I just received my new alienware M17XR3 with 6 gigs of ram, an nvidia GTX 460M 1.5 gigs, and an 2720QM core i7 @ 2.2 ghz. Installed some games on it to test it out, they all run just about flawlessly (WoW, Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare 2, etc). I decided to pick up Crysis 2 because I liked the demo and wanted to try something that was a little more demanding than the aforementioned games to see how it ran.

At 1024 x 768 on high graphic settings (read: "LOW"), the game is nigh unplayable. I've since tried nearly all the resolutions available as well as the other two graphic settings (very high and extreme) and they make it even worse. I'm probably running on the order of 10-15 FPS MAX, with the most ridiculous motion blur i've ever seen. Everything looks kind of washed out and it's hard to do much of anything.

One thing I did notice is when the in-game rendered cinematic that plays in the beginning after initially getting out of the sub, it runs completely flawlessly, but in-game itself is just absolutely atrocious. Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this and how I could fix it? Thanks.

Your video card is on par with an 8800gtx. Compare specs at your leisure. What kind of fps did you get in BC2?

Well, we do know that Crytek won't help you. Sorry, bud.

Unless...well, Alienware still makes PCs right, they're not a console manufacturer, correct? Oh, yeah...not a chance bud.

Hopefully someone here on the forums can give a helpful guess, but this game is way unfinished.

(I have nothing useful for you; the game works as it is designed to on my PC, though unfortunately that means badly)

the other 3 games you mentioned arent demanding at all, why did you expect to run a game that is demanding based on the fact u can run games that aren't demanding

Make sure your drivers are up to date

Yup your video card is equal to a 8800 gtx.

Make sure your drivers are up to date

Here is a link for the latest GTX460M drivers from Nvidias website.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-270.51-beta-driver.html

These are for Win 7 x64. Go to nvidia site if you have a different OS. Also, make sure you have plenty of clearance around the vents on your laptop, GPUs and CPUs throttle down their speed if they overheat.

Also 460M is slightly better than 8800GTX due to 64 more shader cores and DX11 support. It is closer to a GTX260. One drawback of mobile GPUs is if they don't have dedicated VRAM they tend to under perform.

Crysis 2 is pretty weak as far as demanding games go. I wonder if your video card is unsupported or too weak. I don't know much about mobile cards but you should check online on their site for new drivers. Your processor is on the weak side as well, though. It's no mystery, it's your computer. Good news is, the game runs fantastic on a relatively new computer! I never have any hiccups or anything under the usual 60 FPS.

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Thanks for your 2-cents.

I have the same problem with my Toshiba Qosmio. I gave up, my laptop exceeds the requirements but I can only play it on my PC. I think it has to do with the game not being able to run correctly on dedicated mobile video cards...

Nice laptop btw.

Somethings you can check also is any power saving modes that it migh tbe trying to run. You might try grabbing the 3dmark06, Vantage demos (http://www.futuremark.com) and seeing how they run and then comparing those scores with others with similar laptops. 10-15 fps seems a bit low, have you tried using a program like fraps to confirm your actual speed ? I'm not sure I'd expect much better than 30 fps though

Might try things like disabling your soundcard to make sure it's not causing a problem. Sounds like Crysis 2 is doing something that rubbing the laptop the wrong way.

You can also try using this utility to turn off the blur and maybe shadows to see if it helps performance at all.
http://www.fileplanet.com/219312/210000/fileinfo/Crysis-2---Advanced-Graphics-Options-Utility

You might make sure.

Drivers and Bios ( all software and drivers up to date. Dell is infamous for quirks if all their stuff wasn't installed and updated...just use the tool they have on the web site..tells you what you need.
CPU
GPU ( ATI's version works fine...but Dell tweaks laptop drivers alot ..weirdos )
BIOS
ALL Hardware drivers

Make sure it is running cool enough..it's sounds like the CPU is way throttled back due to heat or extra junk running the background.

Dell is famous for bloat. So check that..especially their weird back up programs.

Check if you can adjust power performance...

etc.

Good Luck..

PS Getting rid of Motion Blur would give you your biggest FPS boost.

Just so you know, this isn't the first thread made about people having severe FPS issues with laptops/mobile video cards... My bet is that the problem lies somewhere along that line.

how do i check my FPS on crysis 2?

Fraps, the trail is free.

I appreciate all the replies.

Drivers are up to date. For some reason you can't go directly to nvidia's site to get drivers for this card, or at least I can't. When I download them from there I get a message stating: "Install cannot continue. This graphics driver cannot find compatible graphics software". Come to find out, you have to go to Dell's website and get the latest nvidia drivers from there. Maybe it's a problem on Dell's end, I'm not sure. I realize the card isn't the best there is, but it should certainly perform a little better than what it is.

As far as performance in other games, I've got vsync enabled steady 60 FPS in all games at max settings currently. Bad Company 2 will occasionally have some very slight slowdown in a wide-open area with a lot of explosions and whatnot going on. I guess I'll just have to play it on my desktop exclusively unless some of the tips here make it playable or some hidden issue that hasn't come to the surface yet is discovered and rectified. Thanks again.

Something's definitely wrong, or you're misjudging the fps. I'm running Crysis 2 on a Dell Studio 1555, intel core 2 duo, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 -512mb on the lowest res and graphic settings and i'm getting a partially smooth 20-25fps. Your video card has double the memory of mine and you have an i7, getting 10-15 FPS MAX just doesn't make any sense to me.

Like Mad_Murdock and ogreballerina said, make sure you aren't on power saving mode or someting like green energy mode. I know most laptops now are default set on a green energy or power saving mode which will only be using you 50% of your cpu speed. Make sure it's set to high performance. Sometimes I leave my laptop on power saver when i haven't got it plugged in, and when I plug it back in and start gaming I'll wonder "why am I lagging so much?!", check power mode, ohh its been on power saver =/ .

I haven't yet had a proper smooth experience with Crysis 2, my laptop heats up pretty fast and it just gives up on giving me performance to keep my gpu/cpu alive. I REALLY need to get a desktop for gaming.

That sounds strange, thats the newer model alienware. I'm using a m15x-r2 with an i7-840 4gb ddr3 and ati 5850 and the game is running perfect on extreme settings at 1080p. I would recommend doing what everyone here said already and take a look at drivers and make sure its plugged in. Alienware stealth mode kills performance big time. So make sure thats off too.

Fraps, the trail is free.

thanks

You might find this interesting:
http://kotaku.com/#!5786946/crysis-2-gpu--cpu-performance-test

I didn't get a chance yesterday to update all the drivers, but I plan on doing so today and reporting the results here afterwards. As far as power saving mode or whatever, doesn't that typically turn off automatically once you're plugged in? The only reason I ask is because when I first got it and was running on the battery only, everything was pretty terrible, but once I was plugged it everything improved by 100%. I've since removed the battery (no need to keep charging/discharging it if I'm predominantly using it in one spot at the moment with easy access to an outlet) and am plugged into the wall. Either way, I'll be sure to double check that to make sure the settings are appropriate.

I'm assuming "alienware stealth mode" is a reference to the keyboard backlight glow setup they come with or whatever. I'll try turning that off as well to see if it has any impact. I'm thinking this almost has to be a driver issue at this point, so hopefully the dell website will have all of the latest drivers that I need to make sure this thing is operating at the level it should.