XPS M1210, video card and battery life?

I'm considering the XPS M1210, but I'm wondering about the 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 TurboCache video card option...specifically two things:

1 - How good is this video card?
2 - How much will it reduce the battery life of this notebook? Also, will it eat up the battery life at all times, or only when I'm using it for 3D?

 

It's a decent card. It will play modern games with the settings turned down. I don't know exactly how much it will lessen your battery life, but it certainly will. It will always consume more power than an integrated card--but it will consume less while idle. It can clock itself down when not under strain. It all comes down to whether or not you need dedicated graphics. If you don't you could consider the cheaper 700m or maybe something in the lattitude line.

 

The video card powers the screen, so you're always using it no matter if you're playing 3D games or browsing the internet. I have a 2 month old m1210 (with the old Yonah Core Duo) and I've been extremely impressed by the battery life overall. I get close to 4 hours on the 6 cell battery, and 6 hours on the 9 cell, using wifi. I've gotten over 90 minutes playing WOW on battery, using wifi. I find 4 hours to be quite decent. I can take it to Panera at lunch and play WOW without taking the power cord.

I haven't taxed the video card at all, but many many previous threads in this forum have detailed the performance of the GeForce Go 7400 in this particular machine. The card itself performs very well, but it's just a medium card as far as performance goes. It'll play everything, but more taxing games will need settings turned down. Of course, people who care about every single setting turned up to max on the newest games should be looking at 17" machines, anyway, in my opinion. The m1210 has far surpassed my expectations, and I love it.

The m1210 is built for performance. If you don't need the video card, you should (as the previous poster said) consider something along the same size built more for mobility. Some of Dell's business models have neat options, like a second battery in the optical drive bay.

 

looks like I won't have to worry about battery life then!

 

I mean, I quoted maximum. I generally use it on battery when I'm just taking notes in class and chatting on aim and stuff. I've got it carefully set to conserve power, and I didn't upgrade anything but the video card when I bought it ... I get better results than most reviews, but I'm fairly obsessive about these things and I love my m1210.

More like 3 and 5 hours of battery life (on the 6 and 9 cell), to be conservative, but those are still good numbers for what I expected to be a power-hungry heat-intensive monster.

 

yes it does, however, the card underclocks itself drastically when rendering in 2D mode or doing any non-graphic intensive down (0.3 Mhz from a max of 450mhz :O..now thats drastic, isnt'it? )

From what I have tested inferred so far, the Go7400 based M1210s draw between 14-15W under light load (browsing), wi-fi on and medium screen brightness compared to 13-14W on the integrated graphics...On a 53 whr (6 cell battery) , this translates to a minimal 7% increase in battery life (say from 3.5 hours to 3.7 hours )

Obvoiusly, the load goes up upto 30W under intensive 3d usage with high CPU and GPU utilization, but then, you can't even put the integrated graphics M1210 to intensive 3d usage

IMHO, it is almost pointless getting a M1210 without a Go7400

 

That's good info, thank you very much.

 

I have the card and it is very good.
It will eat up the battery life. when I need to use it for a while without a powercord I lower all the settings on the lappy