Intel IGP

[Spinoza]

Tell us more... this is great news.

[fuzzylunkin1]

Whoa, news spreads in Allegiance?

Code: Select all

Raingriffin was in IRC and something came up where I found out he couldn't play Allegiance with his power cord plugged in, so I told him to check his chipset power management settings and also check vsync options.  It turns out he went on some huge quest and made a few discoveries of his own regarding vsync.  I thought I'd let you know.  Here's the conversation.

        <Raingriffin> hey there
        <Raingriffin> fuzz you there?
        <Raingriffin> pkk?
        <Fuh-zz> hello
        <Raingriffin> hi
        <Raingriffin> had something to tell about the intel chipset on my laptop
        <Raingriffin> you may have been interested since you told me to check about some things
        <Fuh-zz> sure i guess i might end up telling someone who will do something with the info :p
        <Raingriffin> yeah but it may be not too important
        <Raingriffin> as long as it goes into techline
        <Raingriffin> basically oyu told me to check the power management options for the overheating
        <Fuh-zz> right, the power cord charging thing
        <Raingriffin> and it worked, it seems the laptop onboard intel chipset can't handle max quality with alleg
        <Raingriffin> in the chipset options menu
        <Raingriffin> i set it on balanced and now max graphics in alleg don't blue screen the game anymore
        <Raingriffin> but then kicks in the other new
        <Raingriffin> news*
        <Raingriffin> remember how you told me to check about vsync?
        <Raingriffin> well
        <Raingriffin> looks like the R6 beta client doesn't have the option in the menu at least not where r5 has it, not nowhere else i could find but...
        <Raingriffin> i found out the options wasn't even  in my chipset's menu
        <Fuh-zz> oh that's right, in R6 it's automatically enabled
        <Raingriffin> yeah and here kicks in the weird thing
        <Raingriffin> it seems intel chipsets onboard laptops default vsync to off
        <Fuh-zz> they probably do that so they get more people coming in with overheating chipsets
        <Raingriffin> yes but now here's the really big news
        <Raingriffin> remember we got intel fixes in r6
        <Fuh-zz> for the most part, yep
        <Raingriffin> cause intel gave graphical glitches in r5
        <Raingriffin> now i got those too
        <Raingriffin> but i took some ross version drivers for intel mobiles
        <Raingriffin> that let me enable vsync on
        <Raingriffin> in the chipset menu
        * pkk|AFK is now known as pkk|GB
        <Raingriffin> i went into r5 today and turned vsync on there too
        <Raingriffin> and the glitches are not there anymore
        <Raingriffin> not even one
        <Raingriffin> not even a slowdown
        <Raingriffin> and i am running at 1200x800
        <Fuh-zz> that's good news
        <Raingriffin> with everything on
        <Raingriffin> so maybe, just maybe
        <Fuh-zz> hey Pandy are you here?
        <Raingriffin> that could be one source of the glitches we kept having
        <Fuh-zz> not all but some perhaps
        <Raingriffin> it sure handled mines
        <Fuh-zz> what model chipset do you have?
        <Raingriffin> one of the older ones
        <Fuh-zz> everything gets old after a year
        <Raingriffin> mobile intel 4 series
        <Raingriffin> express
        <Raingriffin> it always puzzled me how come it handled, say DDO and didn't handle alleg
        <Raingriffin> i can run HL2 np and i can't run alleg
        <Raingriffin> well that's all i wanted to report
        <Raingriffin> obviously now it works perfectly in r6 as well
        <Raingriffin> not the right way to report it i am sure but still
        <Raingriffin> it's major for me cause i haven't been able to play since i changed laptop
        <Raingriffin> almost a year ago
        <Fuh-zz> cool dude
        <Fuh-zz> have fun in game :)

Looks like the drivers he mentioned are just the "desktop" flavors which normally you can't install on a laptop.  I guess it worked out for him.

[Death3D]

Can someone tell me what's Rain's make and model? Im interested in buying a netbook/laptop soon and I want it to be able to play Alleg, since it's the only game I play.

[fuzzylunkin1]

QUOTE (Death3D @ Feb 15 2011, 04:13 PM) Can someone tell me what's Rain's make and model? Im interested in buying a netbook/laptop soon and I want it to be able to play Alleg, since it's the only game I play.

I'm not sure, you'd have to ask him. I would recommend avoiding Intel at all costs if you can, though. Both Nvidia and ATI provide proper driver support for their mobile cards these days.

[Bard]

I've got a couple of old IBM laptops laying around that I may be able to test this on, assuming I can find the right socket/tray for the removable drives and a laptop drive I don't mind wiping/installing alleg on. (Both of them currently have no hard drives in them for reasons involving machine deprecation and SoX compliance/e-Discovery.)

I'll start looking around

If this works, it would be EXCELLENT NEWS for a WHOLE TON of people.

(edit - I think they're just easily removable drives, not hot-swappable...)

[Spinoza]

QUOTE (Death3D @ Feb 16 2011, 01:13 AM) Can someone tell me what's Rain's make and model? Im interested in buying a netbook/laptop soon and I want it to be able to play Alleg, since it's the only game I play.

Rain's laptop is apparently not a great buy.
If you want a netbook, netbooks all have the same basic Intel chipset... so if it's fixed for one, it should be fixed for all.

I was about to write that non-Intel gfx options are expensive but it seems there's some progress, there Asus and HP laptops available with low cost Nvidia chipsets.
I don't know if they're really much better than Intel IGP except with regards to drivers.

This is OT and of interest to a lot of people, so we could restart this discussion in OT once this solution is confirmed.

I'll maybe test this too, if my mom agrees to let me mess with the netbook she never uses.

[raingriffin]

The only thing i can tell you about my chipset is that its drivers are a modified version of the more general Intel mobile express series 4 chipset. Now samsung tailored them to this lappy's architecture but they suck heavily. Basically you couldn't even modify opengl and d3d performance. IT turns out the general drivers are WAY better than the laptop's original tailored versions, with the only downside that you need to turn down some performance on programs and games that stress the CPU as well as the chipset proper. That's cause INTELs have no real accel of their own but just virtual memory.
IMHO this may be agood solution to cut costs but if i ever had had an idea of what that means in 3d performance i would never have bought this sad joke of a puter.

AS someone else said, there is a new gen of laptops and netbooks housing low end ATI and nvidias. Try those, at least they have a dedicated chip for this instead of crappy swap memory. That said, if the stupid vsync off at default for intel is what plagues Alleg, let's all cheer for being able to get rid of the annoyance, and let everyone game again.




small edit: if you're ever going to delve into modelling for F**S sake never buy an intel laptop...EVER.
!*"£$E"£!$*£*$£!$*

[fuzzylunkin1]

I don't know the details but I'm pretty sure this vsync problem (assuming it's not just a problem with your computer alone) isn't the only problem Allegiance has/had with Intel chipsets, so even if it works for some I doubt it will work for all.

[FreeBeer]

Thanks for the find and posting on it, guys!

[Bard]

QUOTE (fuzzylunkin1 @ Feb 15 2011, 05:16 PM) I don't know the details but I'm pretty sure this vsync problem (assuming it's not just a problem with your computer alone) isn't the only problem Allegiance has/had with Intel chipsets

For some reason I was suddenly reminded of an old hip-hop song...