GoHack's Alienware Area-51 m5550 Review

congrats on your nw rig! have you tried F.E.A.R or BF2?

pics!!!!!!!!!

Ahh, GoHack...we LOVE pictures! (but thanks for the benchies)

There is a Bf2 demo but its only Gulf of Ohman ( a map). And i think theres a FEAR Demo ...

Thanks for the benchmarks GoHack, what settings are you able to run Oblivion at? I know on the M5500 with the 256mb 6600, 2gb of ram and the 2.0Ghz pentium M it could run it on medium well at 1024*768, can the M5550 do a little better? Thanks.

Tried F.E.A.R. yet?

Ok. Im doing something very wrong with m5550 then. I tried to play Oblilion at the native res, 1280 x 800, and it plays fairly terrible, and stutters quite a bit. I just started the game too, and this is in the 1st underground level. I shudder at the thought of what it will play like when I get outside.

So just having read you are playing oblivion OK at 1280 x 800, I need to figure out what Im doing wrong. What power management program are you using? I'm tyring NHC (Notebook hardware control), and forcing the CPU to run full speed when plugged in. Also, Ive tried uninstalling that and just using windows powermanagement. In both cases, Oblivion played terrible.

Maybe I need to get your video driver setup working in mine.

EDIT:

UPDATE:

Googled the drivers, and got them. Got and ran Drive Cleaner Pro, as per the program's instructions.

Installed the new drivers. Overclocked to 460 and 360 (10 mhz each).

Note: The over clock settings DO appear to work. They were saved after I rebooted.

Oblivion note:

Playing Oblivion for me on my m5550 is still like watching a slide show. Frame rates are terrible at 1280 x 800, Bloom, HDR (or none), and NO AA. If Oblivion truly does play fine on your machine at 1280 x 800, then there is something wrong with my machine that I can't determine.

Here's a tweak guide I found useful: Oblivion Tweak Guide


(credit to hulioni for publishing the info on tweakguides.com a few months ago)

Wow that's amazing!

If you carried on playing for a little while longer you'd get outside, then we could really see how well the M5550 copes with the game

VARIOUS m5550 Benchmarks. Will be updated as new tests are added

All tests done with 3DMark03

Take One:
3DMark03: 4507
notes:
Several small background programs running, as well as Norton Anti-Virus 2005.
NGO Nvidia Optimized Forceware v1.9137

• Image settings: Quality
• Antialaisining: Application Controlled
• Anisotropic: Application Controlled

Take Two:

3DMark03: 6616
notes:
only change was, uninstalled Norton Anti-Virus 2005, big improvement.

Take Three:
3DMark03: 4325
notes:
nvidia setting change:
Image: Performance
Big drop in performance from either test. Either card is getting hot and scaling back, or "Performance" image setting is worse on my machine than "Quality" setting. Highly doubtful, suspect over heated GPU being scaled back.

Take Four:
3DMark03: 8294
notes:
NoteBook Hardware Control installed, CPU forced to run at full speed 2.0 ghz (no CPU scaling)
nVidia setting change, back to Image: Quality
6 hour cool down between Take 3 and Take 4.
Best score yet. I am sure that in Take 3, the GPU was over heating and being scaled back.
Also tested by playing Oblivion. Played GREAT at 1280x800, no AA, Bloom On. (note, only played for 5 minutes so unsure if over heating will be a problem during the game)

Take Five:
3DMark03: 4795 :-(
notes:
same as take 4, but with Notebook Hardware Control uninstalled (ie, allows CPU to scale as dicated by Windoze).
Not a total cool down period, but notebook but was left sitting idle for 3 hours before running benchmark. Very sad to see the results are so much lower than Take Four.

Take Six:
3DMark03: 6159
Used as a "control" test, i.e, exactly same ast Take Four. Not sure why the fairly large difference in results.

Take Seven:
3DMark05: 2183
Something is definately wrong here, compared to GoHacks results...

GoHack:

Do you have ACPI enabled in NHC? (there are two check boxes on the ACPI page)

Also, is your NHC registered?


My m5550 is just not as snappy as yours.

Just ran another benchmark

3DMark05 run, score 3113
no background programs at all enabled.
Nvidia Image setting on Quality

Just ran another pass, no setting change at all:
3DMark05: 2313

I have idea what my systems problem is. Overheating?

GOHACK:

Have you tried any benchmarks with any of the newer versions of the NGO drivers?

And have you actually read the instructions in NHC about configuring ACPI? It's quite complicated and I wonder if anyone has actually done it.