At this point, I was seriously regretting my purchase. I wasn't happy about it to begin with and the issues I had ran into made it all the worse. The A8 is not a good quad-core (it underperforms per-core even below some dual-core i3s) and the Z585 is already at least two years old. As I didn't expect a performance gain (and in fact expected worse performance than my low-range desktop), the lack of Linux for common, every day tasks had me nearly depressed.
After I was fed up trying to install any Linux distro I've worked in the past, I finished setting up my Windows (using another computer to find drivers, installing necessary apps) I proceeded to download a few games on Steam and benchmark the system.
Most of my library ran alright on my desktop. Later games required dropping the resolution (Shadow Warrior pushed my system just a little) or some extra tweaks (THIEF had me upgrade my RAM and required some messing around with the .ini files), but they all ran. The only game I had to seriously turn everything down for was "Call of Duty: Ghosts" (downloaded it for benchmarking as a next-gen game, didn't keep it), but that one also ran (though only barely). The rest of my library is mostly older games, with the exception of few and far between (Deus Ex Human Revolution, Tomb Raider to name a couple).
I didn't really intend on clogging up the hard drive with games I wasn't going to replay anytime soon, so I only installed what I was playing and a couple of games the performance of which caught my attention while I was on my desktop. As such, there were six games on my install list:
- The MOBA Infinite Crisis and the MMORPG Champions Online, both of which I often play to kill time and get my super-hero fix and as such they are always somewhere on the hard drive.
- Natural Selection 2, the heaviest Source-based game I've come across and my preferred online shooter at the moment, aside from the various Counter-Strike flavours (all of which ran perfectly even on the desktop).
- Mass Effect, because I was in the middle of a campaign playthrough at the moment of switching systems and despite it being a very old game by now, the desktop still gave me the occasional framerate drop and stutter.
- Batman: Arkham Origins. The first two Arkham games ran great on my desktop (although Arkham City required turning off some cosmetic details), but Origins gave the system a run for its money; it was playable, but I had to drop the resolution and turn off all the extra cosmetics and still got considerable framerate skipping during the open-city segments.
- THIEF. This one busted my balls when I purchased it. I had to wait for Mantle support from AMD's gpu drivers and upgrade my RAM, on top of some .ini messing about. The game is so terribly optimized it causes issues even on high-end machines.
Performance is where my tune changed. Considering the troubles I'd gone through, as well as all my research and my negative predisposition toward laptops, I expected the worse. Never had it occurred to me I'd get a performance increase.
But that's exactly what I got.
A few preparations were required; I run the system through the AC adapter and I have entirely removed the battery, as there's no point playing games on battery power. Aside from increasing physical battery life, this is also said to increase power output to boost performance on laptops.
I also had to switch Windows on performance mode, both in terms of the Aero theme and when it came to the power options. Lastly, I also installed the Razer Game Booster, an app I'm not certain really works, but the results are satisfactory at the moment.
Another thing that's ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY if you own or buy one of those "dual graphics" laptops: TURN OFF THE DUAL GRAPHICS MODE. Having two GPUs is helpful in that the system will use the integrated GPU (or the APU, in AMD's case) when the system's on light load (movies, office work, internet), but will switch to the dedicated card during 3D heavy apps (games, 3D modeling programs). You can make sure of that and/or set it manually via the Catalyst manager on AMD systems (right click on the taskbar icon-> Configure Switchable Graphics-> Set X App to High Performance).
The problem with AMD's "asymmetric crossfire" is that, despite their claims of two GPUs working together for better performance, the damned thing doesn't work. AMD has yet to provide proper drivers for this function and as such, while the performance gain may be theoretically feasible, it almost ALWAYS leads to micro-stuttering.
I was defeated upon my first efforts to benchmark these games, because even though I had a good framerate count, there was a lot of stuttering. Turning off dual-graphics fixed the stuttering entirely and made a gigantic difference.
Infinite Crisis ran well on my desktop and runs a bit better on the laptop. I didn't focus on it a lot, as for some idiotic reason MOBA developers make these games surprisingly heavy on the processor. Turning everything on Ultra-High drops framerate considerably (but the game is still playable), but on medium I average 56fps. Honestly, why you'd need ultra-high visuals on a MOBA is beyond me.
Champions Online is also fairly old, but surprisingly heavy considering the actual quality of its visuals. I never had any huge issues with the game, but on open-city situations the framerate was an average of 22 with a lot cosmetics turned off. Well, the Z585 annihilated my Athlon desktop on this. Despite it having lower memory capacity (4GB of RAM, 1GB free for use opposite to 6GB on the desktop), the quad-core handles the game more efficiently. Almost everything's on max, running on the system's native resolution (true-HD, not full), the game averages 30fps. It rarely goes over that (in fact it seems as if the game's locked on 30) and there are the occasional drops below 25 when the city textures and layout are loading in real-time (the memory is important here), but the overall result is fantastic. As usual, the big performance gain comes from turning off anti-aliasing, which is fortunately not a big problem when a game's running on the screen's native resolution.
Mass Effect, at this point, wasn't a concern. As expected, the game runs averaging 55fps with everything on max. As I finished the campaign a day after benchmarking it, I also installed the 2010 Mass Effect 2, which also runs between 30-60fps (depending on load and size of map) with everything on full.
Arkham Origins was the first that truly impressed me. I didn't even have to try many different configurations; running on native resolution with all cosmetic details (again, minus AA) on averages 35fps, while switching the geometry detail and post-processing to the DX11 Enhanced setting causes less than 10fps drop (which I'm personally not willing to sacrifice for barely-noticeable-graphical-upgrades, but still). That was during the open-city segments; no stuttering during load, loading levels was all-around quick, practically no noticeable drops under heavy load. I expect building interiors will make the game even faster.
THIEF was the Holy Grail. It was the game I was CERTAIN wouldn't run. It's the only game I installed purely for benchmarking (though my complete save game did carry over) and at first, I very much thought it was unplayable. It was the first game I tried, sure that it would fail and originally it did. Constant stuttering (due to the game's terrible optimization on the real-time-texture loading feature), not enough RAM to turn off real-time loading and that was with everything on low; turning up the resolution on HD or adding cosmetic details made the game average a whooping 1fps. So not even kidding.
For all intends and purposes this was a failure of an experiment-- that was until I did two things. The first was one I've mentioned already, turning off dual-graphics-mode. Shame on AMD, by the by; Arkham Origins is at least a game optimized for NVidia machines, dual-graphics not working is acceptable within range. But THIEF was endorsed by AMD and optimized for their hardware and turning it off makes the game work better. A lot better.
Another thing I did was something that was a huge no-no on my desktop: I went to the game's display settings and turned off Exclusive Fullscreen. This feature gave me a major performance gain on the desktop, but it crippled performance on the laptop.
Once these two fixes were applied, the ridiculously heavy and terribly optimized THIEF ran better on the laptop than it did on my desktop. It's still not perfect; real-time-loading still causes significant stuttering (which can be fixed once I upgrade my RAM), but I managed to get up to 50(!) fps on the open-city segments, running on native resolution and even turning on most of the cosmetic details (except SSAA and tesselation, both of which are broken in this game to begin with).
I was elated. With only a couple of tweaks, the heaviest game I've come across on my systems to this day turned from unplayable to a fairly good performer; on a laptop. A laptop built over two years ago.
The only game in the list that really did disappoint me was Natural Selection 2. Valve's Source engine is fantastic and offers great range for users of practically every configuration still out there today. Natural Selection 2 ran on my desktop with quite a few tweaks (and ridiculously long loading times), but it barely runs on the Z585.
Oh, it runs, it's playable, but not enjoyably so. The interesting thing is that, theoretically, performance on the IdeaPad is better compared to my Athlon desktop. Turning everything on and switching everything off causes very small framerate deviation (around 2fps between all off and all on medium), both on the DX9 and DX11 modes.
The problem is that there is constant stuttering. I don't know why. Dual-graphics mode isn't the culprit this time around. The game just stutters. Considering the minuscule framerate change between different graphics configurations, I have to place some of the blame on the game's developers for bad optimization. Natural Selection 2 is a pretty, but still far too heavy game that seems to have sacrificed the Source engine's diversity for visuals that eat up a lot of memory (if the texture popping is anything to go by).
It is of note that the monitor I was using on the desktop ran on Full-HD and the resolution downgrade on the laptop is certainly a factor in favor of the performance gain. The 7670m despite its power is too old to run games on Full-HD monitors as fluidly as my bechmarks would suggest.
However, outside of Mass Effect, none of the aforementioned games ran on any playable level on Full-HD and I had to tinker with the resolution settings on the desktop to get them running (usually dropping below the laptop's native resolution).
IdeaPad Z585's specs: AMD A8-4500 (quad-core, 1.9GHz up to 2.6GHz on Turbo), 4GB RAM, 1TB 5400RPM HDD, 7640G APU + HD7670M, True-HD 1366x768 native resolution.
Desktop's specs: AMD Athlon II x2 250 (dual-core, 3.0GHz, semi-locked multiplier), 6GB RAM, 500GB HDD 7200RPM, HD6570, Full-HD (1920x1200) monitor.
After I was fed up trying to install any Linux distro I've worked in the past, I finished setting up my Windows (using another computer to find drivers, installing necessary apps) I proceeded to download a few games on Steam and benchmark the system.
Most of my library ran alright on my desktop. Later games required dropping the resolution (Shadow Warrior pushed my system just a little) or some extra tweaks (THIEF had me upgrade my RAM and required some messing around with the .ini files), but they all ran. The only game I had to seriously turn everything down for was "Call of Duty: Ghosts" (downloaded it for benchmarking as a next-gen game, didn't keep it), but that one also ran (though only barely). The rest of my library is mostly older games, with the exception of few and far between (Deus Ex Human Revolution, Tomb Raider to name a couple).
I didn't really intend on clogging up the hard drive with games I wasn't going to replay anytime soon, so I only installed what I was playing and a couple of games the performance of which caught my attention while I was on my desktop. As such, there were six games on my install list:
- The MOBA Infinite Crisis and the MMORPG Champions Online, both of which I often play to kill time and get my super-hero fix and as such they are always somewhere on the hard drive.
- Natural Selection 2, the heaviest Source-based game I've come across and my preferred online shooter at the moment, aside from the various Counter-Strike flavours (all of which ran perfectly even on the desktop).
- Mass Effect, because I was in the middle of a campaign playthrough at the moment of switching systems and despite it being a very old game by now, the desktop still gave me the occasional framerate drop and stutter.
- Batman: Arkham Origins. The first two Arkham games ran great on my desktop (although Arkham City required turning off some cosmetic details), but Origins gave the system a run for its money; it was playable, but I had to drop the resolution and turn off all the extra cosmetics and still got considerable framerate skipping during the open-city segments.
- THIEF. This one busted my balls when I purchased it. I had to wait for Mantle support from AMD's gpu drivers and upgrade my RAM, on top of some .ini messing about. The game is so terribly optimized it causes issues even on high-end machines.
Performance is where my tune changed. Considering the troubles I'd gone through, as well as all my research and my negative predisposition toward laptops, I expected the worse. Never had it occurred to me I'd get a performance increase.
But that's exactly what I got.
A few preparations were required; I run the system through the AC adapter and I have entirely removed the battery, as there's no point playing games on battery power. Aside from increasing physical battery life, this is also said to increase power output to boost performance on laptops.
I also had to switch Windows on performance mode, both in terms of the Aero theme and when it came to the power options. Lastly, I also installed the Razer Game Booster, an app I'm not certain really works, but the results are satisfactory at the moment.
Another thing that's ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY if you own or buy one of those "dual graphics" laptops: TURN OFF THE DUAL GRAPHICS MODE. Having two GPUs is helpful in that the system will use the integrated GPU (or the APU, in AMD's case) when the system's on light load (movies, office work, internet), but will switch to the dedicated card during 3D heavy apps (games, 3D modeling programs). You can make sure of that and/or set it manually via the Catalyst manager on AMD systems (right click on the taskbar icon-> Configure Switchable Graphics-> Set X App to High Performance).
The problem with AMD's "asymmetric crossfire" is that, despite their claims of two GPUs working together for better performance, the damned thing doesn't work. AMD has yet to provide proper drivers for this function and as such, while the performance gain may be theoretically feasible, it almost ALWAYS leads to micro-stuttering.
I was defeated upon my first efforts to benchmark these games, because even though I had a good framerate count, there was a lot of stuttering. Turning off dual-graphics fixed the stuttering entirely and made a gigantic difference.
Infinite Crisis ran well on my desktop and runs a bit better on the laptop. I didn't focus on it a lot, as for some idiotic reason MOBA developers make these games surprisingly heavy on the processor. Turning everything on Ultra-High drops framerate considerably (but the game is still playable), but on medium I average 56fps. Honestly, why you'd need ultra-high visuals on a MOBA is beyond me.
Champions Online is also fairly old, but surprisingly heavy considering the actual quality of its visuals. I never had any huge issues with the game, but on open-city situations the framerate was an average of 22 with a lot cosmetics turned off. Well, the Z585 annihilated my Athlon desktop on this. Despite it having lower memory capacity (4GB of RAM, 1GB free for use opposite to 6GB on the desktop), the quad-core handles the game more efficiently. Almost everything's on max, running on the system's native resolution (true-HD, not full), the game averages 30fps. It rarely goes over that (in fact it seems as if the game's locked on 30) and there are the occasional drops below 25 when the city textures and layout are loading in real-time (the memory is important here), but the overall result is fantastic. As usual, the big performance gain comes from turning off anti-aliasing, which is fortunately not a big problem when a game's running on the screen's native resolution.
 |
| Champions Online, averaging 30fps on the settings shown. |
Mass Effect, at this point, wasn't a concern. As expected, the game runs averaging 55fps with everything on max. As I finished the campaign a day after benchmarking it, I also installed the 2010 Mass Effect 2, which also runs between 30-60fps (depending on load and size of map) with everything on full.
Arkham Origins was the first that truly impressed me. I didn't even have to try many different configurations; running on native resolution with all cosmetic details (again, minus AA) on averages 35fps, while switching the geometry detail and post-processing to the DX11 Enhanced setting causes less than 10fps drop (which I'm personally not willing to sacrifice for barely-noticeable-graphical-upgrades, but still). That was during the open-city segments; no stuttering during load, loading levels was all-around quick, practically no noticeable drops under heavy load. I expect building interiors will make the game even faster.
 |
| Arkham Origins runs fluidly at 30fps+ on these settings. |
THIEF was the Holy Grail. It was the game I was CERTAIN wouldn't run. It's the only game I installed purely for benchmarking (though my complete save game did carry over) and at first, I very much thought it was unplayable. It was the first game I tried, sure that it would fail and originally it did. Constant stuttering (due to the game's terrible optimization on the real-time-texture loading feature), not enough RAM to turn off real-time loading and that was with everything on low; turning up the resolution on HD or adding cosmetic details made the game average a whooping 1fps. So not even kidding.
For all intends and purposes this was a failure of an experiment-- that was until I did two things. The first was one I've mentioned already, turning off dual-graphics-mode. Shame on AMD, by the by; Arkham Origins is at least a game optimized for NVidia machines, dual-graphics not working is acceptable within range. But THIEF was endorsed by AMD and optimized for their hardware and turning it off makes the game work better. A lot better.
Another thing I did was something that was a huge no-no on my desktop: I went to the game's display settings and turned off Exclusive Fullscreen. This feature gave me a major performance gain on the desktop, but it crippled performance on the laptop.
Once these two fixes were applied, the ridiculously heavy and terribly optimized THIEF ran better on the laptop than it did on my desktop. It's still not perfect; real-time-loading still causes significant stuttering (which can be fixed once I upgrade my RAM), but I managed to get up to 50(!) fps on the open-city segments, running on native resolution and even turning on most of the cosmetic details (except SSAA and tesselation, both of which are broken in this game to begin with).
 |
| THIEF delivers stutters, but shifts between 30-50fps on these settings. |
The only game in the list that really did disappoint me was Natural Selection 2. Valve's Source engine is fantastic and offers great range for users of practically every configuration still out there today. Natural Selection 2 ran on my desktop with quite a few tweaks (and ridiculously long loading times), but it barely runs on the Z585.
Oh, it runs, it's playable, but not enjoyably so. The interesting thing is that, theoretically, performance on the IdeaPad is better compared to my Athlon desktop. Turning everything on and switching everything off causes very small framerate deviation (around 2fps between all off and all on medium), both on the DX9 and DX11 modes.
The problem is that there is constant stuttering. I don't know why. Dual-graphics mode isn't the culprit this time around. The game just stutters. Considering the minuscule framerate change between different graphics configurations, I have to place some of the blame on the game's developers for bad optimization. Natural Selection 2 is a pretty, but still far too heavy game that seems to have sacrificed the Source engine's diversity for visuals that eat up a lot of memory (if the texture popping is anything to go by).
 |
| Natural Selection 2, averaging 22fps on these settings. Dropping them leads to minor gains. |
However, outside of Mass Effect, none of the aforementioned games ran on any playable level on Full-HD and I had to tinker with the resolution settings on the desktop to get them running (usually dropping below the laptop's native resolution).
IdeaPad Z585's specs: AMD A8-4500 (quad-core, 1.9GHz up to 2.6GHz on Turbo), 4GB RAM, 1TB 5400RPM HDD, 7640G APU + HD7670M, True-HD 1366x768 native resolution.
Desktop's specs: AMD Athlon II x2 250 (dual-core, 3.0GHz, semi-locked multiplier), 6GB RAM, 500GB HDD 7200RPM, HD6570, Full-HD (1920x1200) monitor.
Should upgrade the APU to the A10-5750m. Can do this without any kind of BIOS mod, just make sure to set the BIOS to UEFI not Legacy b/c the z585 wont POST with the A10-5750m in Legacy mode.
ReplyDeletebesides that cup upgrade another thing is you didnt experiment with amd dual graphics presets (same as crossfire) it can actually use both cards at the same time relativly well but it needs to be preset for every application you intend to do this with. to do so go into ccc/gaming/highpreformance then click add application, find your game that is bordeline playable and add its exe. then scroll down on the game settings and find a preset amd profile at the bottom that matches it or one using the same engine (some research required). Doing that can bump your fps by 10 or more and the annoying icon that it has is easily turned off but shows you its working. also amd overdrive works you can overclock on a cooling pad to 2.6 with pretty low heat or to 2.4 if you give it enough space to vent.
ReplyDelete