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bennett

Running Doom 3 on a laptop - post your stories here

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I bought doom 3 today expecting not to be able to play it on my sony pcg-k13 laptop, and of course, I wasn't disappointed. Maybe my poor little 4 month old Sony fits within the specs for the game in some ways, but nevertheless, after installation, it ran just about as well as I thought it would, meaning I was plagued with shading problems, a frame rate of about 1 fps, bad loading times, etc. However, just like with Star Wars: Galaxies, after a bit of research, I was able to play the game normally, with a pretty decent framerate. Maybe the graphics aren't stellar, but still, it works and is completely playable- which is the important thing. I may even be able to bump up the resolution (haven't experimented with that yet). Anyway, so what I did and what I plan to do to make it even better:

note: This thread can also be used as a resource for those with ati "ram sharing" notebook chipsets such as the 320, 340, or 345m, in order to improve general performance to play Doom 3. And to other posters on this forum- feel free to refer to this thread if you get any other "CAN MY LAPTOP RUN THIS GAME?!?!" threads, which seem to be pretty common and annoying in every Doom 3 Technical Issues forum.

1) Mod your drivers using Patje's mobility modding tool to Catalyst drivers. They WILL work with mobility chips! The mod app is available at driverheaven.net. Just go to Patje's mod, download the app, and follow the instructions. It's pretty self explanatory. Download the Catalyst drivers. Run cat drivers, then error results. Run Patje's and rerun cat installation. Buy Patje a pint. Done.

2) Max out your shared graphics ram to 128 mb. You can do this in your system BIOS by hitting F2 when your notebook boots, then change the settings appropriately. This will help out your poor notebook's graphics chip some more, but possibly at the expense of windows xp performance. If you're concerned about RAM, buy another 528mb stick. Your notebook will thank you for this.

3) Perform Doom 3 tweaks as you see appropriate. I did the "seta image_cacheMegs "XX"" in doomconfig to 128, which seemed to help a bit. I haven't attempted the "extract pk4 files" mod yet, where you extract all the .pk4 files using an extraction utility to avoid compression delays, but I will probably do that at some point.

4) Turn off most special effects, most importantly, shadows. Shadows appears to slow down fps the most of any systems option, so turn it off. If your fps isn't acceptable, turn off some others. Unfortunately you don't have a gaming machine, so get rid of these. You can still enjoy the game, however, and it will look quite nice.


I currently have the game running on the lowest resolution, because I'd much rather have a smoother framerate than better graphics, but you may think differently. I'm pretty sure it will operate at a higher resolution but I have yet to try that.

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oh, my specs:

Sony Vaio PCG-K13
2.8 ghz Pentium IV
ATI Radeon 345m graphics chip
528 mb SDRAM
40 GB HD
Windows XP home SP 1

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Hey. Great ideas!
I just did the bios change to 128 and it made a big difference.(Default 64)
One question though. If that card is capable of running 128 megs, why didn't they set this as a default?

My laptop specs:

AMD 2800+ Athlon XP-M
512 Ram
ATI IGP 320M Video (64 megs from system memory)
Win XP Service Pak 1

Framerate Doom 3: 10-13 FPS
Everything off: Shadows, etc.
Resolution: 800x600 - Low Details

I also did the cache thing which helped alot. I set mine for 96 because the other 128 megs is being used by the video card now.
Graphics are crap, but it runs rather smoothly.(If you call 10-13 fps on the average smooth.)

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Maybe the manufacturer thinks that 128 will suck too much from your system RAM and slow down your computer or something. I wish I knew. It doesn't seem to hinder XP performance for me at all.

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Funny thing is that it runs better for me also. That's what makes me question it.

I ran 3DMark2001 SE as well. I can see that it is using the added Ram for the video card.

This looks to be the best advice so far for speeding up a laptop to run Doom 3 efficiently.

I would love to see some more laptop enhancing ideas from the community here. Anyone have anything to add?

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Are you using factory or omega drivers for your 320m? I found that the omegas actually slowed performance, so I went with the catalyst mod. I suppose you could overclock with the omegas, but that seems like a potentially bad idea for a laptop, especially given how hot most of them run natually. I'm afraid I'd fry my motherboard.

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Hehe. I am using the Omega Drivers(Cat 4.7). I overclocked from 154 to 193 or so. No artifacts. My fan has been running quite a bit while playing Doom 3, but seems to maintain good framerate.(15-17 on average now.)

I lowered Doom 3 to 640x480 and it runs much faster. Letters look really bad, but graphically runs faster.

Would going back to Cat 4.9 be better than the Omega drivers?

I have also set the ATI Tools for Performance, not Quality.

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I've got the game running decently on my laptop (and by decent it's a stretch) at 1024, medium, cachemegs at 256, using Omega Cats 4.7 (that did the trick) and am getting average 21 fps. Not that good, but interestingly find little difference between 800 and 1024. Plus I like eye candy so I'm loathe to go below 1024.

Although I must say that so far, after the initial excitement of how the game looks, I'm coming to be somewhat underwhelmed with gameplay...maybe too much of the same-old, same-old? Just real pretty?


Specs:

AW Area-51m

P4 3.2GHz
1024 MB PC-3200 RAM
60GB 7200RPM HDD
ATI Radeon 9600 128MB

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TerraFORM said:
Although I must say that so far, after the initial excitement of how the game looks, I'm coming to be somewhat underwhelmed with gameplay...maybe too much of the same-old, same-old? Just real pretty?
[/B]


That sounds like a topic that needs to be discussed in a new post.

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bennett said:

If you're concerned about RAM, buy another 528mb stick. Your notebook will thank you for this.


I am a complete Laptop noob, but how do I increase my memory ?
Is it thru the PCMCIA slots ? or do I have to open the machine ?

thanks

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there should be a small panel on the back of your laptop. open it (you may need a screwdriver) and you should see your ram, along with any open slots available for it.

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I have an Dell XPS with a Radeon 9700 and I can't get catalyst 4.7 to even install can anyone help me with this dilema

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try patje's mod. read the intro to this thread (#1). it should allow you to install cat 4.7 drivers.

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sygdom said:

I have an Dell XPS with a Radeon 9700 and I can't get catalyst 4.7 to even install can anyone help me with this dilema


Sygdom: you can download the Omega 4.7's here: http://www.omegadrivers.net

You must first uninstall the "ATI Control Panel" through add/remove programs, then run the Omega 4.7 install, which should work.

BTW: The 4.7's are not the ones that require the mod to run (the mod is for later versions).

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Dude, Doom3 was never intended for laptops. However, if you do wish to, you'll probably have some battery-power issues unless you use a power-adapter.

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Darkhaven said:

Dude, Doom3 was never intended for laptops.


And you were never intended by your parents, but you don't see us complaining.

j/k :D

We are just having fun here. Don't be a buzz kill.

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Yes, I know, but still; If you're going to play Doom3 on a laptop, you might wanna make sure you have a hefty battery charge or a power adapter.

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http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4587.html <=== has probably been the single best modification i've done so far. it gets rid of the weird split shadowing on ati chips, but may slow down your fps a bit. at least for me, it was worth it. unfortunately, i had to get all the way to hell to find that out ;).


also, my laptop is plugged in 24 hours a day. thanks for mentioning the battery life issue, but i think most of us have it under control.

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I am not boasting here, Just wanted to let others know that it is possible to run it on a notebook.

I bought D3 last weekend, and loaded it up on my fairly new Dell notebook. It far exceeded the requirements for the game, but deep inside myself, I wasn't sure how it would run.

My specs:

P4 - 3.4ghz
512 megs ram
128 megs on ATI Radeon 9700
blah, blah, blah

Once it installed, it seemed to be ok. It wasn't choppy at all, but about two minutes into the game, it froze up completely. I had to completely reboot the system. it did this several times, and was really pissing me off. I did some research and downloaded the latest ATI driver, as it seemed that most people with the similar card was having the same issues. it worked for more then 2 minutes, but less then 15 before it dumped me out again. I then went to the Omega driver recommended on another thread here. That seemed to do the trick. I was able to go for almost a half hour before it crashed. I was really thinking that the notebook was not the solution for playing Doom 3.

Last night, I decided to check its FPS rate and some other things. To my great surprise, after I ran timedemo, it reported that I was getting 62.9 FPS after the demo. I was exstatic, and thought of other issues that might be locking it up.

I went and checked the driver of my sound card and noticed that a new driver was up for it, and was dated a few days after the date i purchased the notebook in June. I loaded it up and went right into playing again. I figured I would go balls to the wall and really push it. I played for more then an hour before I had to take a break. The system didn't lock once.

I would have never guessed that the sound card could have been causing the lock ups.

I still plan on unpacking the .pak4 files to see if it helps in the load times. I don't need it for FPS, but I'll do it anyway. unless someone here thinks otherwise.

Again, Not boasting here, Just wanted to let others know that it is possible to run it on a notebook. Any assistance I can give. Just ask away.

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I'm getting the same problem, on a similar specced machine, I am downloading the latest gfx drivers, and I will also download the latest sound card one. Hopefully I'll be up and running.

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I'm playing it at home just fine on my system, but I've just got it running here on a friends laptop, 2Ghz Celeron, 512Mb RAM, 16Mb Mobility Radeon. Yes, 16MB vid card! Runs like a dog. Using the Patje tweak, which I presume got it running in the first place. Is there a RAM tweak to get it to use system RAM instead of video card RAM? Now that would be sweet... :D

cheers
k00k

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Running Doom on my Dell laptop = 2.4 Intel P4, 1gb ram, 64mb nvidia card, goes really well :) ... well after tweaks which I can say both work big time:

1) The config file tweaks, works really well changed the memory stuff to 500mb and frame rate flew up by + 20
2) The unpacking of the pak4 files works really well as well, got about +10 improvement on frame rate

Currently running the game on 800x600, medium settings with all but shadow advanced options on. Runs at average 40-60 fps without monsters, and then about 30-40 with 1, 20-30 with 2-3 ... lowest drops to is about 10 when some serious scenary is on the go ... so all in all very playable

Games rocks! though needs more spiders + master mind!

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doing patje's mod witht he catalyst 4.7 and then the 4.9 beta drivers slowed me down with fps by %15-%20. so i went back to the stock crap drivers and speed picked back up.

im running a 3.06g intel ht cpu, 1g ddr-2700 ram, ati mobile 9000 with only 64m of ddr2700(bios doesnt have setting for 128). med quality at 800x600 with all advanced turned on except a/a.

i also found i gain about %5 by not uncompressing the pk4 files. i gain about 1 fps using the cacheMegs mod at 256m, and im using the interaction shader mod from beyond3d.com, that gave me a couple fps.

im gonna experiment some with different combinations of the mods some more, but for sure the catalyst drivers slowed me down.

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Live2Dive said:

I went and checked the driver of my sound card and noticed that a new driver was up for it, and was dated a few days after the date i purchased the notebook in June. I loaded it up and went right into playing again. I figured I would go balls to the wall and really push it. I played for more then an hour before I had to take a break. The system didn't lock once.


What sound card do you have? I just picked up an inspiron 9100 and I'm having the same syptoms you describe.

I have:
3.2 P4
ATI 128mb Radeon 9700
1gig memory
SigmaTel C-Major sound card

I've updated the drivers to the most recent on the Dell site, but still get the freeze after 5-10 minutes. Irritating as hell.

Any suggestions?

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Llamatron99 said:

Let off some steam..... BENNETT


I eat Green Berets for breakfast.

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I have a Dell Inspiron XPS with ATI 9700.....had huge issues with this game. A friend of mine has the same video card and re-built the catalyst drivers to work with the 9700 video card only. Here are my settings for in game

Video Quality - High
Resolution - 1024 x 768

Advanced Options - All are set to "Yes" except Vert Sync it is a "No" and Antialiasing is set at 2X

The stats for my Laptop are P4 3.4 Ghz, 1 Gb of DDR Dual 400mhz RAM, ATI Mobility 9700 128mb Video, SigmaTel Audio.

No other tweaks were required and this game rocks on my system.

Here is the link to my friends page to download the drivers.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/suchan271/

These drivers are unsupported but have been tested on his laptop and mine.

Enjoy.

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Acer Travelmate 4001WLMi. Works like a charm (avg. 60 FPS) at 640x480, High Quality.

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ok i just bought this laptop like a month ago. came with 256mb of shared memory (don't fucking ask) a radeon 9000/9100 mobility (duh) a 2.8GHz P4 and a 60gb harddrive. I'm able to run doom 3 with roughly 5fps. If I give my video card 128mb of memory, i only have 128mb of system memory. gay. i can run it a little faster with 16mb of video memory. anyway, if i bought a 1 gig stick for this peice of crap, would i get a decent framerate? if not i'm taking this thing back, because i BOUGHT this in order to play the game. it wasn't until i got home that i found out it was fasley advertising 512mb of ram. blah. i hate this. :(

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