Intel 4 series compatible?

[Mog]

Long story short, I'm getting a new laptop. I'm pretty positive I'm getting the HP intel pentium G60-235DX. It has the intel 4-series graphics chip...and just wondering if there's any strange compatibility issues with FFXI. Wanna make sure before I get it.

[Mog]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

Well I got it, expecting good FPS and graphics. Wrong-o. The graphics are fine, but my FPS dips pretty low when i only approach a few people or go into a wide open area (like sky) So now another question is, is this a vista issue or is the Intel 4 series chip (which sounds integrated) the problem? I would think with a game like FFXI, it wouldn't be an issue, but I'm not sure now.

It's got a 14 day return policy, so I need to figure this out. x.x

[Raydeus]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

<Insert this RDM's usual rant about XI's client>

From what I've heard from people with Intel graphics laptops there's a lot of testing you'll have to go through to find the right driver to play XI with (if available). A friend of mine was testing drivers for more than a week before he could find a decent one.

Now keep in mind this was more than a year ago and that I have no idea what version of driver/graphics he used/had, but at some point he was even mentioning custom drivers, so who knows.

[PiNG]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

Well, i saw the list of competiable game from intel site

Game List: Mobile Intel® 4 Series Express Chipset Family - Game playability on Microsoft Windows Vista*

From just seening the, it probably isn't too bad to play FFXI, you tried the Benchmark program just to see the performance #s? on my laptop (pm965 , dell vostro 1400, 2.6 core2 duo, 4gb ram) running xp VS. vista (preloaded) , it was BIG difference, the vista always had 1.2GB already eaten up from my system memory , just from startup... XP made things noticeably smoother. The bechmark program gave me high 7000s from what i remember.

[Mog]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

The benchmark gave me 2700 when I first got it.

I did more research trying to improve the framerate before I go scouting for another computer. Apparently, removing the transparency effect rate improves the framerate a great deal. Are there other features I can remove to improve it? I'll keep looking in the meantime...

------------------

Well, just went to sea. The framerate is pretty unbearable. /sigh Definitely not something I can get used to.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

1) Intel chipsets tend to not accelerate well with FFXI generally. So you may be leaning harder on the CPU. Hard to say for sure, I don't have experience with anything that new from Intel
2) Some parts of the game will *always* be laggy no matter what, but it does sound like you know what to expect in this regard...

One way you can tell whether the graphics accel is kicking in much at all is to compare the low res and high res benchmark scores. On a properly accelerated setup, in my experience the low res score will be in the general ballpark of around 20% higher; on a poorly accelerated setup the low res score may be more in the range of 80-100% higher.

If you can stand it, MIP mapping may help, but I find that the quality hit is pretty severe unless you already have a VERY high background resolution setting (higher than you can set without using regedit).

Turning off weather effects will make a big difference on a system struggling to keep up. And some of the in-game settings will make a difference (though it's been a while since I've used a system slow enough to need to tweak this).

[Mog]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

1) Intel chipsets tend to not accelerate well with FFXI generally. So you may be leaning harder on the CPU. Hard to say for sure, I don't have experience with anything that new from Intel
2) Some parts of the game will *always* be laggy no matter what, but it does sound like you know what to expect in this regard...

One way you can tell whether the graphics accel is kicking in much at all is to compare the low res and high res benchmark scores. On a properly accelerated setup, in my experience the low res score will be in the general ballpark of around 20% higher; on a poorly accelerated setup the low res score may be more in the range of 80-100% higher.

If you can stand it, MIP mapping may help, but I find that the quality hit is pretty severe unless you already have a VERY high background resolution setting (higher than you can set without using regedit).

Turning off weather effects will make a big difference on a system struggling to keep up. And some of the in-game settings will make a difference (though it's been a while since I've used a system slow enough to need to tweak this).

Yeah, I'm using MIP mapping and turned off the majority of weather effects.

And the High res performs at 1764. So quite a difference from the low res.

[Ameroth]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

My guest is Vista. Like Ping pointed out, his system idles at 1.2GB of ram being used. Pretty fucking shitty for MS to pump out an OS that works that way, but hey.

How much RAM you has?

[Mog]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

My guest is Vista. Like Ping pointed out, his system idles at 1.2GB of ram being used. Pretty fucking shitty for MS to pump out an OS that works that way, but hey.

How much RAM you has?

I think it's a combination of Vista and the integrated Intel chipset. Even when turning a lot of the vista settings down, it still runs like shit. I'll check the RAM when I get to my place.

[Mhurron]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

Jesus christ. Vista uses ram more efficiently then any Windows did before it and it reports differently.
Coding Horror: Why Does Vista Use All My Memory?

Unused RAM is wasted ram.

On top of that, FFXI sits in about 3-400MB. It works on a PS2 with 128MB system ram remember.

Have you tried seeing if there is an updated driver for your chipset see if there are any performance fixes?

[Mog]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

Jesus christ. Vista uses ram more efficiently then any Windows did before it and it reports differently.
Coding Horror: Why Does Vista Use All My Memory?

Unused RAM is wasted ram.

On top of that, FFXI sits in about 3-400MB. It works on a PS2 with 128MB system ram remember.

Have you tried seeing if there is an updated driver for your chipset see if there are any performance fixes?

Tried...it's already updated. I don't know what else to do besides install XP and see if it runs better, but I don't know.

[Ameroth]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

Jesus christ. Vista uses ram more efficiently then any Windows did before it and it reports differently.

It might use it efficiently, but that doesn't mean it's not wasting my RAM by filling it up with needless GUI functions/interactions that never existed before Vista showed its face. Unused RAM maybe wasted RAM, but RAM that could be being used for other more important jobs seems like a waste all the same.

[Raydeus]

Re: Intel 4 series compatible?

It doesn't matter how good Vista is handling RAM though, you'll always be better off using XP instead. But hopefully Windows 7 will change that.

Laptop + Vista = Problems.