Ok, so I was treated to a laptop late last year and I spent some time looking at some available ones. I settled on this HP pavillion DV900. It was advertised as having '768 or something MB Video Memory' Great I thought! That should be more than enough to run some of the (slightly) older games I play....as it turns out though, it only has a max of 128mb dedicated. Which is pants quite frankly. The actual Graphics card is a NVidia GForce 7150M/nForce 630M..., another thing they neglected to mention. I didn't really know about the intricacies of graphics cards back then, so didn't think to look into it further. Now I get around 10-12 FPS on Rainbow Six Vegas which is a looooot less than on the other computer I use (which has a Palit 9500GT)...I've altered the dedicated memory value in the BIOS to it's max of 128mb, I've tried making Vista look worse than XP, I've tried setting everything on Rainbow Six down to it's lowest (which is currently 640X480) and it's still not fantastic. So, my question is: How do I improve this? Do I simply give up as this is not a great Graphics card and get a new one like one from the ATI Mobility Radeon series? Or is there something else I can do...It's not imperative, as this wasn't meant to be a gaming laptop, but it would be nice to be able to get some kills for a change
you can try upgrading your drivers. that's about it. the bad news is that you're stuck with this card - you can't change notebook graphics adapters as they are soldered onto the main laptop board.
Some lappies have seperate graphics cards, but lower end units rarely do. Indeed on looking into your model its intergrated into the motherboard, your stuck with it and little else will increase its gaming performance. If you want games on the move sell it.
you're referring to the MXM module? yeah.... that kinda died and went away. you'd be very, very hard pressed to find a graphics adapter in even high end laptops that isnt soldered onto the mainboard, and even if you did, good luck first finding, then buying an upgrade model at non-sell-your-kidney prices.
My Inspiron 1720 has its 8600GT card on a slot. Just have to know which models to look for. Seems dells use their own proprietary system.
oh, fair enough. i'm sure dell will be happy to sell you an upgrade at a completely reasonable price!
On the subject of Dells, my mate has a Studio 15 with a rather nice ATI Radeon in it...it's been mentioned in Custom Pc once or twice as a good'un. Looks like I'm stuck....which isn't a biggy, I'll just have to look into a new desktop Thanks anyway....
