Games underestimate my laptop speed

archdukefranz

I have a really nice laptop
1.7 centrino (outclocks a 2.8 p4 apparently)
512mb ram
ATi radeon mobility 9700
...
Plenty of games I try to run on it won't work and say that my specs are too low, saying that they require more than a 1.0 ghrz processor in general.
Anyone have any idea why?

dawballz

archdukefranz wrote:

I have a really nice laptop
1.7 centrino (outclocks a 2.8 p4 apparently)
512mb ram
ATi radeon mobility 9700
...
Plenty of games I try to run on it won't work and say that my specs are too low, saying that they require more than a 1.0 ghrz processor in general.
Anyone have any idea why?

Is this when you have it on mains or running off battery?
Some processors throttle down to save power when running off battery power.
Other than that I couldn't tell you at the moment.
Any more info?
What games?

Boro

As Dawballz said, just check that your proc is running at full blast. One of the centrino features is that the chip will lower its speed if you arent doing anything. Several laptops have settings where you can set this speedstep. Eg yours might be running in maximum battery life mode as opposed to maximum performance mode.

Your proc could have locked in at the slower speed though. You should be able to disable speedstep from the bios too if you cant find software in windows to do it.

rsynnott

Particularly if they're older games, it's possible that they're simply not able to read the processor's info (a lot of software had trouble with this on early P4s). HAve you looked at the game manufacturers sites?

Boro

Most games that require a minimum processor speed of 1gig+ would probably have been released fairly recently (last 2 years?). They really should be able to decipher the cpu info of a p4/p4m.

Capt'n Midnight

archdukefranz wrote:

Plenty of games I try to run on it won't work and say that my specs are too low, saying that they require more than a 1.0 ghrz processor in general.
Anyone have any idea why?

First on a laptop battery life is king, if they can squeeze an extra 5% out of the battery by slowing down the laptop they will usually do it, on a desktop it's the opposite if they can get an extra 5% of speed by using double the power that's what they will do.
Next most laptops have variable speed processors intel step step speed and all that - check in the control panel applet to see if it's set for full speed or not.
Are you running on battery - if so then can nearly guarantee the CPU won't be running flat out - try it plugged into the mains
have a look at the tweaking/moding forum - should be some CPU speed aps there

Boro

Good FAQ/Guide here on Speedstep technology.

case_sensitive

My inspiron used to do that, and it took a while to persuade my Vaio V505 to run at full whack, even when plugged in.
How do you know? If you right click on My Computer in XP, properties, will show you the current reported speed, and the series, so on mine when on battery, I get ;
2.2Ghz P4
600 Mhz

or something to that effect.
Sisoft Sandra will do a full mhz reporting, and tell you how it stacks up against other procs, highly recommended, and free frmo guru3d.com;
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=177