CCC,MOM, and Gaming

[bludgard69]

Hi all,and good morning from S.C. My question I guess would be;Do graphic-cards actually help with gaming?I mean when I play RE5,with or without ATI,I notice no difference in gameplay or appearance.If any of you sagatious peers could point me to some simple to understand literature on the matter,I would be grateful.I appologize if this has been covered previously.Thank-you all.

 

[mpcrsc562]

What do you mean specifically "with or without ATi?"

 

[bludgard69]

What I mean is;I run the game with CCC enabled,and CCC disabled.I notice no dif.ATI is my graphics card.

 

[bludgard69]

Am I confused?:huh:

 

[stormy13]

Do graphic-cards actually help with gaming?

Yes they do, without one you won't be playing any games (or seeing anything else for that matter). In your case with that game (RE5) on that laptop you don't even make the minimum requirements for the game,

Resident Evil 5 System Requirements

Resident Evil 5
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows XP
Processor: AMD Athlon64 X2 / Intel Pentium D series
Memory: 1 Gb
Hard Drive: 8 Gb free
Video Memory: 256 Mb
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 2400 / NVIDIA GeForce 6800
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard
Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

You're OK with the onboard video (it performs just a bit better than the above mentioned HD 2400, but not by much), and the 2 GB of ram. The problem is that the game also requires at a minimum a dual core processor and yours is only a single core,

AMD Athlon 64 TF-20 - AMGTF20HAX4DN

which pretty much means that that game will struggle regardless of what video card is used.

with or without ATI,I notice no difference in gameplay or appearance.

Probably comes down to being under the minimum requirements, and the fact that for the game to run it probably auto-detected the settings to all low. Unfortunately with the specs on that laptop if you want to play any games on it you're going to have to pay particular attention to the system requirements, and if it doesn't meet them forgo the game (or if you try it hope it doesn't play like a slideshow).

 

[mpcrsc562]

What I mean is;I run the game with CCC enabled,and CCC disabled.I notice no dif.ATI is my graphics card.

CCC helps give you more control over the features of the card. You can run a game without CCC, but you may be limited in what type of higher resolutions you can run the game at. To be honest, I have never owned an ATi card that I did not run Catalyst, so I don't know what it is like to run without it.

On higher-end cards, CCC gives you the ability to overclock the cards as well as if you have two (or more cards installed) to have them run in tandem (CrossFire).

At what resolution do you run RE5 at and what types of effects do you have enabled in the game? Have you tried running the game at its maximum supported resolution with all effects turned up without using Catalyst? In other words, you could probably run the game without Catalyst as long as you run the game with no effects and at its minimal resolution.

 

[bludgard69]

I run RE5 with all settings on low.I am new to PC gaming if that is not quite obvious.It seems to run fine,yet I know that I am missing out on the graphics and whatnot.I average about 18fps in dx9,15-16fps in dx10 mode.I actually overclocked this to 1.9g and got 20 or so fps,yet wasn't that much difference.No problem with fsb overclock.No extra heat.prime95 ran for 4 hours on toture test,no problems.The only concern I have is that the DRAM freq went over the max(333)mhz.I dont know if this is an issue of concern or not,so I desist in oc-ing. I appreciate the responses.

 

[bludgard69]

I know I can Double my RAM,can I also do the same with CPU?

 

[bludgard69]

Yes I've run RE5 at optimum without CCC.Pretty choppy.

 

[mpcrsc562]

I know I can Double my RAM,can I also do the same with CPU?

No.

 

[bludgard69]

Can I overclock my GPU?ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics (Acer Incorporated [ALI]) Any known notebook tools?

 

[Fumz]

You don't want to do that; the success rate is fairly low, as is lifespan.

 

[bludgard69]

Thanks, Fumz.I dont know why I am so obseesed with destroying my lappy.Question;to get better gameplay on my system,should I just add more RAM?Is there anything else that I could do without meddling with clock issues?

 

[Fumz]

Unfortunately, there's not much you're going to be able to do given the machine's limitations: single core Athlon 64 @ 1.6GHz and onboard graphics. If the machine does its job in terms of work performance, then by all means, continue to let it do that, but I wouldn't invest money into it trying to achieve decent gaming performance; there's literally no one part/component that you could buy that would bring you up to an acceptable fps.

You'd be better off building yourself a gaming machine, which, contrary to popular belief, can actually be quite inexpensive these days. As it stands, if you're getting between 10-20 fps, then one could make the argument that you're not gaming; rather, you're watching a set of stills.

 

[bludgard69]

:roflmao:Thanks.It does appear as if gameplay is more like a fast slideshow.It's bearable probably because I have nothing to compare it with.I do appreciate your help.I'll do more research on gaming machine.

 

[Lomai]

Welcome to Seven Forums bludgard69

Hope things work out - you could try this link to help you out

Regards

 

[bludgard69]

Thank you for the welcome,Lomai.And"Try this link",I shall.'Preciate it.I'll get back to you.​

 

[bludgard69]

Lots of stuff to browse through.Thanks,Lomai.I feel like a kid in a candy store.