topic Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP in PCs & Accessories

Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

jemvaio — Sun, 22 Aug 2004 22:06:12 GMT

Hi,
love my laptop, so muct that my sister gave me a copy of DOOM 3. It should work, it's over the min spec, but does it ? no.

After about 5 mins the screen locks, I can hear the audio, but Doom 3 has crashed.

Anybody else experiencing this problem ?

Cheers,

p.s. if this has been answered before for the VGN-S1XP, please accept my apols, but as this Formum HAS NO SEARCH facility....

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

nick_pan — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 10:51:51 GMT

hey, whats the specs of your laptop and how much over the minimum specs is it?

remember the minimum specs stated is for a desktop..and laptops are alot less powerful.

for example, farcry works alot better on my desktop P4.2.4GHZ.256MB RAM
than my laptop
P4.2.8GHZ.512MB RAM

furthermore, DOOM3 requires alot of power so you'd have to have a very good laptop anyway

search around for a doom3 patch off their website which should fix your problem (farcry worked extremely poorly on my laptop until i installed a patch) as well as the usual thing..make sure your gfx drivers etc. are fully up to date!

Nick

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

jubaird — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 12:00:05 GMT

Hi,
love my laptop, so muct that my sister gave me a copy of DOOM 3. It should work, it's over the min spec, but does it ? no.

After about 5 mins the screen locks, I can hear the audio, but Doom 3 has crashed.

Anybody else experiencing this problem ?

Cheers,

p.s. if this has been answered before for the VGN-S1XP, please accept my apols, but as this Formum HAS NO SEARCH facility....

Hey! I love my S1XP as well and the same thing happens when I play Doom 3. Even when all the graphic options are turned down. It's a real pain, especially as most of the time you have to switch off to recover.

Nick, spec of the S1XP is:

* Pentium M 735 1.7Ghz
* 512 MB RAM
* 64 MB ATI 9700

This should be enough to run Doom 3 on basic graphics. I'll also check out the patch and get back to you all!
:smileygrin:

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

kee-lo_ — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:36:08 GMT

I think Doom 3 uses a lot of resources, you'll need at least 2.6Ghz to run it.

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

jemvaio — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 18:49:37 GMT

I though that too, but looking into it - a 1.7 Centrino should cope with it pretty easily; the bottleneck would be the 64 9700; but even that should truck along reasonably ok.

The thing is, it manages quite happily until it locks up....

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

TygerTyger — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 18:57:40 GMT

Updated drivers may or may not help.

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

rikyman — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:30:04 GMT

It´s simple, i've had the same problem with Vaio A197VP, if you install Radeon Omega Drivers 2.5.67 wich are based on ATI's Catalyst 4.8, you cam play Doom 3, Far Cry and all others, the problem is in the drivers givem by Sony, maybe the given drivers are old, maybe Sony are lasy in updating their drivers, and we are loosing a lot...

Now I have no problems, all games work fine and faster, with no change I have a score of 3D Mark 2001SE of 10954, that´s very aceptable for a laptop.

The 64Mb video memory is not the problem, a run Doom 3 at 1024x768 all in High with no problems, give Omega a try and you will not regret.

Sory the bad English, I'm Portuguese. S1XP I'ts Amasing.

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

kee-lo_ — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:36:00 GMT

Yeah the A197VP is a nice machine

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

nick_pan — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 21:01:21 GMT

rikyman, thats very good advice thx man

tyger i agree updated drivers dont always directly solve the problem but they do make sure that your system components are up to spec. i always like knowing im getting the best out of my machine

and as for a 1.7ghz centrino with a 9700 64mb, that should have NO problem playing doom3 at lowest settings..thats a powerful machine

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

nick_pan — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 21:16:39 GMT

It´s simple, i've had the same problem with Vaio A197VP, if you install Radeon Omega Drivers 2.5.67 wich are based on ATI's Catalyst 4.8, you cam play Doom 3, Far Cry and all others, the problem is in the drivers givem by Sony, maybe the given drivers are old, maybe Sony are lasy in updating their drivers, and we are loosing a lot...

Now I have no problems, all games work fine and faster, with no change I have a score of 3D Mark 2001SE of 10954, that´s very aceptable for a laptop.

The 64Mb video memory is not the problem, a run Doom 3 at 1024x768 all in High with no problems, give Omega a try and you will not regret.

Sory the bad English, I'm Portuguese. S1XP I'ts Amasing.

sorry man, gotta link to these drivers? cause i dont wanna be downloading the wrong thing. thx

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

rikyman — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 21:58:15 GMT

Here is the Link
You have to remove the drivers from Sony and reinstall these ones.

You can get them also Here

Have a try an say something.

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

kee-lo_ — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 23:37:33 GMT


and as for a 1.7ghz centrino with a 9700 64mb, that should have NO problem playing doom3 at lowest settings..thats a powerful machine

Totally agree Nick

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

Damien — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 06:54:56 GMT

Hello guys...
Was wondering whether somebody could take the time to go through some things to me?

I have a 64mb ATI 9200 graphics card in my PCG-K215S...P4 2.8, 512ram.
I have FarCry and want to get Doom3.

I'm a little concerned about buying Doom3 as i have had a few problems with FarCry locking up at 1024x768 res...(not yet lowered the res.)

I have read about uninstalling Sony drivers and updating with drivers from the link supplied by 'rikyman'...

Is this the best way to allow me to play the games? If so how exactly do i do this? Which driver do i need to download, and how do i remove the old one? Help in this would be GREATLY appreciated as i would love to chill in the garden playing FarCry and Doom without any lock-ups!!! Its just that i'm not really too sure how to go about it...

Cheers...

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

nick_pan — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 07:39:48 GMT

damien i have a very similar computer to yours,

farcry should work fine with your specs tho i repeat, make sure u have the new farcry patch ~ get it at www.farcry-thegame.com
it makes a difference. get patch 1.1

listen ur gonna have to accept that the 9200 card is ageing. in a desktop it would be struggling with farcry and stuff and the mobility 9200 is a stripped down version! however it should manage to play these games, u should just lower your resolution to 800x600 and put all settings on low for the time being.

as for rikymans advice, im currently doing just that as these set of drivers seem to be maximising the output of the mobility range. basically, if you go to his 2nd link, download the drivers ~ the one at the top, thats your new drivers..

you'll have to uninstall the others by going to

control panel->system->hardware->devicemanager->display adapters and finding ATI RADEON MOB 9200 or something like that, if you write click on it u can unistall it. and once thats done, u can replace the unistalled drivers with the new ones u just downloaded. hopefully u should notice a difference in performance

ill try it tonight and do a 3D03 benchmark test

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

rikyman — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 07:44:10 GMT

You remove the drivers from sony in Add Remove Programsn remove all Ati item in that apears in Add Remove Programs.

The install Radeon Omega Drivers 2.5.67 from the link in my last post and you are done.

Radeon 9200 it's not as powerfull as 9700, but you can get those games running if you don't push setings tof the games too hard.

Have a try.

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

chods — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:09:17 GMT

I initially had this problem. I downloaded all the latest drivers from the download area, and also edited the script file with runs DOOM3.
Check out - http://doom3.filefront.com/info/tweakguide to make the neccesary adjustments.

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

jemvaio — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:14:10 GMT

which download site ??? just had a look at Sony support, but there the only drivers there are the original ones which ship with the XP. I tried to install the new Radeon ones, but they said they couldn't find any compatable hardware (basically told me to get them offa Sony)......

Is there anywhere else? or am I missing something.

Thanks for all the replies...... and cheers!

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

TygerTyger — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:20:06 GMT

Omega are unsupported by anyone, use at your own risk and only if you are sure that you can undo whatever mess they may make. They are a fine alternative to Sonys driver inaction but they are by no means infallible and should not be used by computer newbies.

Also, for those who would like an alternative for whatever reason, you could download the standard desktop Radeon drivers and use a small program which modifies them to be compatible with mobility chipsets. Again, use at your own risk if you are a confident computer user but in my experience this is a more reliable way of doing it. If anyone wants to do it this way, post back and I will post the link to the mod program.

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

jemvaio — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:43:16 GMT

Ok,
could you post the URL for the conversion program ?

Cheers,
Jem

Re: Doom 3 and the VGN-S1XP

marcgaston — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:19:45 GMT

Yes, I would also be very interested in this mod program to convert the original ATI drivers for my Sony S1XP.

By the way, the way I solved the problem of running Doom 3 was by downloading the special use-at-your-own-risk catalyst driver from ATI (I think it's version 4.9.something), I extracted the files from it (by double-clicking) to C:\ATI\ and then I expanded the file atioglxx.dl_ into atioglxx.dll (using the command line program expand) and replaced the original atioglxx.dll in the windows/system32 directory.
Try it if you want but make a backup of the original atioglxx.dll first.
Now Doom3 works smoothly with 45 frames in timedemo demo1 using the lowest qualitiy specs.

Marc