Just how good is the GT 420m?

Will it be able to play Starcraft 2, Mass Effect 2, and GTAIV with high quality?

I'm resisting upgrading to the i7 and 435m on the XPS 15 unless I really have to. So a related question might be - does anyone know yet if those two upgrades will make the laptop significantly louder or hotter, or impair it in any other way? I wish a review would come out with the max configuration... (i7, 435m, 8gb).

Thank you!

 

Someone on this forum has just received his i7, 435m. He said he will be posting his thoughts later tonight, hopefully some benchmarks as well.

 

Long story short, you have to be more specific.

High quality to Person A might mean 1920x1080, settings on max, 60fps minimum.

High quality to Person B might mean 1600x900 (or 1280x720 which can claim to be "HD" but ewww), settings on "high," 30fps average.

The problem is Person A will require more than 2.5 times the performance to achieve "high quality." So suddenly a $1100 laptop turns into a $3000 one.

 

I am sorry to bother, but I have been wondering the same and a few more things.

What would be the native resolution for the 15.6 B+RGLED 1080p screen?

From what I have read, the 420m is a bit better than the 330m, so I think you could run all those games in low settings.

But as gpig said, the max settings you can reach depends on the screen resolution you use/like and the gametype too, since some are more cpu dependant (GTAIV) and others gpu dependant (Mass Effect, Dragon Age).

And even if you have all the hardware requirements to play at high settings, watch out for the heat it might produce below the notebook!!! XD

 

1920 x 1080.

 

I'm closer to Person B... I just want to be able to play the games at decently high settings without trouble

 

what ever the 4670 handled the 420 can handle.

 

Actually the latest benchmarks seem to show that the 4670 crushed the 420m. NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

You must be thinking of the 435m.

 

i do not see too much "crushing" i would thing anything with in 5 +/- frames you probably not going to feel.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3999/dell-xps-15-l501x-review/4

 

My basic concern is,

Will GT 420m be too weak for games coming in a year or so? (Weak being not even handling Medium graphic settings)

Or will i7+GT435m be like an internal heater ?

Or will the upgrade not be too noticeable in terms of performance?

All this considering the 1366x768 screen and not Full HD..

 

If you are buying a laptop you know no matter what card you have ,it;s going to be weak compared to desktop graphics. Unless you get some 17 inch alienware or asus g73 our graphics cards basicly "suck" . Just go with the i7 +435m. Your gaming already so there is always heat involved and we already know the i7 put out a little more head than dual cores.

 

First of all, 4670 is more powerful than the 4650, so it's going to be a lame comparison. There is no 4670 on your site, so we must compare 420m with the 4650.

Did you look at the games after the first one? The 4650 was 50% faster in 1 game. Probably an average of around 20% faster. And the 4670 is faster than the 4650...

Update: The 4670's core clock is 22% faster than the 4650.

 

I have a 4670m that uses GDDR3, and it is indeed much faster than those results in anand (nothing is overclocked in my end)

btw I have a very high CPU limitation since I use a P7350

 

I would classify 16-17% increase as quite a significant increase.

 

If it helps, a guy in Sager forum who has an NP5135, which comes with the GT 425m said that he was easily able to overclock to and beyond 435m speeds.

 

A GT420M will suffice at 1366x768 res
Only for FHD you do require 435M

 

That depends highly on the game, the settings, and your tolerance for framerate. Saying something that general is misleading.

 

I am not misleading dude
I am telling in a general sense considering the games that are not so demanding as Crysis and Metro 2033
And the GT420M if clocked to the level of Gt435M can play any game at 1366x768 or 1280x720 at med-high settings with a good Framerate of 30
This is what was proved in Anandtech's benchmark without OC
So better check that first

 

i checked in some websites, it's same performance as ati 5730 ...

 

The 435 is close to the 5730, the 420 is far behind the 4670 let alone the 5730.