Optimus III Performance

[rhx123]

Hello. I am considering the purchase of an Optimus III with these specs:
Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-2450M (2.50GHz) 3MB
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 650M - 1.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - Hard Disk
250GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD2500BEKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N130 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
Optimus/Voyager Series 6 Cell Lithium-ION Battery (48.84WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 90W Adaptor (GT 540M) / 120W Adaptor (GT 555M)
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE

I will be playing
-TF2
-Minecraft
-Portal 2
-GMod

Firstly I gather the 650M can run TF2 at 1920x1080 on high, but what kind of AA/AF performance can I expect?

Also, what is the performance increase with 1600 over 1333 memory? I was planning on getting the faster, but I see I cannot have it with the i5. Would the Windows performance benefit (responsiveness) from Sticking the Sandy bridge i7 and 1600 ram in there, or would I be better putting the money towards sticking an SSD in after I receive it? £80 could go a long way to a M4 128gb.

Cheers.

 

[tom6561]

Can't answer your first question but for gaming the performance gains with faster ram are pretty negligable, maybe it'll get a slightly better benchmark score but that's about it. An SSD would definitely be the way to go.

 

[1zikki]

You can normally find out the FPS on every setting here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html but seeing as those games you have listed aren't on here, you will have a hard time finding out if that card will play them, but I can't see why not, it's an adequate card and they are all fairly requirement light, so that's the help I can offer you on the gaming side, hope this helped, 1zikki

 

[rhx123]

Thanks for your replies.
Another question I have is about nvidia optiums. I notice there is a button called "Independant GPU Button". Does this mean that the laptop does not use nVidia optimus and has to be switched manually? Also, (if it is used) is there any way to disable optimus and run the screen straight from the GPU, as I may be interested in running 3 displays which I gather cannot be done with the intel GPU.
Cheers again.

 

[LimeyPotato]

Ah, you are in luck since I have all of those games that I can run on my desktop. Desktop specs: 4GB RAM [2x2GB] Intel pentium duo quad processor 2.60ghz and I run on an NVIDIA GeForce INTERGRATED graphics card. They don't run like a dream but they run! I have been looking at purchasing an Optimus III myself but not for gaming, however I need it to be fast and powerful for designing, I have been told they are great, I've even seen one of my gamer friends play skyrim on it beautifully!

Now about the games you want to play:

Minecraft:
This game is very fun and we all enjoy the fact that it's completely personalized to its users. The freedom on this game to do anything. However it is poorly encoded, as we all know. "Damnit Notch" and "FIX IT JEB!" Are phrases often used. This game being poorly coded does not rely so much on your video card, but your RAM. Most games only need about 4GB RAM and rely on processor speed and your video card, but not MC. However, I would not worry about it too much, since the yogscast have a computer with 12GB RAM and a high horse video card that still can't run the damn thing smoothly. On another note, upgrading to 8GB RAM only costs about an extra £16 or so.

Portal 2:
The laptop will more than easily handle this. It relies more on your graphics than your RAM, and my PC can run it very smoothly on 4GB RAM and Integrated graphics. It also runs smooth on co-op.

Garys Mod:
Same as Portal

TF2:
I suffer from lag, but I think it's more Internet sided than tech sided. The laptop should handle this game just fine.

The only demanding game on your list is Minecraft, but you could have a beast of a machine and still lag, its just poor coding. This laptop could run some pretty demanding games with the specs you have, but I would personally advise to upgrade the RAM to 8GB for an extra £16. I know we all want to cut the prices down as much as we can, but £16 couldn't even buy you a game these days. Think of it as a 2 year investment Besides that is how much it would cost you if you were to upgrade the RAM later on.

Also I can help you with running minecraft to the best you can run it:

Getting OptiFine mod greatly reduces lag, but only for single player since most servers forget to install the mod.
DxDiag will show you how much USABLE RAM you have. For instance you have 4018 Installed ram, your machine is likely to have about 3018-3518 usable RAM. So open up a notepad, type in

java -Xms1024M -Xmx[enterusableRAM] -jar minecraft.exe

Then save it as a .bat file.

My example:

java -Xms1024M -Xmx3000M -jar minecraft.exe

Hope this helped