HP dv9335 gaming bottleneck?

[Tron87]

I got this laptop last spring for work. At the time a had a competent desktop for gaming. Over summer my PC was stolen and the insurance money went to CC dept so here I am with just a dv9335.


Intel Core 2 Duo @ 1.73ghz
nVidia GeForce Go 7600
2gb DDR2 ram

Which of these is my biggest bottleneck?
The machine runs HL2: EP 2 at 1440X900 and Medium High setting. Its quite playable but I dont' know the exact fps. My PC rebuild is a long way off so I was just wondering how my laptop is gonna do in the next 6 months.

 

[theworminator]

I'd say that it's your GPU, mostly in today's games

 

[Tron87]

figured. I've heard that some GPU's are changeabe. MXM or something. How do I tell if my laptop has this feature?

 

[theworminator]

Sorry man, I'm pretty sure the Go 7600 is soldered directly to the motherboard, they're not in a slot. I asked a reseller if I could upgrade from a 7600 before, and that's the answer he gave me.

 

[Tron87]

Well then I'm super lucky that there are tons of awesome games with reqs that are lower than HL2. Time to get those overtime hours so I can go quad PC asap. Thanks worm

 

[theworminator]

No problem man. Try out some old games too, they're pretty awesome and you don't need graphics. Worms Armageddon, System Shock 2, the list of classics goes on. Cheers!

 

[tomdrum]

would that play serious sam 2? I enjoyed those titles 😀

 

[Tron87]

I figure its actually a really competent gaming machine. I am a gamer in every definition except the intense techno side of the hobby, but i will be building a PC soon so that is about to end. I have been able to play through Supreme Commander campaigns with no real complaint but I did lower the setting as the screen filled with units.

Anyone looking for a gaming laptop around 1200 won't be terribly disappointed i think. Time to brush the dust off the ol' Alien vs Predator 2.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

A friend of mine has the same rig (recommended he pick it up when on sale in the US).

Both the CPU and GPU will bottleneck you in different situations, but it's capable overall and actually quite balanced with both CPU and GPU being in the mid-rangre power area IMO.

If you plan on running all games at 14x9 then yeah the GPU is going to take the most abuse because that's not a mid-range setting when the graphics chip is a midrange chip.

However you should be able to play any current and near future title with the settings optimized.
I can play Oblivion and UT3 on my old CoreSolo 1.73ghz w/ X700, you should be fine with Bioshock and Crysis when in DX9 mode and at medium settings with a lower than 14x9 resolution.

You will need to learn to find that balance in your rig, and maybe to pull a few more fps or setting out of it learn the OC'ing limits, as an example I was able to boost the X700 25% core and 30% memory, which made Oblivion playable at 1024x640 with additional help of things like grass optimizations and and optimized textures.

 

[ibleet]

The 2 biggest laptop bottlenecks are Ram and Hard Drive. You have more than enough Ram. The other bottleneck in some laptops is a slow (5400rpm or less) Hard Drive. With games that require a lot of loading, its worth it to pick up a 7200rpm drive. In your situation, I would say that your GPU is a bigger bottleneck than the CPU.