, are we gonna have another vista vs xp thread?

it was just a suggestion. if u like vista, great. i like xp for gaming. who cares right? i think for best performance, stick with xp.

I personally dont like having so many things running that I dont use. If I'm going to disable half the goodies with vista, I might as well go with the lighter XP. hey, that's just me...

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

That's a good point, Omni and Kailea. Vista is new, and it's coming with my laptop, so it's unavoidable. I'm getting tired of installing XP on new machines, and having to tell the tech "I had to reinstall, my computer crashed and I had to reformat and/or a virus caused it.."

But whatever, it works. I've been using the same SP2 disk for years.

But on the flip side, I'd like to have Vista around so that when there is new stuff being made for it, I can have it.

So there's nothing wrong with partitioning (ty Luna), so I'll keep the OSes on separate sections and just keep the files (music and pics and etc) on the second one. Anyone object to me installing FFXI on the XP sector?

[Feba]

Re: Laptops & Fraps & Other Stuff

Vista is not bad at all, its NEW, for god sakes cant anything be new anymore?

So new products aren't supposed to work? You enjoy the idea of being a guinea pig for a software company?

Strangely enough, I've never had a problem with ''any'' other software because it was "New" (which, by the way, Vista is NINE MONTHS OLD now, isn't it?) -- even Ubuntu linux hasn't had any major problems just because it was "new".

Being "new" is about the crappiest excuse for making crappy products ever come up with. Being poorly tested is a reason, being poorly designed is a reason, being "new" is not. --~~~~