Laptop

[Drumming Monkey]

Hi guys,

Would really appreciate some advice here. I have a fairly old laptop, and I want to see if I can get Arma (Armed Assault) to run with any where near decent FPS. I have used the 'Can You Run It?' application and my laptop gets 100% full marks, i.e better than recommended specs.

However, when I run the Arma demo, I can only get decent FPS on 'very low' graphics settings and low screen resolution. It seems like vegetation causes massive slowdown.

Is this something to do with the demo being more buggy than the actual game?

Here are my specs:

System Information
------------------

Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840)

System Manufacturer: Acer
System Model: TravelMate 5720

BIOS: Ver 1.00PARTTBL

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz

Memory: 2046MB RAM

---------------
Display Devices
---------------

Card name: ATI Mobility Radeon X2500
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.

Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x71DE)

DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)

Display Memory: 1021 MB
Dedicated Memory: 255 MB
Shared Memory: 766 MB

Current Mode: 1280 x 800 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Driver Name: atiumdag.dll,atiumdva.dat,atitmmxx.dll
Driver Version: 7.14.0010.0532 (English)
DDI Version: 9Ex
Driver Attributes: Final Retail

Sorry if this is in the wrong part of the forum or anything!

Thank you very much for reading! :)

[kotov12345]

too old to run :).
You need to use laptops with ati 4th or 5th series to play arma2

[Drumming Monkey]

Hi kotov12345,

Thank you very much for the reply.

I was actually talking about the orginal Arma (Armed Assault) sorry if I'm in the wrong forum.

Do you think my laptop should run this well? as the demo certainly doesn't run well :(

Thankyou!

[W0lle]

You are in the correct forum, but kotov not. :)

The ArmA demo does not perform as well as the game with the last patch does but your laptop might still be too weak to have fun playing the game. Especially the graphics card is too weak.

[Drumming Monkey]

Thanks W0lle,

I guess there's only one way to find out - I just bought the game, considering it is very cheap it won't matter that much if it doesn't run that well.

Are there any links you could possibly point me to regarding running the game on low spec computers?

thanks again :)

[kotov12345]

my bad sorry - I'm only pressing new post option not looked talking about arma - not arma2.
But as far as I remember when I tried arma last time it run same fps as first release of arma2 - mean need even faster pc then arma2 :)

[Drumming Monkey]

Its weird cos my graphics card has 256mb dedicated ram (1 gb non dedicated) - isn't that the 'recommended' amount for Arma 1? shouldn't I be getting better FPS?

Might be cos the drivers are old and I dont think you can get drivers for my card anymore, as its a crappy notepad card :(

[kotov12345]

usual that any laptop 3-4 times slower than equal desktop.
It is not question about size of graphic card - it about GPU ,chipset and limitation of performance of any laptop due to size and ability to keep it cool enough.

You can try to put 4gb of ram install win 7 and change hdd to 7200 rpm - you might will get 20% more - don't forget clean of dust and replace thermal paste :)

[Drumming Monkey]

Ah Ok. Thanks for your help. Think I'm gunna start saving up for a new desktop, so then I can play Arma 2 as well as Arma 1 :D

Really really love the game think it's worth a new PC just to play!

Thanks guys :)

[Drumming Monkey]

Just thought I'd let you guys know I bought Arma for my laptop and it runs smoothly on 'very low' graphics settings :D Looks kinda bad but Im one of those people that can't deal with bad fps, even on xbox it sometimes annoys me, so I could probs run it at low or normal but the fps would be bad.

Anyway I plan on getting a new PC sometime soon so I can get Arma 2, but for now Arma 1 will satisfy my simulation craving!

Could you guys recommend a few mods / addons for me?

I'm looking for mods which

-Allow you to give the AI the order to fire on a position even when they can't see the enemy, to give suppressing fire to keep an enemies head down, rather than specifically targeting individual soldiers.

-The most simple mod (not good with scripting) which allows you to call in an airstrike / artillery strike on a map coordinate.

-Mods which make the enemy AI better!

Thanks guys!