Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

So for the breakdown is:

Deus Ex - runs perfect
Invisible War - Choppy and more blocky than I remember.
Morrowind - Choppy but probably fixable
Oblivion - Stops responding on first loading screen.
Torchlight - Runs perfectly, so put me down for Torchlight II.

So I'm going to focus on getting Morrowind up to spec and see if I can't get Oblivion working. I'm fairly sure I can get all of them stable, but I can see its mostly smaller indie games or GoG with the laptop til I build or buy something much better.

Portal 2 was by far the choppiest when I had it, which was odd considering it runs on Source and that's rather basic stuff today.

[Icemage]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

While it's certainly true that laptops can't be upgraded beyond RAM/storage drives/optical drives, Asus's g-series laptops have decent specs and are fairly priced. They're quite heavy and thick though, so it depends on you consider portable. I suspect the reason so many laptop GPUs underperform is that they're too thin, and have to throttle down the CPU and GPU to avoid overheating.

They're reasonably priced and have decent specs at the time you buy them but the way PC gaming works is that your cutting-edge hardware becomes unable to run games at max specs released 6 months after you buy it, and everything else goes down 1 rung on the ladder respectively. All PC gaming hardware is only reasonably useful for maybe 2-3 years from the time you purchase it before it needs to be upgraded (or you can't run the latest and greatest games at anything faster than a slideshow). With a desktop PC, you can sort of stagger that cost by replacing a motherboard/CPU, then replacing the GPU at a later date while keeping pretty much everything else (mouse, keyboard, monitor, maybe even the power supply).

With a laptop, you don't get that option - you have to buy a whole new machine for that, and you pay a significant price premium for your trouble. Beyond that, laptop components tend to be less capable hardware, since laptops generally are optimized for lower power consumption and not for computational power, so even with the extra cost you still get less bang for your buck compared to a desktop unit in the same price range.


Icemage

[Raydeus]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

BBQ already said he will work towards building a gaming rig down the road. So I think we should focus on helping him get the most from the (temporary) PC gaming device he currently has. <_<;

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

BBQ already said he will work towards building a gaming rig down the road. So I think we should focus on helping him get the most from the (temporary) PC gaming device he currently has. <_<;

Yeah, I'm glad you're focused on that point. I'm not exactly aiming high with a 2008 laptop here. Persona 4 Arena and some future Skyrim downloads are the last 360things I'm buying, everything else goes to PC savings, 3DS XL, Wii U and a Vita. Once I have the gaming PC that's adequate for Skyrim running at full blast with HD textures (or maybe I should be setting the bar over at Watch Dogs now), its Steam sales that will go a long way toward helping me save for upgrades while helping me get a fix on third party games.

For now its simpler things this laptop can handle. The point of starting the Steam library was to get the ball rolling and shake me out of paying the idiot tax on PS3 and 360 games.

[Icemage]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

You said "save" and "Steam sales" in the same sentence. Does not compute.

At any rate, what I said earlier still stands; unless your laptop PC has a dedicated graphics chip with its own resources, there's not really a lot you're going to be able to do to get it to run something as horrendously inefficient as Oblivion. Doesn't mean you shouldn't make the attempt, but you should at least be aware you're playing with the deck stacked heavily against you. A non-gaming laptop from 2008 is going to struggle to run anything released in the past 5 years that isn't an indie game no matter what settings you use (and might even cough up a hairball on a few of those).


Icemage

[Raydeus]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

I've found out that an Oblivion with low settings and a Texture optimizing replacement mod looks pretty good and it's light enough for a laptop. There was one that made textures look much better while reducing their actualy size at the same time, there's also one for Skyrim and the Fallout games. Just check the Oblivion nexus site. Just kill shadows and AA and play with field of view and texture filtering settings.

I mention Oblivion because it's the only game of that type I've actually installed on a Laptop, along with other games like Half Life 2 and HL Source.





PS > And yeah, Steam is pretty good for getting good games cheap, but if you are not careful you'll spend a lot getting more games than you can actually play. Just like me. orz

[Aeni]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

You're only using a dual core?

That's your problem. You need at least a quad these days, or if you want good performance without getting too pricey an Intel i5 series will do.

Core Duo works decently enough for pre circa 2008 games which Steam is backlogged full of. There is a difference from being able to play a game, play a game decently and play the game at the most intense and gorgeous visuals it can be displayed at. I suspect BBQ just need something in the middle and not the latter.

What's probably more important is reducing latency and load times, so an SSD drive would have to be high on the priority list, followed by a good graphics card and a motherboard that can bring all of it together. CPU power isn't an issue as it was 20 years ago. If it was between spending X amount of money getting a 15% improvement from a CPU upgrade or getting improvements up and down on the rest of the system, I'd choose the latter. Fast memory, fast storage, fast graphics are all important to run a game well. Getting a dust storm to behave just a smidgen more lifelike isn't really important for me as getting tits on a character to look nice.

[Raydeus]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

PPS > And about games, these are the ones I can think of the top of my head right now. They may or may not have been released on other platforms as well.

Ys Origin and Oath (if you haven't played them on portables)
Bastion
Recettear and Chantelise
Legend of Grimlock (old school but surprisingly addictive)
Oblivion
Fallout 3 and NV (depending on performance, but you've already played those)
Vampire : The Masquerade -Bloodlines- (kinda glitchy since it was an adaptation of the Source engine but it has a nice story and it's kinda more open than expected, there's a patch for it that really makes thing a lot better)
Knights of the Old Republic (if you haven't played it yet, it will run magnificent on any recent hardware)
Max Payne (of course)
CoD 4 (it's a 2006 game and it isn't demanding so it should run well, plus it's the best of them anyway)
Games like Machinarium, Longest Journey and Dreamfall are good too, but it really depends on whether you like that type of gameplay.
Portal (I have a free copy of it if you want it)
Half Life 2 and HL source.


Etc. Etc. <_<;

[Aeni]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

At any rate, what I said earlier still stands; unless your laptop PC has a dedicated graphics chip with its own resources, there's not really a lot you're going to be able to do to get it to run something as horrendously inefficient as Oblivion.


Icemage

My system struggles just to load Total War: Shogun 2 (running on the map itself is fairly nice) which boggles the mind considering it doesn't look as nice as some of the other PC titles that use less resources. Many games also do not have memory protections in place and end up causing huge leaks (and require unnecessary minimum ram as a result) I just hate it when those titles don't get docked points for that in reviews. Most reviews are made with top of the line PCs and those reviewers are so oblivious to that fact.

[Raydeus]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

Shogun always takes that long to load unless you have an SSD installed, it's sort of a tradition. But considering how patient you need to be to play those games to begin with I just enjoy the music while it loads. XD

You can reduce load times by reducing the number of characters displayed per unit or getting a SSD since there's too many tiny files to load. I wish Shogun would use more RAM to cache all the stuff instead.

[Malacite]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

It could also just be shoddy coding in Oblivion's case...


But again, BBQ hasn't given us his system specs or even what settings he's running these games on which is paramount to properly analyzing the problem. I'm betting you're using an on-board GPU that came with the Laptop which could be the source of the bottleneck, since according to everyone else it's not your CPU (though again, you've only given us vague terms and not actual models & performance numbers).

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

Thought I already gave the specifics >.>

Compaq Presario A900
Card: Mobile Intel(R) 956 Express Chipset Family, drivers updated to current via Intel site.
Processor Intel Pentium Dual CPU T2390 @1.86GHz 1.87GHz
Installed RAM; 3 GB
32-bit operating system, Windows 7

[DakAttack]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

No offense, but my Droid has better specs than that.

[Malacite]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

Yeah that's... wow. And I thought my PC was ancient.

Tell me that's at least DDR3 RAM and not DDR2...

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Help a PC gaming noob PC game better

Again, I think there's a fundamental - or possibly completely intentional and just douchey misunderstanding going on here. I am not - repeat NOT - intending to just DL Skyrim and expect it to work on this laptop. Much of what I bought of Steam was to serve two purposes:

(1) To get the ball rolling on a library that moves me away from playing on consoles/encourages me to build a good PC
(2) Games that actually work on the laptop for now.

I am well aware it is not capable of running 360 or PS3-level games and could not render anything from Skyrim on its best day. I know my iPhone4 and 3DS can run circles around it. I'm not asking for a rating, just how to make mostly last gen games work on it so I have some fun things to play and explore in the meantime while I work on building this new PC. I seek to move away from consoles in the future but I'm not giving up what I have just yet. The 360 is here for now, I'll probably just Gamefly rather than buy games for it.