E6410 Owner's Thread

Hey guys - know whether a e6410 with the integrated graphics card is upgradeable later with a discrete card? thanks

also...if you had to choose between an e6410 with 4gb ram, with 512mb nvidia and an e6410 with 8gb ram but integrated.... which would be better value??

i dont play games much but i may every now and then....otherwise...movies, web, 2d apps....

thanks

 

i'd go with 4GB & discrete gpu imo. i dont think you're going to gain much from 4 -> 8gb of ram compared to the integrated vs discrete gpu (but this is all opinion, someone else may follow up with facts)

 

You can't upgrade/downgrade your GPU for this system. Whatever you pick, you stay with.

You are far better off with 4GB of RAM which is more than enough even for a gaming desktop computer (because about all games are still programed in 32-bit so they are limited to 2GB max RAM usage).

 

2^32 is 4GB, not 2GB. And with virtual addressing, the amount of memory is limited only by swap space.

 

thanks for the responses - ice, goodbytes and orange....

if i didnt game much at all...i wonder if things would just be faster with all the multitasking, etc with the 8gb? how terribly off is the intel integrated hd vs the nvida nvs3100m ....hmmm

came across this from googling too.. http://www.m-techlaptops.com/how_much_ram.html

actually i guess can always upgrade ram later if the need arose...duh... which i cant do with the graphics card.... tho mighty expensive memory upgrades,,,,

 

2GB DDR3 1333MHz sticks are under $40 including shipping:
2GB DDR3 1333 at Pricewatch - Lowest prices, Sales | Page 1
I doubt it's that cheap at Dell. However, if you want 8GB you'll need 2 stick of 4GB each. Those look to be about $75 each including shipping:
4GB DDR3 1333 at Pricewatch - Lowest prices, Sales | Page 1

 

Don't forget that battery life will be reduced with the nvidia graphics as compared to the integrated intel video. i don't know if that's important to you or not.

 

Most 32-bit software on Windows can use only 2GB since they aren't aware of the larger address space. There's a special flag (called LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE) you can set when building the software so that it can use up to 4GB of address space on a 64-bit Windows.

So, goodbytes is right here (at least roughly) because most games don't make use of that flag.

 

Dell typically charges a substantial premium for a RAM upgrade. DIY is normally far cheaper, but there again, do you really want to yank you upgraded RAM and replace the OEM if you require a warranty repair or replacement?

On the other hand, a 512MB GPU is very unimpressive. More to the point, NVIDIA has a pretty awful track record. As far as I'm concerned, I'd pay $50 more for Intel's outstanding integrated graphics over a mediocre 512MB NVIDIA GPU. If the upgrade option was for a 1GB ATI GPU I might consider it, but for the mediocre NVS3100M? NO WAY! If you really need the 3D performance, you'd be better off moving up to a workstation notebook.

Personally, I'd suggest Intel Graphics for something like streaming HD - actually this is where Intel really shines. If you're concerned about battery life, Intel wins out, since the NVS3100M is far too power hungry for its mediocre performance.

 

Oddly enough, there's another poster in another Dell thread who's suffered through 2 motherboard replacement due to overheating NVIDIA GPUs, and he really wants to downgrade to integrated Intel graphics for the next motherboard replacement.

There are benefits to having more that 4GB of RAM in a 64-bit system. As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much RAM, especially if you have multiple applications open.