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Gaming issues with 9300?

post #1 of 17
5/29/05 at 6:33pm
Thread Starter 
I cancelled my order on the XPS Gen 2. I was having an impossible time of justifying the extra money for the "ultra" video card and aesthetics. However, I'm a pretty avid gamer, so I was curious as to whether any of you have had any problems at all with playing some of the latest games on the 9300? I'm particular interested in how Doom 3, UT 2004, HL2, WoW, etc.. all play on the notebook. I'm also curious as to whether anyone uses a 5400rpm drive for gaming and whether they have any "hiccups" from load or seek times during gaming. I was planning on installing a 100gb seagate momentus myself and just replace the default 40gb drive. Anyway, I guess my specific questions are:

1)How do the latest games run?
2)Any hiccups from 5400rpm drives?
3)Have you noticed any low fps in any games that the 6800 go doesn't handle very well?
4)Have you generally been happy with the gaming performance on the 9300?

Thanks in advance!
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post #2 of 17
5/29/05 at 7:10pm
I don't have an i9300 but I can tell you for sure that you won't have any problems running those games at high settings.. even some AA/AF, but you might wanna wait till someone else is more specific.
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post #3 of 17
5/29/05 at 10:18pm
1. Great
2. I have the 80GB 5400RPM no problems so far, and it's real quiet
3. Yes, I have some low fps in Far Cry, although I am running it 1920x1200 with everything at 'very high' and on a less optimized renderer (OpenGL) with SM 3.0 enabled
4. Yes very happy. Being able to play everything at 1920x1200 with AA and AF gives a beautiful and fluid gaming experience (especially HL2 and Doom III).
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post #4 of 17
5/30/05 at 10:24am
My 9300 has no problems with anything I throw at it (mostly WoW and GuildWars).
If you are, as you say, an avid gamer, I would have to tell you to reconsider the XPS2, as the video card is significantly better, unless you OC the hell out of it like REAVER.
I chose the 9300 over the XPS2 because of the price, the battery life, and I wanted the WXGA display.
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post #5 of 17
5/30/05 at 10:26am
REAVER one question for you. I see your 3dmark scores and want to say..whoaa how you do that?
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post #6 of 17
5/30/05 at 10:41am
Groove - XPS2 - enough said.

Oh - unless you remove the part about "Avid Gamer" from your post. The ULTRA is for tomorrow's games - IMO the $400 (if you wait for the 35 percent off you can score for even lower) price difference is well worth it. Just look at the 3DMark scores - its a BIG diff in the #'s - and from exp I can tell you that FarCry plays quite a bit better on the Ultra - same goes for Doom3 - but that's not important - since the next games will really test and show the Ultra power difference.

As for Reaver - 5K for a 9300 is quite a score - never seen anything close - the 5 9300's we have are all around 2200 to 2500 -
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post #7 of 17
5/30/05 at 11:01am
I have a 9300 and it runs all games very well, even at 1920x1200 (although this is one big resolution slowing the card down). Even so, most games run incredibly well on my i9300 (about as fast as my desktop with a 6800GT !). The nvidia drivers are very good in scaling the TFT resolution and even keeping aspect ratio (so no problems with non-widescreen games, just black borders left/right). With some overclocking, I can get my i9300 to reach +4000 points in 3DMark05, which I consider pretty decent.

Doom3, HalfLife2, Guild Wars, UT2004 are the games I play most now and all run fine at max resolution/settings (Hl2@1920x1200, no AA, 8xAF - Doom3@1600x1200,no AA, 8xAF, GuildWars@1920x1200 max settings, idem UT2004). Other games that tend to require a heftier card (like FarCry) run pretty well at say 1280x800 (a downscaled 1920x1200 resolution).

I would've loved an XPS2 because as a pc gamer I can always use a faster card, but it was just too expensive at the time
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post #8 of 17
5/30/05 at 11:57am
Thread Starter 
Grr, now I'm back to straddling the fence again... Thanks for the posts though. Game performance is definitely a big priority, but so is battery life because I will commute with this laptop quite a bit and I can't have it plugged in all the time. I need to go at least 2.5 hours or so without a plug with no problem. Anybody know what the comparison is between 9300 and xps2 in relation to battery life? I don't necessarily need to play bleeding edge games in the next year, but I definitely want HL2 and Doom3 to play well on the laptop, along with WoW. Those are probably the main games I would be playing, and there are a slew of HL2 engine and Doom3 engine games due out relatively soon. Ah well, I'll make my mind up sooner or later... sigh.

Also, I'm traditionally an overclocker, so I was planning on just oc'ing the card considering that's all an ultra is anyway. Getting a little more bang for my buck that way.
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post #9 of 17
5/30/05 at 4:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Groove75
I was planning on just oc'ing the card considering that's all an ultra is anyway.
I don't think that's the only difference. I'm not the expert here, but I know that the Ultra has faster RAM. There may be other differences as well.

It is possible for the 9300 to last for 2.5 hours on battery if you turn the performance waaaaay down (i.e. you aren't gaming). With everything cranked up playing WoW or GW the battery lasts about 1.5 hours. The XPS2 will get even less.
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post #10 of 17
5/30/05 at 10:02pm
9300 with good performance gives me about 1 and 1/2 hours - max battery I can get a bit over 2 - XPS is a little less - but not enough IMO to make a buy not buy decision over. Will full charge on XPS you should be fine for 2.00 hour off batt - just set max battery profile.

Both units are lower than average when it comes to batt life.
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post #11 of 17
6/1/05 at 5:53am
How much faster would the card preform if it was only ran on the regular 17'' monitor they offer, not the UXGA one?
Thanks
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post #12 of 17
6/1/05 at 5:57am
If your a "AVID" gamer then the XPS2 is a no brainer.
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post #13 of 17
6/1/05 at 6:15am
I'm reckon my 9300 with 6800 Go and WXGA runs games just as speedy as an XPS2 with 6800 Go Ultra and WUXGA at respective native resolutions.

Noody
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post #14 of 17
6/1/05 at 6:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Movieesa
How much faster would the card preform if it was only ran on the regular 17'' monitor they offer, not the UXGA one?
Thanks
the speed of the card is very dependant on what resolution you use to play your games. when attaching a 17" monitor to your laptop, I would recommend using 1024x768, which will be quite a bit faster than running your games at the native 1920x1200 resolution.

downside to using a lower resolution is that you'll notice jaggies more often, so when using lower resolutions, you'll use AA (anti-aliasing) more often, in turn decreasing performance. It's quite often a trade-off.
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post #15 of 17
6/1/05 at 6:25am
The WUXGA doesn't consume much more, if any, power than the WXGA.

The main cause for power consumption in an LCD is the backlight which is the same on both models.
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post #16 of 17
6/1/05 at 8:39am
Thread Starter 
Well, thanks for the input. I think I've decided on the 9300. I think both are great machines, but I don't quite feel like shelling out top dollar for the xps 2 at this juncture. I don't mind downsizing the screen res to be able to play some of these games. Honestly, even though the battery life is slightly better on the 9300 vis a vis the xps 2, it is still significant enough for me to be swayed to the 9300 camp. I'm extremely mobile with my laptop and very frequently would I need at least 2-3 hours of use out of it. Also, I can see myself oc'ing the gpu to bleed a few more fps out of a game if needed. It appears as if the 6800 go can play HL2 and Doom 3 engine games very well, and that's all I care about at the moment considering that there is a flood of games due out in the near future that take advantage of these engines and will be popular for a long time to come. (Quake 4, Pariah, and Prey come to mind) I've always been one of those people that justifies a few hundred saved on previous gen technology, is a few hundred put toward the next upgrade in 2 years or so. That being said, the XPS 2 is certainly a sweet piece of hardware, but doesn't quite fit my profile for a laptop at this point in time. Ah well...
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post #17 of 17
6/1/05 at 11:15am
I have a work provided 9200 that I use as a second gaming machine. It's good enough to play WoW/EQ2, but only at 1440x900 and with a lot of eye candy turned off.

I play EQ2 mostly on my XPS2 at home, in all the glory. As an AVID gamer (I typically play games 4+ hours a day), the choice was easy for me.

The 9300 should be plenty for a regular gamer (1-2 hours a day).
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