Asus W5A and 3D Games?

Hi all. I'm looking for a mobile laptop with minimal 3D gaming capability. I see the W5A has 128mb shared video and wonder if anyone has tried it on any 3D games. I'd love to crank out World of Warcarft on medium to low settings. I have a desktop for the real 3D applications, but would like something thin and light for on the road that I can still do a little gaming on. $1500 is my price range. Any recomendations? Thanks all!

 

You can play WoW in those settings, I'm pretty sure.

Because I could play WoW(Lowest settings on all) on my 2 year old 1.2ghz AMD with 486 RAM and onboard 64mb graphics

 

Thanks for the input. Anyone else using the W5A have anything to say about its 3D performance? Any input in general about the new 128mb shared video ram? The W5A looks a lot like the Voodoo Envy i22... wonder how it has been performing. I can't seem to find much info on it. Thanks again.

 

The graphics on the W5 are better actually for graphics programs than they are for gaming. You're not going to game heavily on a 12" widescreen anyway........ or at least no one should expect to. A lot of people play those games like... the sims, AoE3, WoW, things like that..... and they play them just fine. You can't get into anything much more involved than that....... but a lot of people consider that heavy gaming for themselves... so I don't know what you might be looking for.

 

Haven't tried gaming on a W5A, but on a notbook with similar specs (1.73 P-M 512MB, DDR2 533, Dual channel, GMA 900) the gist of it is that high end games released up to about a year ago are playable. Far Cry and WOW are the limit and those may not be that much fun depending on your tolerance for low settings and the occational glitch. Go another year back to the likes of Jedi Academy or UT 2003 and it'll most likely play just fine.

 

That's a pretty good assessment....

 

Missed this part:

The i:222? Strange that... You'd almost think that they simply bought a W5 from Asus, painted it changed some specs around and resold it at a $1200+ premium. But... That can't be the case now, can it? 'Cause who'd want to pay almost 70% extra for that?! No... Wait... That's exactly what they do.

 

... sarcasim.... it's not just me that rules it. Now come on.. maybe they just didn't know and if so that would just be a mean comment.... lol..

 

Well, I can be sarcastic, since I'm not a reseller... But seriously: Didn't intend to be rude to the original poster. Sorry if I came across that way. It's just that I don't get the whole Alienware/VoodooPC concept.

Still if one were in the maket for a styled up ultraportable and had the money to burn I don't think there are any better alternatives than this. Much better than the Alienware Sentia at any rate. That computer is just so average. Hell, I've even been told that the Uniwill 223 was 'obviously a cheap Taiwanese Setina ripoff, just worse and much less cool'.

 

Like Bugmenot said, it should play most older games without problems.

I would check the games system requirements though, some older games
require hardware T & L and I don't think that integrated graphics support this
through hardware. It does support it through software but some games, including older games, require it to be in hardware.

 

I can't check right now, but I'm pretty sure the GMA 900 drivers 'lie' about the old fixed-function HW T&L the same way they 'lie' about the vertex shaders.

 

Thanks for all the input everyone. Basically, the highest end game I am looking to play would be WoW, and I know it is very soft on the requirements. I quote from the WoW homepage...

"Windows® System 98/ME/2000/XP OS:
* 800 MHz or higher CPU
* 256 MB or more of RAM
* 32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware transform and lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better
* 4 GB or more of available hard drive space
* DirectX® 9.0c or above
* A 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection "

My concern is that someone else voiced... WoW seems to require hardware T&L. Will the W5A handle this with its Embedded Intel® 915GM VGA? I'd be happy running it on medium settings as long as I got a decent frame rate. Any input guys? Thanks again!

 

Intel GMA 900, the graphics subsystem embedded in the i915GM, is supported in WoW. With DX8+ level hardware the game use vertex shaders and not the older DX7-style fixed-function T&L. Even though the GMA900 does not do vertex processing in hardware it's functionality is transparent as far as the game is concerned. Sofrware emulated vertex shaders coupled with a relatively fast CPU will in fact be faster than the limited DX7 T&L functionality offered by cards such the Geforce 2 and Geforce 4MX.

The biggest hindrance to performance on the GMA 900 is not the lack of vertex shaders or T&L, but memory bandwidth (so it's important to run dual channel), and it's slow pixel shaders (so one might want to turn off as much eyecandy as possible). For example: If you ran 3Dmark03 on a W3V (Mobility X600) with the HW vertex shaders disabeled it would still score significantly higher than a W3A (GMA 900) with the same CPU; indicating that the Intel solution is limited by other factors more so than vertex power.

 

It's no doubt that Intel's integrated graphics can move mountains compared to what most people think of when they think of what integrated graphics used to be......

also remember you're pushing this on a 12" widescreen... that's the hight of 10" screen... you're going to be able to enjoy these games on the lower settings, becasue you couldn't tell anyway......... the only time you'd really see the difference is if you exported the video out to say your tv screen or a larger computer monitor......

 

Also when your considering a ultraportable for games, make you you get the new intel 915 integ video card instead of the 855. While the new sonoma processor has little (if any performance improvements) at worse battery life, the 915 gives about 3 times better framerates than the old 855 graphics chipset. Here is a good review at tom's hardware (which also lists framerates for various games):

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050511/intel_915gm-08.html

(there are many pages to this review of both the new video card and processor) hope this helps!

 

Well the W5 only comes w/ the 915...... so I think that was a given, but thanks for bringing it up incase he starts looking at something else.

 

Wow, great info. One last question... and please dont laugh. Do you think there is any hope for a W5A with 1gb of dual channel ram to pull off Battlefield 2? (From what I hear, a W5A only goes to 750mb or so, so for argument's sake lets consider the Z63A) As I said before, I'm not really looking for a gaming laptop, just one that can pull the games off acceptably from time to time... something that can make them at least playable.

 

768MB is the max amount supported according to spec. I'd guess that is is due to there beeing no 1GB µDIMMs around when it was released. They do exist now, however, and VoodooPC is offering them @ $171 in their custom W5A. The regular Asus resellers will probably be able to sell you one before too long, bringing the total to 1280MB.

 

First of all, there are no 1gb microdimms (µDIMMs) .... and the W5 doesn't take them anyway........ the W5 takes a regular so-dimm....... the S5's and M5's (z33a) take microdimms..........

The reason that Asus only shows on their site that 768mb is "supported" is because that's all they've tested. I've continuously ran a 1gb stick in the open slot (resulting in a total of 1.25gb) since the day we recieved the W5's.. what... 4 months ago or more. Asus just never bothered testing the 1gb chips, but at this point, I can say they run smooth, stable and perform as would be expected....... I believe other W5 owners should be able to concur with this.... if they have theirs set up like this...... $171 from voodoo for 1gb ddr2 400 so-dimm is even a little high... but it is voodoo... if people will buy a painted W5, they'll pay a premium for everything else I guess.

 

Better tell Infineon they're not making them then.

Better tell Asus that their specifications are wrong then.

Given this I hope you can see how I'd be under that impression. Sorry for the mistake.

 

Well, two things....

1. There are no 1gb udimms...... infineon may be the first to put them out, but they are NOT out yet and won't be for a while......... They are "in production" and should be available Q3 .... look towards the end of Q3, but hey... we're not even in Q3 yet.

2. NEVER, EVER trust Asus' specifications. ONLY trust someone who's actually gone over their systems with a fine tooth comb because any spec they write down is translated from Chinese and usually by people who aren't looking at the laptop......... reading off white papers and such. At one time the unit may have been ready to go with udimms, but the production units (which have been out for about 4 months not), have all had so-dimms........ this IS something that surprised me when I first saw it, but it may also be why officially they never showed that they tested more than 768mb of ram...