Second Life Forums Archive - Just wondering... 8400m GT

Soundless Smalls

Registered User

Join date: 3 Mar 2007

Posts: 9

08-27-2008 16:22

Hey all, I hope I'm not posting this in the wrong section of the forums. And I hope that Lindens respond on forum posts. Anyway.......

PLEASE DON'T STOP READING, it's not as much as it looks

I was looking around a bit on the web, landed on Torley's blog -> videos -> graphics videos... and then, I found a link on one of his videos that says to look on the System Requirements page on SL.com... so I did and I noticed that the SL would run on a 8500.. so I looked at nvidia.com for 8500 stats and for 8400m GT (which I have) stats.... And...

8400m GT > 8500 GT
8400M -> http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8400M.html
8500 GT -> http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8500.html

If you look at those links, you'll notice that the 8400m GT and the 8500 GT are exactly the same, except that the memory bandwith of the 8400m GT is actually faster....

Now you're probably thinking: 'So???'.
Well the reason of me looking for the differences in the stats, is because SL just isn't working on a 8400m GT, I contacted SL tech support by submitting a ticket, had to follow a whole list and.. ended up with an answer saying: 'that video card isn't compatible with SL' (or something close to that)

Now my question is: WHY?
Why won't SL run on a 8400m GT while it does work on a 8500 GT(which has lower stats)?

I have this question in my mind for a couple of months now and I just had to ask.

I hope someone can clear things up for me.

Thank you all for your time.

Osgeld Barmy

Registered User

Join date: 22 Mar 2005

Posts: 3,336

08-27-2008 20:52

heres a thought, are you running this thing with the power plugged into the wall?

some laptops, when on battery power, revert to some craptastic minimal on chip video system to save juice

interesting tho that the 8400m GT does have a higher memory clock speed than the 8500GT (altho the M series is usually a newer revision, to make it small and less draining on laptops)

Soundless Smalls

Registered User

Join date: 3 Mar 2007

Posts: 9

08-27-2008 23:22

Thank you for your reply,

Yes I am, SL used to run fine on this laptop, I had nearly no lag with full graphics, but around May/June SL came with a new update and never came through the hardware test since then. I hoped there was a way around this, but LL said it just wouldn't run on the 8400 and since then I've been wondering why. I tried to modify a client to find a way around, but it seems that I don't have the skills to do that.

Mathew Kawashima

Registered User

Join date: 5 Aug 2008

Posts: 23

08-29-2008 05:41

Hm...that's strange because I'm running SL perfectly on my laptop with a 8400M GT 256 MB.
Are you sure that all of your drivers are up to date? What laptop have you got?

Kathmandu Gilman

Fearful Symmetry Baby!

Join date: 21 May 2004

Posts: 1,418

08-29-2008 15:52

The 8400m is, well, craptacular and so is the 8500 for that matter. I suspect the problem lies more with the way the graphics share resources with the main system in a laptop 'cuz shared video memory and SL have a long history of problems. The performance of integrated video has always been way overinflated in technical specs vs. actual performance. You can always take one to two series numbers off anything that is mobile. A mobile 8600 is actually going to only give about 8500 (dedicated video card) real world performance on a good day, usually less compared to the dedicated video card. An 8400 mobile has no where to fall too as the 8400 dedicated video card has utterly abysmal performance and has less horsepower than an 8 year old Ti4200 and that will barely run SL itself. With the mobile performance hit you are left with something that is less powerful than an Intel video chip. This is why support said what they did.. Nvidia should be sued over this sort of fuckuppery in my opinion.

If there is some sort of setting for video memory in the bios, you might try making sure there is at least 64meg set for video and that you have as much system memory installed as you can squeeze in, Vista especially.

_____________________

It may be true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease but it is also true that the squeaky wheel gets replaced at the first critical maintenance opportunity.

Robot Poultry

Registered User

Join date: 23 Jun 2006

Posts: 208

08-30-2008 09:22

From: Kathmandu Gilman

The 8400m is, well, craptacular and so is the 8500 for that matter. I suspect the problem lies more with the way the graphics share resources with the main system in a laptop 'cuz shared video memory and SL have a long history of problems. The performance of integrated video has always been way overinflated in technical specs vs. actual performance. You can always take one to two series numbers off anything that is mobile. A mobile 8600 is actually going to only give about 8500 (dedicated video card) real world performance on a good day, usually less compared to the dedicated video card. An 8400 mobile has no where to fall too as the 8400 dedicated video card has utterly abysmal performance and has less horsepower than an 8 year old Ti4200 and that will barely run SL itself. With the mobile performance hit you are left with something that is less powerful than an Intel video chip. This is why support said what they did.. Nvidia should be sued over this sort of fuckuppery in my opinion.

If there is some sort of setting for video memory in the bios, you might try making sure there is at least 64meg set for video and that you have as much system memory installed as you can squeeze in, Vista especially.

The mobile GPU's in question have dedicated video memory. Up to 512MB in both cases.

Kathmandu Gilman

Fearful Symmetry Baby!

Join date: 21 May 2004

Posts: 1,418

08-30-2008 10:18

Laptop sellers are very aware of the things people are looking for in their products, "dedicated memory" is a watchword for sure. Problem is, how is it defined? I have seen "dedicated memory" in many, many laptops as simply a chunk of system memory that is permanently allocated as video memory.. this is still shared memory just made "dedicated." I can't say in this specific case but buyer beware. Dedicated memory that makes a difference has to be super fast DDR2, DDR3 or in rare cases DDR4 that is only used by the video system and is not a part of system memory in any way and has to physically be near the GPU.

_____________________

It may be true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease but it is also true that the squeaky wheel gets replaced at the first critical maintenance opportunity.

Soundless Smalls

Registered User

Join date: 3 Mar 2007

Posts: 9

08-31-2008 06:14

Thank you for all your replies..

@Matthew
Yes I installed the latest drivers, I actually tried to install the drivers above the current drivers, tried uninstalling the current and installing it over and what nog,
I got the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ21E

@Kathmandu
My graphics memory is actually set to 64Mb. I got 4GB DDR2 Ram which adds 1279MB shared memory to my graphicscard, which raises the total to 1343MB..

SL really did run perfect on this system before that update.. I hope a Linden will also respond on this post..

Welcome to the Second Life Forums Archive

Just wondering... 8400m GT > 8500 GT

Just wondering... 8400m GT > 8500 GT
Soundless Smalls Registered User Join date: 3 Mar 2007 Posts: 9	08-27-2008 16:22 Hey all, I hope I'm not posting this in the wrong section of the forums. And I hope that Lindens respond on forum posts. Anyway....... PLEASE DON'T STOP READING, it's not as much as it looks I was looking around a bit on the web, landed on Torley's blog -> videos -> graphics videos... and then, I found a link on one of his videos that says to look on the System Requirements page on SL.com... so I did and I noticed that the SL would run on a 8500.. so I looked at nvidia.com for 8500 stats and for 8400m GT (which I have) stats.... And... 8400m GT > 8500 GT 8400M -> http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8400M.html 8500 GT -> http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8500.html If you look at those links, you'll notice that the 8400m GT and the 8500 GT are exactly the same, except that the memory bandwith of the 8400m GT is actually faster.... Now you're probably thinking: 'So???'. Well the reason of me looking for the differences in the stats, is because SL just isn't working on a 8400m GT, I contacted SL tech support by submitting a ticket, had to follow a whole list and.. ended up with an answer saying: 'that video card isn't compatible with SL' (or something close to that) Now my question is: WHY? Why won't SL run on a 8400m GT while it does work on a 8500 GT(which has lower stats)? I have this question in my mind for a couple of months now and I just had to ask. I hope someone can clear things up for me. Thank you all for your time.
Osgeld Barmy Registered User Join date: 22 Mar 2005 Posts: 3,336	08-27-2008 20:52 heres a thought, are you running this thing with the power plugged into the wall? some laptops, when on battery power, revert to some craptastic minimal on chip video system to save juice interesting tho that the 8400m GT does have a higher memory clock speed than the 8500GT (altho the M series is usually a newer revision, to make it small and less draining on laptops)
Soundless Smalls Registered User Join date: 3 Mar 2007 Posts: 9	08-27-2008 23:22 Thank you for your reply, Yes I am, SL used to run fine on this laptop, I had nearly no lag with full graphics, but around May/June SL came with a new update and never came through the hardware test since then. I hoped there was a way around this, but LL said it just wouldn't run on the 8400 and since then I've been wondering why. I tried to modify a client to find a way around, but it seems that I don't have the skills to do that.
Mathew Kawashima Registered User Join date: 5 Aug 2008 Posts: 23	08-29-2008 05:41 Hm...that's strange because I'm running SL perfectly on my laptop with a 8400M GT 256 MB. Are you sure that all of your drivers are up to date? What laptop have you got?
Kathmandu Gilman Fearful Symmetry Baby! Join date: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1,418	08-29-2008 15:52 The 8400m is, well, craptacular and so is the 8500 for that matter. I suspect the problem lies more with the way the graphics share resources with the main system in a laptop 'cuz shared video memory and SL have a long history of problems. The performance of integrated video has always been way overinflated in technical specs vs. actual performance. You can always take one to two series numbers off anything that is mobile. A mobile 8600 is actually going to only give about 8500 (dedicated video card) real world performance on a good day, usually less compared to the dedicated video card. An 8400 mobile has no where to fall too as the 8400 dedicated video card has utterly abysmal performance and has less horsepower than an 8 year old Ti4200 and that will barely run SL itself. With the mobile performance hit you are left with something that is less powerful than an Intel video chip. This is why support said what they did.. Nvidia should be sued over this sort of fuckuppery in my opinion. If there is some sort of setting for video memory in the bios, you might try making sure there is at least 64meg set for video and that you have as much system memory installed as you can squeeze in, Vista especially. _____________________ It may be true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease but it is also true that the squeaky wheel gets replaced at the first critical maintenance opportunity.
Robot Poultry Registered User Join date: 23 Jun 2006 Posts: 208	08-30-2008 09:22 From: Kathmandu Gilman The 8400m is, well, craptacular and so is the 8500 for that matter. I suspect the problem lies more with the way the graphics share resources with the main system in a laptop 'cuz shared video memory and SL have a long history of problems. The performance of integrated video has always been way overinflated in technical specs vs. actual performance. You can always take one to two series numbers off anything that is mobile. A mobile 8600 is actually going to only give about 8500 (dedicated video card) real world performance on a good day, usually less compared to the dedicated video card. An 8400 mobile has no where to fall too as the 8400 dedicated video card has utterly abysmal performance and has less horsepower than an 8 year old Ti4200 and that will barely run SL itself. With the mobile performance hit you are left with something that is less powerful than an Intel video chip. This is why support said what they did.. Nvidia should be sued over this sort of fuckuppery in my opinion. If there is some sort of setting for video memory in the bios, you might try making sure there is at least 64meg set for video and that you have as much system memory installed as you can squeeze in, Vista especially. The mobile GPU's in question have dedicated video memory. Up to 512MB in both cases.
Kathmandu Gilman Fearful Symmetry Baby! Join date: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1,418	08-30-2008 10:18 Laptop sellers are very aware of the things people are looking for in their products, "dedicated memory" is a watchword for sure. Problem is, how is it defined? I have seen "dedicated memory" in many, many laptops as simply a chunk of system memory that is permanently allocated as video memory.. this is still shared memory just made "dedicated." I can't say in this specific case but buyer beware. Dedicated memory that makes a difference has to be super fast DDR2, DDR3 or in rare cases DDR4 that is only used by the video system and is not a part of system memory in any way and has to physically be near the GPU. _____________________ It may be true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease but it is also true that the squeaky wheel gets replaced at the first critical maintenance opportunity.
Soundless Smalls Registered User Join date: 3 Mar 2007 Posts: 9	08-31-2008 06:14 Thank you for all your replies.. @Matthew Yes I installed the latest drivers, I actually tried to install the drivers above the current drivers, tried uninstalling the current and installing it over and what nog, I got the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ21E @Kathmandu My graphics memory is actually set to 64Mb. I got 4GB DDR2 Ram which adds 1279MB shared memory to my graphicscard, which raises the total to 1343MB.. SL really did run perfect on this system before that update.. I hope a Linden will also respond on this post..