Can this laptop handle DM?

Hey guys, I need some advice here. I'm going to be stuck away from home for a long period of time for some work related training coming up and I have a DELL Latitude D630 laptop that I'll be taking with me. I have never gamed on a laptop before and don't know what to expect. It looks like the specs are as follows:

XP Professional w/SP2
Intel Core2 Duo T7300 @ 2.00GHz
1.99 GB of RAM
For display adapters it's showing Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family
Logitech wireless mouse
61.5 GB Free disk space

Also, if you think this will work, what settings should I have set to make sure I experience a very minimal amount of lag and the most enjoyment? I haven't loaded the game yet but am strongly considering it so I don't turn suicidal from absolute boredom, plus I don't know how long I can go without playing DM!! Thanks in advance!!

dbanimal wrote:For display adapters it's showing Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family

It's worth a try, I would use onty's FPS Enhancer cfg, you can get that here:

http://hl2dm-university.com/other_resources.htm

It should handle DM fine, the only reason why I wouldn't get it is the onboard graphix, I don't know much about that but usually they suck

This is pretty much a standard issue work laptop so I didn't have any say in what goes into it. I was most worried about how it will handle the graphics, I hear this is usually the biggest hurdle to get over with a laptop.

How may MB of vid ram does it have? I fit has 256 you should be ok. You prob won't be L33T with that but you can at least play.

Go into thw Win XP control panel (forget where it is exactly if you need help finding it I can look at mine) and set up XP for performance not for the pretty extra BS they include. Turn off the screen saver and the fancy desktop picture. When you start it, shut down any non-essential crap running in the back ground from te system tray. Finally, put the game vid settings on lower settings to help the vid processor render the picture better. I would try it asap so you know what you are in for. I had a pentium 3 laptop with 256 97 vid ram and 500 mb ram that barely ran the game, but I took it with me on trips until it died.

I've helped some people figure out problems trying to run HL2 with computers that ran this chipset (intel 965) and it used to cause extreme low fps. I just checked the intel site and it appears they may have a new driver to resolve the issue. You may want to download this driver incase you have trouble.
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/i ... 024522.htm

i play on a laptop and don't bother if its does not have a decent graphics card. Intel on board graphics is not worth the bother trust me i have a 256mb radeon mobility card and it can only run it at lowest graphics to get 160fps. save your self the heartache and don't buy it. I recommend at least 2gb ram with a nvedia or radeon graphics on board for a laptop and don't get a wireless mouse.

Intel graphics are pretty low end, that will be your main problem. If you aren't shy about modification its a nice computer if you just drop a 8600M in there or something.
Basically that GPU the main bottle neck. Also as for the ram if you have access to bios you may be able to alter what it can access, but onboard will leach the system ram.

Also since you brought it up you might like this article about what nvidia has to say about intels graphics http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3282

Thanks for the replies everyone!! I can't modify it at all being it's a company owned laptop so it will have to stay as is. I normally wouldn't even think of playing a game like DM on a laptop but I'm going to be away from home for so long that I'm getting desperate. I guess all I can do is try!

dbanimal wrote:Thanks for the replies everyone!! I can't modify it at all being it's a company owned laptop so it will have to stay as is. I normally wouldn't even think of playing a game like DM on a laptop but I'm going to be away from home for so long that I'm getting desperate. I guess all I can do is try!

i play on a lap top,
here is some avice.

how many USB ports does the lt have/? if not too many and you need more my may want to invest in a USB hub.

i use a full keyboard that is usb b/c it can take the beating.
The usual laptop flimsy key's can't handle the constand WASD pressing.

i would also think of getting laptop cooler, my LT gets pretty hot and the cooler really does help.

it's a lot of other crap to bring with you...

also,
where will you be headed?
As a last ditch effort you can always look for a LAN/Gaming center. steam website has a list of 'cyber cafe's on their site.

After my apt got robbed and i was without a system i would go to a place, it was bout 1 hr or a flat fee for an 'all nighter'.
only problem is PC's are so cheap nowadays these places go under all the time.

Thanks for the advice! It does have plenty of USB ports. I'll be heading to Cleveland Ohio for 1 week, then 3 weeks, then 4 weeks!! I was told there's not much to do there besides the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but that will provide only a couple hours of excitement. I suspect I'll be in my hotel most of the time or at a local bar!

dbanimal wrote: I'll be heading to Cleveland Ohio for 1 week, then 3 weeks, then 4 weeks!!

Ah, yes, the armpit of america.

dbanimal wrote:Thanks for the advice! It does have plenty of USB ports. I'll be heading to Cleveland Ohio for 1 week, then 3 weeks, then 4 weeks!! I was told there's not much to do there besides the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but that will provide only a couple hours of excitement. I suspect I'll be in my hotel most of the time or at a local bar!

Even living in Ohio I can't tell you anything about cleveland besides that.

Wow, so I really am going to feel suicidal during my stay in Cleveland!! OK, now there's no doubt in my mind - this laptop is getting loaded with DM!! I'll just work on the settings to make sure the game runs OK. Cyber, any advice on some good places to eat / have a few drinks? I'll be near the Highland Heights area.

Hey guys, well I loaded DM on the laptop and smaller maps seem to run pretty good, my ping is usually about 5ms (on LAN). As soon as I get into larger maps (dm_resistance and larger) things get pretty rough and my ping will rocket up to 80ms and laggy as Hell on LAN. I suspect this is probably due to my graphics. I have everything set to low. Should I do anything else as far as screen size (full vs. wide)? I have also closed out anything running in the background that I could. Any other pointers?

ping shouldnt have too much effect on Frames Per Second. You can play with a ping of 80-150 but if FPS is only 10-20 thats a little rough. Put netgraph on and see what your FPS are.

I have a Core 2 laptop with Intel onbaord and it doesnt play shit. Dm jerks around at 5-10 fps, totally unplayable.

There ARE external video cards coming down the pipe for this situations.
Cant wait.

The only thing is is that when i have my laptop, i am on the road and hotels pings can be 1250 because of the firewall they have. So even taking my Kick PC doesnt get me DM sometimes.

I prefer the paycheck/mileage/car allowance to the game though!

I'm back from my first week of training. My fps at one point were around 10 and that's when I noticed the worst affects.
I'll have to see if I can ship out one of my pc's the next time I have to travel!!

Yup, gotta have a DX9 compliant GPU with dedicated memory buffer. Anything like that will play Dm at low settings.
Onboard equals JewelQuest.

dbanimal wrote:Hey guys, I need some advice here. I'm going to be stuck away from home for a long period of time for some work related training coming up and I have a DELL Latitude D630 laptop that I'll be taking with me. I have never gamed on a laptop before and don't know what to expect. It looks like the specs are as follows:

XP Professional w/SP2
Intel Core2 Duo T7300 @ 2.00GHz
1.99 GB of RAM
For display adapters it's showing Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family
Logitech wireless mouse
61.5 GB Free disk space

Also, if you think this will work, what settings should I have set to make sure I experience a very minimal amount of lag and the most enjoyment? I haven't loaded the game yet but am strongly considering it so I don't turn suicidal from absolute boredom, plus I don't know how long I can go without playing DM!! Thanks in advance!!

you're an idiot. did it ever occur to you just to try running the game on your laptop?

Replicant wrote:

dbanimal wrote:Hey guys, I need some advice here. I'm going to be stuck away from home for a long period of time for some work related training coming up and I have a DELL Latitude D630 laptop that I'll be taking with me. I have never gamed on a laptop before and don't know what to expect. It looks like the specs are as follows:

XP Professional w/SP2
Intel Core2 Duo T7300 @ 2.00GHz
1.99 GB of RAM
For display adapters it's showing Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family
Logitech wireless mouse
61.5 GB Free disk space

Also, if you think this will work, what settings should I have set to make sure I experience a very minimal amount of lag and the most enjoyment? I haven't loaded the game yet but am strongly considering it so I don't turn suicidal from absolute boredom, plus I don't know how long I can go without playing DM!! Thanks in advance!!

you're an idiot. did it ever occur to you just to try running the game on your laptop?

You're kind of an ass, did anyone ever tell you that? I wanted to know this information before actually installing the game as this is NOT my laptop - I didn't want to waste my time unless I knew there were ways to make it run better if it would run at all.

dbanimal wrote:You're kind of an ass, did anyone ever tell you that?

Yes people have many times.

L2k wrote:

dbanimal wrote:You're kind of an ass, did anyone ever tell you that?

Yes people have many times.

Its a syndrome called the brick wall effect resulting from a condition known as head hard as stone. Unfortunatly in this case it seems incurable.

Paradox wrote:Its a syndrome called the brick wall effect resulting from a condition known as head hard as stone. Unfortunatly in this case it seems incurable.

He just needs to get his head out of Emma Watson's imaginary ass, take a deep breath and come back to reality.

I feel bad for the people that try to strike up a conversation with him irl.