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Gaming performance tweaks? Gateway MT3422

post #1 of 10
8/8/07 at 6:29pm
Thread Starter 
So I bought a new laptop that I thought would be decent for certain games (World of Warcraft, to be specific), at least as far as laptops in its price bracket go. Problem is, even running World of Warcraft at minimum settings, it's pretty slow.

Specs are as follows:
1.7GHz Athlon64 X2 dual-core
1GB DDR2 RAM
nVIDIA GeForce Go 6100

I've already set the nVidia control panel for performance over quality, and power profile for the Windows Vista Home Premium is set at maximum performance. Does anyone have any tips for how to improve performance, at least in WoW?
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post #2 of 10
8/8/07 at 9:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by xen9899 View Post
So I bought a new laptop that I thought would be decent for certain games (World of Warcraft, to be specific), at least as far as laptops in its price bracket go. Problem is, even running World of Warcraft at minimum settings, it's pretty slow. Specs are as follows: 1.7GHz Athlon64 X2 dual-core 1GB DDR2 RAM nVIDIA GeForce Go 6100 I've already set the nVidia control panel for performance over quality, and power profile for the Windows Vista Home Premium is set at maximum performance. Does anyone have any tips for how to improve performance, at least in WoW?
Well for starters, you may want to upgrade to 2GB of DDR 2 System Ram (2GB is the Sweet spot for running Vista w/ Shared Memory) another thing you can do is upgrade to a faster Hard Drive (a 80GB or 100GB 7200RPM would make things a lot faster), also try turnning off Idexing, System Restore, and check what loading up at System Start up, a lot of what's running could be slowing you down as well, and one more thing, Defragmenting your Hard Drive at least once-a-week, all of the above things will speed up things up on your system........
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post #3 of 10
8/9/07 at 6:42am
Thread Starter 
I'm looking at upgrade options right now on Newegg for memory. The Best Buy site for this laptop states "1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 memory for multitasking power, expandable to 2GB". I had assumed that the laptop had two 512MB sticks, but the way that's worded makes me wonder. I'd rather not open it up right now (and risk voiding my warranty), but does it have one 1GB stick and a free slot, or two 512MB sticks and no free slot?

I'd call gateway, but it's a simple question, and they like to charge through the nose for support of any kind, and I don't trust Best Buy to answer the question for me. After all, their salespeople are the ones who told me that, and I quote, "this laptop will run WoW pretty well."

Edit: well, CPU-Z just answered that question for me. Two 512MB sticks. Manufactured by Hyundai electronics? Hmm.

Also, it identifies the processor as a Turion 64 Mobile TK-53. I feel a bit ripped off, since all the documentation for the laptop, and even the stickers on it identify it as a proper Athlon. And it only has 256KB L2 cache per core, which seems a bit pathetic. Sure it only cost $700, but even then I'm not so sure I would have bought this beforehand if I'd have known.
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post #4 of 10
8/9/07 at 6:47am
sorry to buzz in denb45 :-)
xen9899: download cpuZ, run it, it will tell you ur ram spec and how many slots are being used

cheers ...
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post #5 of 10
8/9/07 at 11:15am
My guess is the cheap integrated GeForce Go 6100 - it won't get great gaming performance without a better video card.

All the laptop dual cores are Turion 64 X2s. If you're going for a laptop, you don't want an old Mobile Athlon 64.

The Turion 64 X2 TK-53 is actually one of the latest chips released this year. It is using the Tyler 65nm core, so it's not a ripoff by any measure. Sure it has less cache than the TL-58, but it was cheaper too. The AMD chip does not need as much cache as the Intel ones because it has an integrated memory controller.
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post #6 of 10
8/9/07 at 12:41pm
Thread Starter 
Problem is, all the other laptops in that price range use Intel GMA 950 Video, so the 6100 was really my best choice.

As for the processor, why the heck would all the documentation, stickers, etc. identify the processor as an Athlon when it wasn't? Especially when other laptops properly state that they have a Turion processor. I suppose being lied to like that bothers me more than the actual processor I ended up with.
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post #7 of 10
8/9/07 at 9:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by xen9899 View Post
Problem is, all the other laptops in that price range use Intel GMA 950 Video, so the 6100 was really my best choice. As for the processor, why the heck would all the documentation, stickers, etc. identify the processor as an Athlon when it wasn't? Especially when other laptops properly state that they have a Turion processor. I suppose being lied to like that bothers me more than the actual processor I ended up with.
I won't even touch an Intel Proc, who wants something with only 533Mhz FSB Speed, when you can have 1600MHz FSB with a AMD X 2 Duo Core, Intel's are way too slow for my computing needs AMD is the way to go.....
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post #8 of 10
8/9/07 at 10:32pm
My guess is that this base was used for several models. When the newer processors came in, they substituted the new chip and kept the branding as the Athlon, despite AMD"s usage that it is a Turion 64 chip.

FSB isn't everything. Intel chips beat out the AMD chips on every spec. That is why AMD has to lower their prices, they just cannot match the performance of the current Intel Core 2 Duo.

FSB.. actually that 1600 MHz is a lie. AMD chips use HyperTransport clocked at 800 Mhz, which is comparable to Intel's FSB at 800 MHz in Santa Rosa. While the bus speeds will play a role in performance, it is the CPU architecture that makes the Intel Core 2 Duo superior to any of AMD's offerings right now.
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post #9 of 10
9/12/07 at 5:49pm
To Xen9899:

I was just wondering if you can tell me what kind of battery life you're getting with the Gateway MT3422. I'm interested in getting one so I can carry around for classes. I'll only be using it for Microsoft Office. Battery life would be my biggest concern, b/c many of my classes don't have outlets available for students.

Thanks.
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post #10 of 10
9/24/07 at 1:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by sneekgeek View Post
To Xen9899: I was just wondering if you can tell me what kind of battery life you're getting with the Gateway MT3422. I'm interested in getting one so I can carry around for classes. I'll only be using it for Microsoft Office. Battery life would be my biggest concern, b/c many of my classes don't have outlets available for students. Thanks.
I have an MT3422, and I can say the battery life is pretty good. I have a 2 class block (1 hour 20 minutes each), and with the 10 minute time between classes I had it running on balanced power mode with 15% to spare afterwards... So about 3 hours on the moderate power setting, with the power saver mode in vista I see another 30 minutes on top of that. And note this was with wifi on and browsing the internet about half of the time. The four things I dislike about the laptop, is the crap software that gets bundled with it (takes about and hour to remove it all), they use a recovery partition instead of the standard OS disk, the integrated vertical and horizontal scroll zones on the touchpad get in the way (mouse ftw anyway), and though not gateways fault... the rather crappy driver support for linux.
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