Nvidia 7150M Integrated Graphics Card Review

INTRODUCTION

Eight months ago I wrote an article detailing the kind of performance a person can expect from the at-that-time leading integrated graphics performer, the Nvidia GeForce Go 6150. Here was a part that helped recommend an AMD-based notebook as a viable alternative for users that didn't want to make the sacrifice that an Intel-based notebook with the miserable GMA 950 would require.

Now, of course, no one is going to argue that the serious gamer should probably just ignore integrated graphics parts entirely. But the past eight months have seen real improvement to this part of the market, with all three of the big dogs releasing refreshes. Intel released their GMA X3100, AMD released their Radeon Xpress 1200 line, and nVidia was the last to the party with their GeForce 7150M. The first two of these refreshes offered bold new technology previously unheard of in integrated graphics: Intel's GMA X3100 jettisoned the pipeline-based design of last generation's desktop hardware in favor of using eight unified shader units, while AMD's Radeon Xpress 1200 parts feature four pipelines heretofore unheard of in integrated graphics outside of Intel's lamentably slow GMA 950.

While integrated graphics are still the bottom of the performance food chain, the know-it-all geeks who claim "IGPs are horrible!" should probably listen close. We're not living in the hideous era of the Intel Extreme Graphics anymore; these bad boys have evolved to have enough horsepower to run Unreal Tournament III playably.

nVidia's GeForce 7150M, however, looks suspiciously similar to their old Go 6150. It has the same shader and pipeline counts, same core clocks ... basically feature-identical to the Go 6150. Yet this part is the one you're most likely to see in an AMD based notebook, at least if you buy HP like I do. (Disclaimer: That's not a plug, I'm not getting paid, I just like their notebooks and retail presence. Personal preference.) So with the jumps in performance from parts by AMD and Intel, what's the deal with nVidia?

EVOLUTION OF AN IGP

If you compare nVidia's Go 6150 and 7150M on paper, they look identical. 425MHz core clock, two pixel pipelines, one vertex shader. But the modern technophile has gotten so hung up on the numbers game that they miss one very important detail: all chips are not created equal.

nVidia's new IGP is a much better performer than it might appear on paper - especially when compared to its predecessor - and the reason for this is a simple one: the Go 6150's graphics core was based on the technology nVidia used in their desktop 6 series cards. The 7150M, on the other hand, is based on the technology they used for their 7 series, which was a sharp refinement of the 6 series. Most of the technology is very similar, but much like a Pentium III evolved into a Pentium M, so the 6150 has evolved into the 7150, and the performance per clock makes a jump.

In this review, you'll see the results of the refinements made to the core of the 7150M, and they might surprise you.

CAVEATS OF AN IGP

No matter how much you refine an IGP, there are still certain caveats that seem to pop up, and the 7150M is no different.

I'm not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of graphics hardware engineering; what I can tell you is that in my experience, complex shadows and lighting are the quickest way to turn a game unplayable on an IGP. This has been my experience across the board with every game I've played on the 7150M, the Go 6150, and the desktop Radeon X1250. Complex shadows and lighting and Kryptonite for the modern IGP.

I would also be remiss to point out that while my experiences with the 7150M have overall been positive, its achilles heel for me has been a big one: in my test notebook, I've been unable to update the drivers; the ones on HP's site are the ONLY ones I can use. Every other driver will at best just not install (yes, I tried modified ones from laptopvideo2go), and at worst blue screen and FUBAR your Windows Vista install. If you're running your 7150M in Vista, you may find Aero Glass performance to be pretty choppy like I did, and I haven't been able to find any solution to it. While I'm sure it will be resolved at some point, I spend more time in Aero Glass than I do in Doom 3 and for me, it's a dealbreaker. Your mileage may vary.

TEST SETUP

First of all, while this article is chiefly comparing the GeForce 7150M to the GeForce Go 6150, there are a couple caveats.

ORIGINAL GO 6150 SYSTEM:

• HP Pavilion dv6258se
• AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-56 (1.8 GHz, 2x 512k L2 Cache)
• 2GB DDR2-667 RAM
• 120GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 Hard Disk
• 1280x800 WXGA Glossy Screen
• Windows XP Professional SP2 with Dual Core Hotfix

GEFORCE GO 6150 Configuration...

• 128MB VRAM set in BIOS
• ForceWare 84.66 (laptopvideo2go)
• Set to Performance

Unfortunately, I no longer have this unit on hand, so the older benchmarks will have to be used.

GEFORCE 7150M SYSTEM:

• HP Pavilion dv2610us
• AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58 (1.9 GHz, 2x 512k L2 Cache)
• 2GB DDR2-667 RAM
• 160GB Hitachi TravelStar Hard Disk (5400rpm)
• 1280x800 WXGA Glossy Screen
• Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

GEFORCE 7150M Configuration...

• 128MB VRAM set in BIOS
• ForceWare 156.65
• Set to Performance

The driver and CPU differences aren't a huge deal; the major concern is likely going from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Most will probably agree that this should actually handicap the newer part, but it's my experience that Vista graphics performance - especially with nVidia hardware - is now virtually indistinguishable from XP performance. For what it's worth, I'm actually personally using Vista Ultimate on my home desktop. I'm assuming some of you have seen my hate-filled vitriolic reviews of Windows Vista in the past, but the operating system has actually shaped up pretty well over the past few months and I'm willing to eat crow on it. So I'm hoping you'll trust me when I tell you the performance difference on a well-equipped machine is like night and ... uh ... night, and that these notebooks are very comparable.

In addition to the games I tested in my previous article, I've included brief performance information from a couple new games just for the 7150M. I've also omitted Oblivion; Oblivion performance on the Go 6150 was so atrocious that even if the 7150M was twice as fast - which it's not - Oblivion STILL wouldn't run remotely well. I pick my battles; this one isn't worth fighting.

DOOM 3

nVidia's integrated graphics hardware remain the only integrated graphics hardware that will run Doom 3 out of the box, requiring only one tweak to an in-game setting to achieve playable framerates.

The game itself has come along in the years, but still knows how to punish cheap hardware. In my next review I'll probably retire it in favor of Quake 4, though, which is both a better and more complex-looking game.

I used Doom 3's built-in timedemo and always used the second run. The first run always nets lower results as the demo itself loads from the hard drive as you run it; everything's already in memory on the second run.

Doom 3 at its best on the 7150M. (view large image)

All benchmarks were run with shadows disabled.

Setting	Go 6150	7150m
640x480 Low Quality	31fps	36fps
640x480 High Quality	27.3fps	33.8fps
800x600 Low Quality	22.1fps	26.1fps
800x600 High Quality		24.6fps

While the 7150M still can't run playably at 1024x768, it nonetheless runs much more smoothly than the 6150 did.

I also benched the game at 640x480 Low Quality and with shadows enabled with a result of 22.4 fps. While it's mildly playable at that setting, I really don't encourage it. The 6150's 22.1 fps at 800x600 Low Quality actually ran much smoother; with shadows enabled the framerate swings much more wildly.

F.E.A.R.

Though it still doesn't look "quite" as good as more modern games, it still punishes hardware with the best of them.

All benches were run at the following settings:

COMPUTER OPTIONS:

• Single Player Physics Medium
• Multiplayer Physics Medium
• Max Software Sounds Medium
• Particle Bouncing Medium
• Shell Casings Off
• World Detail Minimum
• Corpse Detail Minimum

VIDEO CARD OPTIONS: EFFECTS

• Effects Detail Medium
• Model Decals Medium
• Water Resolution Medium
• Reflections & Displays Medium
• Volumetric Lights Off

GRAPHICS

• FSAA Off
• Light Detail Minimum
• Shadows Off
• Texture Filtering Trilinear
• Texture Resolution Medium
• Videos Medium
• Pixel Doubling Off
• DX8 Shaders Off
• Shaders Maximum

F.E.A.R. on the 7150M, now able to run with Volumetric Lighting enabled. (view large image)

Here's how the cards panned out using F.E.A.R.'s built in test...

Card	Min FPS	Avg. FPS	Max. FPS
Go 6150 @ 640x480	18	28	57
7150M @ 640x480	20	37	69
7150M @ 640x480*	14	34	70
7150M @ 800x600	12	25	47

(* With Volumetric Lighting enabled and set at minimum.)

If you tweak the settings a little, you can get it nice and smooth at 800x600, but the game is still unplayable with shadows enabled. Apples-to-apples, the 7150M is consistently much smoother than the Go 6150 at 640x480.

GUILD WARS: FACTIONS

Guild Wars: Factions, better than ever on the IGP. (view large image)

Here's where I started to see really big gains from the Go 6150. While the Go 6150 was at its best running at 800x600 medium detail, the 7150M can actually run maxed out at 1024x768 with the same framerates. If you're willing to turn a LOT of stuff down, you can get it playable at 1280x800 as well, but I found it to run a bit too haltingly for my tastes.

While I cancelled my WoW account a long time ago, I'd expect similar performance out of that game. Dedicated WoWers should be just fine on the 7150M.

FAR CRY

Far Cry jumps a resolution AND raises settings. (view large image)

Far Cry is another big success story for the 7150M. Here are the settings for virtually identical framerates between the two IGPs:

Setting	Go 6150	7150m
Resolution	800x600	1024x768
Machine Spec	Very High	Very High
Texture Quality	Medium	Medium
Filter Quality	Trilinear	Trilinear
Anisotropy	1x	1x
Particle Count	Medium	High
Special Effects	Medium	High
Environment	Medium	Medium
Shadow Quality	Low	Low
Water Quality	Ultra High	Ultra High
Lighting Quality	Low	Low

If you're willing to tank most of the settings, you can get up to 1280x800, but I find these settings at 1024x768 to be a great compromise. At this point, it's actually running nearly as well as it did on my old 128MB Mobility Radeon X600. Impressive!

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2004

A classic runs nicely on the 7150M. (view large image)

Seeing a pattern with these improvements? UT2004 went from being "meh" in performance on the Go 6150 to a bonafide joy on the 7150M. With settings at medium, the 7150M achieves the same framerates at 1024x768 that the Go 6150 did at 800x600. The 7150M can even run the game pretty playably, if a little bit choppy, at 1280x800 with low settings.

UNREAL TOURNAMENT III

It ain't pretty, but it goes! (view large image)

Unreal Tournament III was, for me, a big disappointment. It offered little in the way of change from the previous games and felt just a little too "safe." That said, you can't really complain if a game stays "good."

I thought it might be able to run on the 7150M; the game scales ridiculously well, pushing 1024x640 medium quality smoothly even on a 128MB GeForce 8400M G, the lowliest of modern dedicated cards.

With everything set to its lowest setting except for screen percentage which is set at 70, Unreal Tournament III runs smoothly on the 7150M. I'm not so sure the Go 6150 would even be able to handle this at all.

HELLGATE: LONDON

The 7150M starts to lose steam here, but I'm not sure who to blame. (view large image)

I'm not a huge fan of this one either, but I seem to be in the minority. For those of you that MUST get your fix, the 7150M will be serviceable, but I had to turn everything all the way down and unfortunately, the lowest resolution the game would let me run at was 1280x720 which really doesn't do the 7150M any favors.

This test was run using the demo; on my desktop the full version went down to 1024x768, which the 7150M should be able to run just fine. Still, this one is really on the cusp.

HALF-LIFE 2: LOST COAST

The ordinarily scalable Source engine delivers some punishment. (view large image)

I ran Half-Life 2: Lost Coast's video stress test, as I figured it would be a pretty good estimate of the kind of performance to expect from the battery of games in the very popular Orange Box. I found the stress test ran best at 800x600 low/medium settings with no HDR or bloom, but your mileage may vary when running the other games in the series.

Half-Life 2, for example, actually scaled up to 1280x800 low settings on my old Go 6150, so I'd expect 1280x800 medium/high on the 7150M.

CONCLUSION

The 7150M obviously isn't going to be mistaken for a gamer's card, but I hope that if I've proved nothing else, modern games can be playable on the 7150M. Sure, you aren't going to run behemoths like Crysis or Oblivion, but many modern games will still run playably on the 7150M just fine, and older ones will run with aplomb.

So if you're one of those people that pops up in the IGP threads on the forums to just randomly deride integrated graphics parts instead of offering something constructive (and you know who you are), I hope I've given you enough to chew on that you'll be able to stop talking. For the casual gamer, the modern IGP is surprisingly plenty.

Now to tackle the GMA X3100 ...

 

Dont bother. We already have a massive discussion in two seperate threads about the x3100.

 

But Pulp's analysis would be much more through and informative than any of the threads I have seen. I welcome the article.

 

Yeah, with updates and follow-ups as new drivers are released.

I love these types of articles from you, Pulp. Because now that I own a PS3, integrated graphics are the way I go now with computers, and I love getting best bang for buck.

 

im always up for more info

 

You know, I think we should have people doing GPU reviews like this, not only for integrated GPUs like Pulp does (another excellent review, by the way ), but for the dedicated graphics cards. They are very informative.

 

A lot of those reviews should be embedded into notebook reviews...but yes, I do kind of like the idea of having separate reviews for notebook GPUs since there are so many choices.

 

Well, its kind of like these reviews that Pulp is doing, right? He does a review of the notebook, and then also does a separate IGP review that goes much farther in depth than you could really do in a full notebook review.

 

Nice review. I didn't expect ut3 to be playable.

That can't be right. On my 64-bit x1700, which is much better than the 8400m g it runs at 848x480 with vivid post-processing, world detail at 3 and textures at 2 with decent framerate(25-40), but it doesn't feel very smooth. It actually feels laggy and choppy. I don't even want to know how it'd run on 1024x640.

 

Is there a simple answer to how the current IGPs stack up to each other?

ATI Radeon Xpress 1250
Nvidia 7150M
Intel x3100

 

I'm sure everyone would love to do the 8800m GTX review .

Hey NBR , where is my test review sample notebook ?

 

It's the case. I found the demo playing abnormally smoothly on low settings when I installed it on my old 8400M G, so I just kept cranking it up until it started to buckle. At med/low settings at 1024x640 wound up being the limit.

Honestly, and this is going to draw a lot of "WTF"s from the audience, I'd almost put the 7150M ahead of the X1250. I was able to glean consistently better performance out of the 7150M than I was with my desktop X1250; not leaps and bounds better, but a bit better here and there.

That, and the X1250 STILL can't handle Doom 3 engine games, while the 7150M clearly doesn't have a problem with them.

 

Thanks. Are these both better than the X3100?

 

The X3100 has the potential to be faster than either one, but it has miserable drivers right now. While you can gamble and win with the X3100 sometimes, it's usually not worth it.

The fact is, the 7150M and X1250 consistently work. I can't say the same about the X3100.

 

Intel makes drivers that reduce the percentage of support calls, it's never been about (decent) performance. Nvidia and AMD make relatively high performance drivers.

 

Tell me about it. I've been going to hell and back trying to get the x3100 to work properly. Good thing I have my desktop PC for games, though.

 

IMHO who cares for a review of a graphics board, which only few enthusiasts will have? I think priority must be geared towards mainstream graphics (i.e. performance, drivers and their availability, compatibility issues, heating/power consumption)...

Of course such review (8800m) would be interesting to read (to compare achievements in mobile graphics department), but not practical at all.

EDIT: 8400/8600 vs 2400/2600/2700
EDIT2: thats why I like pulp's review - big part of all notebooks have IGP

 

Good review Pulp I look forward to more in the future. I find this very informative. Hopefully a patch will fix the Vista issues since it shouldn't take that much more power to run Aero.

 

Nice review Pulp!

 

Don't forget that Pulp's 8400M-G (I'm assuming you're talking about your F9, right?) has a 128-bit VRAM bus width, while yor x1700 is crippled with 64-bit bus width. And other than the memory bandwith, the 8400M-G on paper is better in essentially every way than the x1700. (More shading power and twice the TMU's and ROP's).

 

pulp if you could try a x1270, the latest in the ati radeon 1200 series.

thanks for this review it gives me a possible overview of what mine is capable of.

good luck with the x3100!

great review

 

Strange. I tought that the 8400m gt was the only card in the 8400 series with a 128bit bus. And 64 bits would only affect performance in larger resolutions. In 848x480 like i play it the bandwith of the 64bit memory is not a limiting factor. I'm aware of the great shading power of the 8xxx series, but the low end lacks brute force. Judging by what i saw on the forums the crippled x1700 should be similar or a little better than the 8400m GS. But then again, he just said that he ran in ''medium quality'', not the exact settings.

But i'm not an expert, so i could be wrong.

 

Thanks for the review.

When it comes to the X3100, are you referring to games? I have not had any issues with the X3100 at all, but I would appreciate some enlightenment as to why you think the X3100 does not consistently work. Not that it is a competition, but I do not see how the 7150M has been consistent when it comes to Vista performance. But maybe I fail to understand what you are saying?

 

Great writeup! Thanks!

Happy Holidays!

 

His particular 8400M-G came with a 128-bit bus width for some reason. And just FYI, memory bandwith is the only reason the 8400M-G and the 8400M-GS are low end cards. Even the 8400M-G has more raw power than the previous gen mid range cards.

Yup, he's talking about the inconsistent gaming performance and driver support on the X3100, especially in Vista.

 

Thanks Odin.

 

I'm still not even sure about that bus on the 8400M G, since it didn't score more than maybe 100 better in 3DMark06 than its kin, which is within the margin of error when accounting for driver differences.

Still, the 8400M G may be the low end of the totem pole, but it's still a pretty good mobile part. Only game I had trouble with on it was Bioshock, but this was before Crysis came out.

As for the X3100, its gaming performance is painfully inconsistent, so what we're really left with is a 7150M that, at least in the HP notebooks, chokes on Aero Glass, and an X3100 that can handle Aero Glass but randomly chokes on everything else.

If I had the choice, I'd grab an X1250/X1270. Unfortunately, I can't do a review of it as I:

a) don't have a review notebook for it handy

and

b) have two more articles still queued up and was politely asked to limit my output

When the custom dv2500t I ordered arrives, though, I will very likely produce a review of the GeForce 8400M GS, since that seems to be far and away the most common dedicated part in this generation of notebooks.

 

Yea I have the x1270 and haven't noticed any issues w/ Aero Glass and it consistently runs HL2 at high settings at 1280x800 resolution and same goes for World of Warcraft (haven't tried other games though) (at 30+ FPS)

 

nice review...

it's surprising that many modern games work with integrated graphics...
it's certainly informative...

obviously nvidia will have the upper hand here thanks to openGL and id software...

switching to quake4 will be more realistic in term of benchmarking but even the little outdoor area will certainly kill IGP's performance producing low framerate...

however, it's still not good enough for me... even at 640x480 or 800x600 with playable frame rate... the option is either play without scaling which is too small to see, or have the scaler blow it up to native res on the panel which blurs the whole thing up and enhance the ugliness...

also, it's probably nice to have review on vid card h.264 decode assist capability with all these newer laptop coming with HD (hddvd/bluray) drives...

on the desktop level, the low performance card sux at everything, even HD decoding assist...

i think nvidia and ati should just make 8400 and 2400 series into IGPs and only offer option to upgrade to mid or high level vid cards in notebook...

that way the everyone can get some kind of gaming performance and hd viewing capability without having to upgrade vid card and eating into their battery budget...

alas it's too much to hope in the face of all that is capitalism...

 

Funny that, the core of AMD's next IGP is actually more or less a Radeon HD 2400. It's my understanding that they pretty much die shrank it and soldered it on.

Capitalism has nothing to do with IGPs and everything to do with efficiently shrinking a core and engineering it for maximum efficiency.

As for HD video performance, honestly...I'm not sure how much of an inclination I even have to test it. Most HD video runs perfectly fine on just a modern CPU; while HD-DVD and Blu-ray are becoming a little more common in notebooks, these markets in their entirety are really pretty infinitesimal.

 

My notebook with the 7150 runs great. Maxes out WoW, runs CoD4 decently at low settings, CS:S maxed out at 1024x768, and BF2142 decently at low-medium settings. It's a much better mobile solution than my 8600...

 

@____@ after all this I still can't decide which IGP/Low end (X2300 or 8400G) solutions I can't get. Can't somebody do head to head performance/batterylife/ heat comparison?

 

No, because it's not possible.

 

Just to elaborate, its not possible because there are too many inherant differences. You can't effectivly isolate the parts you may be interested in.

The closest you can come to what you may want is to look at the total system review for various laptops. You can at least get an idea of GPU performance and total battery life.

 

Could someone plz do 3dmarks on these aswell? I can find x3100 and 6150 here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile...rk-List.844.0.html?&or=&search=&sort=3dmark06
but no 7150

 

Has a fix been found for the locked clocks? I tried using different versions of ATI tool but nothing worked so far... The only immediate fix I see right now is having ATI tool run the 3d view in the background so that the computer clocks up to 425Hz

 

Hey guys, I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to laptop gaming and video cards, but I just purchased the HP Pavillion dv9720us which has 2.0GHz 2GB ram and the GeForce Go 7150M. I read Pulp say he/she was able to play Hellgate: London on it.

I have Hellgate and Neverwinter Nights 2, and both say there's not enough video memory available and refuses to let me play. Company of Heroes says the card is only a 64MB card. Are the settings in need of adjusting? I tried updating drivers, but it says they're updated. Also, I'm running Vista...sadly.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I want to game after spending $1000 =P

 

You should be able to set that in the BIOS. Press F10 when you see the HP splash screen on boot and look through the menu and there should be a setting to increase/decrease the amount of RAM allocated to the GPU.

 

I tried Half life 2 episode 2, and altho it played it was a bit sluggish. I had to drop down to 800x600 and set everything to low, i left model detail on medium tho and i used this tweak to increase performance : http://www.halflife2.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-44511.html

After that it seemed to improve somewhat. i get around 20 - 35 fps, its still feels bit sluggish when the movie scenes cut into the game, but other than that it is not to shabby.

I suspect that if i put in more ram it will improve alot. currently i have 1GB of which 128mb is shared to the 7150m, leaving me with 895mb on vista

Will put more ram in end of the month and check it again ...

The other games i play :
Counterstrike Source
Guildwars
Sevenhearts
Worms world party
Flyff
Oblivion ( using oldblivion mod and set to medium details )
Fear

All play really well and quite smooth.

I also have a toshiba notebook which has the X3100 chipset, and it cannot even get near the same framerates the HP gets. i am quite happy that i bought this laptop considering that laptops are so OVERPRISED in my country and i picked this one up quite cheap.

 

bioshock is not playable on 7150m

 

..the main problem with the 6150/7150 are the nVidia Powermizer settings, for some reason the IGP will scale down to 100mhz core speed after few seconds after boot.

By result Aero will start running very sluggish and the only solution is, as suggested, run ATI tool with the 3d window open in the background, or to find some way to change the IGP core frequencies.

I keep looking out fot HP bios updates to fix the problem, but at this point, after I have had the lapotop for 7 months, and after several bios updates, I think that either this problem has not been aknowledged by HP or there is no solution for it.

 

I've been able to lock my freq using powerstrip, now i set the clock 500 3d, 500 3d low power and 500 2d by disabling gpu throttling via the performance option. I'm using compaq laptop with amd 64 x2 tl-58 processor & 7150m gpu. Using nvidia control panel, I also can modify my mem timing & cpu clock, at present my settings are 12-4-4-4-16 cl5, 211mhz ref clock resulting in 2004.5 mhz processor speed, games are quite very much playable now.

 

"Sure, you aren't going to run behemoths like Crysis or Oblivion"

You can run Oblivion on this card, like Pulp I changed the dedicated memory in the BIOS to 128mb and set the affinity to a single core of my Athlon X2 2GHz. I have 2GB of RAM.

I get 30FPS as standard and don't even have to run it on the lowest settings (res is low and textures large, but fading set to at least half).

Performance can be further enhanced by using the Oldblivion mod, but I don't fully understand why as all it does (apparently) is use a different shader for the game, making it compatible with really old hardware.

 

yo everyone i would really appreciate it if someone told me how to change the dedicated memory in bios to 128 i have amd athlon 2x 1.9 and 2gb ram

 

So I am trying to do what you did... What version of powerstrip are you using? I'm using 3.78. How did you set your 2D power settings to 500? You said you "disabled gpu throttling via the performance option" but I don't see that as an option.

My 2D power settings are maxed out at 210 mhz, and I can't make them go any higher. And I'm not sure if I saw any performance increase or not going from 100 mhz to 210... maybe... Aero seems a little smoother, but not entirely smooth yet. Maybe I'll only see a significant performance increase when I set it higher, maybe 300 or 500. But I can't seem to set my 2D settings that high... How did you disable the cap? I don't know if I want to set them too high or they will make the laptop run "hot" with the fan blowing all the time.

[Edit: after trying to get Rivatuner to work, which I couldn't because I can't find a compatible driver since Nvidia supposedly doesn't support the 7150m (completely ridiculous!). I went back and tried powerstrip again and noticed a significant improvement in Aero performance going from 100 to 210 mhz. This may just be the trick to getting Aero to working better, not perfectly, but certainly better]

 

I have this exact same card, 7150M, My question is if I can enhance the performance through BIOS? I'm unfamiliar with the process of doing this, but is there anything I can do?

I've been trying to play Lord of the Rings Online and I can't ever get it to run smooth even on the lowest of possible settings. WoW runs beautiful though, I think, if I remember because it has been a while, I can play WoW on max settings.

 

Quadron, that's actualy quite long time ago i used powerstrip to set those clocks, but currently the only thing that i use is ntune, and using the script builder under 'custom rules', i'm able to lock my reference clock at 211mhz and automatically your gpu core clock become 501mhz, gpu memory become 333mhz (base) / 702mhz (actual), and using cpu-z, my cpu core speed is at 2005mhz (211 x 9.5), i set my memory timings to, RAS 12 RCD 4, RP 4, RC 16, and CL 5 which i've modified all of them using this script and save it to a file. But one thing to remember is to use "load this XXX profile WHEN CPU is active (performance) for 10 seconds", that means your pc will always think that your mode is always on 'performance mode' and will never revert to 3D low or 2D setting anumore. Hope this helps. TQ

 

Just an addition, i think that for those settings to work, it's driver dependant, i'm currently using 174.31 driver. Other driver that i've test cannot hold those settings at every start of the computer, only this driver can.

for a better look, please visit http://djpianz.blogspot.com

 

Hi
I have the 7150m card and after i saw the review i installed Far cry. But i,m not experiencing nice performance at all. The only decent performance i get is when i am on "low". I have the directx_nov2008_redist and my video driver is 179.44
I recently switched from vista to xp, and its a lot better by the way. I also tried the 156.65 - same thing. I have an Athlon 64 X2 2ghz and 3 gb ram (hp pavilion). My shared memory is 512mb. I would really appreciate it if someone can tell me how can i get Far cry to run smoothly with the listed settings in the review. Is it something with the drivers or...
The whole name of my video card is 7150m/nforce630n. Is it something with this nforce stuff. I'm good with that so i need your help

 

7150M is a low end gpu so no use to play latest games. I would prefer taking a dedicated 1gb gpu.