Hi,just bought an acer aspire 9530 with an Nvidia geforce 9600M gt,3GB RAM,and an intel core 2 duo @ 2.00 Ghz.
It's the first machine I get with a 3D video card,so I read all kinds of technical issues to set up the visual settings properly.
When I play games I often notice annoying small vertical wave-like distortions even at the intro videos of some games(oblivion for example).I read that
might be tearing,caused when fps output > monitor refresh rate.I haven't experienced banding/tearing before,so I can't say if that is the case.
One reason I'm not sure it's tearing,is that this happens even while the FPS is <60 Hhz.
Titan Quest,a top-down angle camera view game,is the worst case of those vertical distortions,when i move the character.Yes,the fps where about 70 with all the game's visual settings maxed out.So,I used my nvidia control panel to force 16x anisotropic to lower the FPS.I monitored my FPS with FRAPS and they dropped to 40-50.However,the vertical wave-like distortions still occured, and were clearly noticeable.When I activate Vsync,the distortions disappear but then the smoothness suffers.I consequently forced triple buffering through the Nvidia settings panel,since the game doesn't support it and I noticed a very slight improvement,if any,in smoothness.(when I enabled Vsync,I also disabled the 16x anisotropic to make sure the FPS don't go to 30,but no luck there)
The thing is,when I saw Titan Quest run on the same settings on a higher machine (desktop 8800 GTS) there were no vertical distortions.Since tearing is
caused by high FPS it should display more tearing in the higher machine,no?
When I play First Person Shooters,like Lost planet,there are no wave-like distortions,but when I rapidly move the view horizontally a bit,I can clearly distinguish the vertical lines split in half (e.g.at corners),even at 35 fps!Could it be that this is not tearing,but happens due to low graphics card capabilities?could it just be that my system is not set for so high settings?shouldn't I judge where to set the video settings just by what fps output I'm getting?I'm aiming for 35-40 fps.I set all games at 1280x800 no anti alias,bilinear filtering,med shadows/effects,but high details and textures.
My friend suggested I update my drivers.I bought my laptop 5 days ago,I went to the Nvidia site,no drivers for 9600m GT there.I went to the acer site also,no
drivers for NVidia there.
WHERE ARE THE OFFICIAL DRIVERS?does anyone know?I did read the sticky about laptopvideo2go and about notebookforum's drivers and I thought,ok I'll try
them,as soon as I can find the official ones to go back to if I don't like the modified ones.
Please also give me your opinion about those visual phenomena that I mentioned.I haven't played with a 3D card before and I'm starting to get really
concerned that it's a monitor problem,perhaps a low response time?(AAaaargh,my new laptop doesn't work well?)
Any answer will be much appreciated.Thank you for your concern guys.
It's the first machine I get with a 3D video card,so I read all kinds of technical issues to set up the visual settings properly.
When I play games I often notice annoying small vertical wave-like distortions even at the intro videos of some games(oblivion for example).I read that
might be tearing,caused when fps output > monitor refresh rate.I haven't experienced banding/tearing before,so I can't say if that is the case.
One reason I'm not sure it's tearing,is that this happens even while the FPS is <60 Hhz.
Titan Quest,a top-down angle camera view game,is the worst case of those vertical distortions,when i move the character.Yes,the fps where about 70 with all the game's visual settings maxed out.So,I used my nvidia control panel to force 16x anisotropic to lower the FPS.I monitored my FPS with FRAPS and they dropped to 40-50.However,the vertical wave-like distortions still occured, and were clearly noticeable.When I activate Vsync,the distortions disappear but then the smoothness suffers.I consequently forced triple buffering through the Nvidia settings panel,since the game doesn't support it and I noticed a very slight improvement,if any,in smoothness.(when I enabled Vsync,I also disabled the 16x anisotropic to make sure the FPS don't go to 30,but no luck there)
The thing is,when I saw Titan Quest run on the same settings on a higher machine (desktop 8800 GTS) there were no vertical distortions.Since tearing is
caused by high FPS it should display more tearing in the higher machine,no?
When I play First Person Shooters,like Lost planet,there are no wave-like distortions,but when I rapidly move the view horizontally a bit,I can clearly distinguish the vertical lines split in half (e.g.at corners),even at 35 fps!Could it be that this is not tearing,but happens due to low graphics card capabilities?could it just be that my system is not set for so high settings?shouldn't I judge where to set the video settings just by what fps output I'm getting?I'm aiming for 35-40 fps.I set all games at 1280x800 no anti alias,bilinear filtering,med shadows/effects,but high details and textures.
My friend suggested I update my drivers.I bought my laptop 5 days ago,I went to the Nvidia site,no drivers for 9600m GT there.I went to the acer site also,no
drivers for NVidia there.
WHERE ARE THE OFFICIAL DRIVERS?does anyone know?I did read the sticky about laptopvideo2go and about notebookforum's drivers and I thought,ok I'll try
them,as soon as I can find the official ones to go back to if I don't like the modified ones.
Please also give me your opinion about those visual phenomena that I mentioned.I haven't played with a 3D card before and I'm starting to get really
concerned that it's a monitor problem,perhaps a low response time?(AAaaargh,my new laptop doesn't work well?)
Any answer will be much appreciated.Thank you for your concern guys.
