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Im thinking the low scores are from the memory.

I took a screencap of cpu-z. http://pictures.greatestjournal.com/.../6570753/98143

Look at the timings of the RAM as well as the speed. If it were 2 gigs for 667, the score would be significantly higher. This is for two reasons: first, the video card borrows RAM when it gets into higher memory required situations. This causes a conflict, because the system needs the same RAM. Hence, the system writes to the Hard Drive, which is wayyyyyyy slower than the RAM.

Not to mention that writing to RAM instead of internal video memory is slower. Hence, the x700 out performs the x1600 because the memory has to be routed to the system RAM and back.

Just my opinion. Im not godly with these machines, but I do own one. =D

I have the 5672 (Core Duo 1.66ghz) with a Radeon x1600 512mb. According to Powerstrip the Engine is at 472Mhz and the memory at 364Mhz. My problem is my performance is really bad, even in games. In the beginning of this topic somebody reported getting excellent framerates in games like Doom3 and Counter-Strike Source with most or all settings on high. I get abysmal framerate in Doom 3 with settings on medium, and in CS: Source with settings mixed between medium and high I average 40 and drop as low as 20. I used a modding program to install the latest ATI desktop drivers (6.9) and got a 75% increase in framerate (still nowhere near reported speeds from this topic) but it made CS:S unstable and crash frequently. Normally I use Acer drivers (they're later than the ones available at Acer's website, not sure where I got them to be honest), which are at version 8.24. I've tried the latest Omega drivers but they were unstable and didn't increase my performance at all.

I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, the thread is long and I haven't read all of it. Does anyone have any suggestions? My performance should be much higher than it is, shouldn't it?

If i'm not mistaken early versions of your model 5672 use the X1400 chip, when the manufactures replaced it with the X1600 they underclocked the chip to minimize the heat levels do somehow similar to the X1400.

X1400 (factory settings) : Core Clock : 433Mhz Memory Clock : 345Mhz
X1600 (factory settigns) : Core Clock : 470Mhz Memory Clock : 470Mhz

your X1600 comes closer to the X1400 frequencies, but outperforms it cause of the increased overall pipelines (Fragment pipelines, Vertex pipelines).

Also your model spots the lowest Core Duo 1.66 Ghz and apparently your X1600 borrows some of the system available ram, so your performance is gimped.

How do I check whether the video memory is actually shared? I see no evidence of this but don't know where to check?

And still, nobody else with this lappy and card has reported speeds anywhere near this bad (from what I've seen). From what I've read the X700 performs better than my card is doing.

I tried OCing the card with Powerstrip but the display stopped responding, I thought I'd fried the card.

Think the X1600 models come with up to 256 MB of dedicated RAM, the rest are always shared.
You could check the bios, some bios report the usage of shared memory. Or even better check your system properties and see if you miss any memory. Though HyperMemory dynamically allocates memory when needed so if you are not doing anything graphically intensive you may not see any memory missing. You could always search in the manual, they may hide it in some lower case letters

The BIOS says I have 128 megs of video memory, so I guess the rest is shared. Lame.

Would using shared memory actually decrease the performance? There's got to be a reason why it's going so slow.

We believe it is the underclocking and supposedly a 64-bit memory bus.
What scores do you get from 3DMark?

I don't have 3DMark, I'm not really concerned with benchmarks, just game performance. I guess I'll get it anyway to compare to other people's scores.

edit: I just ran 3DMarks03 and got 5048, which just shows even more that the benchmarks don't mean jack. BTW, 3DMarks says the video card has 256 internal, not sure what's going on with the BIOS.

It does score slower than an usual x1600, so being 64 bit memory migth be true. I dont exactly know how much it would affect being 64bit versus a 128 bit tho using the exact same card. It is underclocked but not much, and it scores 1k less (average) than other x1600.

still its a pretty good performer.

But what about game performance? Filiab said he got 70-100 fps in CS:S with all settings high.

I' ve done some research and found out that the X1600 HM (Hyper Memory) models have a 64 bit memory interface, while the X1600 without HM , only dedicated memory , has a 128 bit memory interface. All the HM models have a 64bit instead of 128 bit .

The reason they reduced the memory interface could be cause of the shared memory usage, because video card manufacturers often use cheaper memory with a lower buswidth. HM is basically a marketing tool rather than a performance boost, since it gives the "right" to vendors to lie about the actuall dedicate memory of the chip.

Memory Interface is the bus inside the gfx card that connects the core (gpu) with the video ram of the card, having a 64 bit instead of 128 bit simply cuts half of the memory bandwith of the card

X1600 (128 bit) Memory Bandwith : 15.04 GB/s
X1600 HM (64 bit) Memory Bandwith: 7.52 GB/s

Having a low bandwith means the Core (gpu) is not fed , and thus cannot compute fast enough. This could explain how an X1600 can gain up to 100 frames in CS:S while the X1600 HM struggles to get playable frames.

You ll be suprised to know that a X1300 delivers a 10.4 GB/s that's 3 GB/s more than the X1600 HM, but they usually preform equall due to the incresead pipelines in the X1600 over the X1300 models.

[double post]

But lvcien has a hypermemory model and he said he could run games at full settings. I don't see anything on whether Filiab's is HM.

And if he doesn't have HM, wouldn't his 3DMarks score have been a lot higher than mine?

Yes it would be a lot higher than yours, as i state above HM models have 64 bit memory interface , where the dedicated only memory models have 128 bit.

Maybe he hasn't, maybe he is lying (joke)
The fact is that HM models are way slower compared to the non-HM versions of them.

Right, and mine was higher than his.