Call of Duty 4 + 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

Hey All,

I'm planning on purchasing the Inspiron 1520 within the next few weeks and I'm looking for some feedback on the 8600m. I've been told that its not the best card for newer games like Call of Duty 4 but I'm not looking for amazing graphics and to see every little detail...I just want to be able to play games at a good quality and I want the card to be able to support future games for the next 3 years or so. Any thoughts on card would be appreciated.

Main Specs:

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB/4MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate
VIDEO CARD 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT
MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
HARD DRIVE Size: 250GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)

 

It's hard to say what will support future games for the next 3 years. The only rigs somewhat prepared for 3 years down the line are desktops, mainly b/c everything can be upgraded by component.

Crysis, for instance, will run on medium/low already w/ that setup you have. Bioshock will run around medium once everything's taken into account, the lower end of medium really.

It depends on how much you want to spend, but a 3000 dollar laptop now will be running games on low in 1.5 years, 2 if they're lucky. Especially with all this talk of the next generation of cards being released (9xxx series for NVidia, etc)

 

B.S. I have the Vostro 1500 with the 8600M GT, 2gb ram & a 1.6ghz C2D cpu. I played the demo version of CoD4 today and had no problems. You'll get at least a few good years out of the 1520 and save quite a bit of dough.

 

January is the expected due date for the 9 series nvidia cards. From the specs I've read, it's nothing super special, just faster clock speeds and more digits added to stream processors and such. Nothing to call home about but then again, they might have something up they're sleeve.

Bottom line, get the machine and enjoy it. My i1520, plays all the newest games. I had Crysis running at some high settings just fine with about 30-40FPS. Which was smooth as hell for some reason. UT3 ran perfectly maxed out. Haven't tried COD4 though, but would like to.

IT honestly doesn't matter how much you spend on a machine..because either way in 3 weeks to 6 months it's gonna be out of date.

Buy, and enjoy.

 

What resolution are you playing Crysis? I have it at 1280x800 and can only play at medium with my NP9260 (7950GTX)....

 

So you´re running Crysis at 30-40fps? That must be some very low options and a very low resolution.

 

Um.. I said at some high settings... and a mixture of mediums. At native resolution 1200x800 resolution. Only issue is the system heats up like hell. Frankly Crysis wasn't all it was cracked up to be.. More of a comic book look then realism. It reminded me of Farcry and Quake design style mixed together.

Glad I wasn't like every other sucker in the office and I know that ran out and bought $6000 desktop setups for the game.. lol 9 series is so close to..


Ah well enough said.

OP, like I said, enjoy w.e you get, because no matter what it is there will be a better one shortly after.

 

Call of Duty 4 runs just about OK on 1280x800 medium on my 8600GT. By that, I mean it's playable, and maintains above 25fps for the most part, but sometimes dips to about 21-22fps.

Crysis, played that too. 1280x800, medium-low. Didn't run great, about 17-40fps depending on what was going on. Was playable....ish. Depends on your standards. Remarkably, though, the game actually feels smooth at low FPS in the 18-20 range, which is something I've not seen before, despite all the ho-hum about Bioshock's apparent same feature.

 

Overclock that sucker and you're good to go. CoD 4 ran surprisingly well, many features on med-high at 1280x800.

 

Like he says, CoD4 will run decently. It's not that demanding of a game. The game has great visual appeal when running and gunning. Pause and look around, though, and you'll see why it's not bogging down your system.

As far as a few good years, that's relative. For wordprocessing and the like? Sure. For games coming out a year from now? Well "good" is relative if low settings are "good".

 

I've had good experience w/all 3 of those games. Crysis Single Player was beautiful at 1280 and yes ~30 fps, with about half the settings on high.

 

I dunno. 8600m GT will run *most* games in the next couple of years just fine. Not all shooters will be as demanding as Crysis, and the fact that the Crysis demo runs relatively well is a good sign. The full version optimized should run better.

I mean, I've been able to run lots of games on my wife's laptop with Xpress 1100 graphics. Resolution and features had to be turned down, but they ran and played fine. Games like C&C 3, Far Cry, BF2, etc. And that's an integrated card running games less than two years old!

 

Installing..

 

you got the full game already kewl, staying tuned for your review or any other info.

 

Yeah gonna take a bit of time to install. gonna put it in my review but I;m overclocking my gpu to play it at best possible res. Demo worked fine at 1680 x 1050. I'll play it on stock and see what settings are good for people who dont want to overclock.

 

Cod 4 plays very well on my asus G1S
Options on Max / almost all max and it plays really smooth

 

^ You have the full version too? I went to the store and the guy has it on the 360 and he got it yesterday. He spent 10 minutes going nuts over how good it was. One customer in the line behind me got mad and had to tell him to hurry the hell up.

 

Yea, I'm waiting and waiting to get cod 4
It comes out the 8th or the 9th here
(In Belgium)

The demo was great

 

9th here in the UK and if we pre-order its for £ 20

 

I should take part of what I said back. (Still standing by my *opinion* that running a game at all low settings is not "fine" to me) However, given that the hardware in an XBOX360 is not going to get any better, and Bioshock runs decently on my laptop, and there will be many more games that come out for both, there's probably not a better time to be a laptop gamer and have consistent success with an array of games over a period of a couple years.

Many games will be coming out and have come out with the UT3 engine and the 8600m handles those at basically medium (give or take based on how far the developer pushed it). Which is fine by *my* standards.

To each their own, but I'm not so certain anymore that a system purchased in the past 6 months won't last a couple years or more given the parallel game releases for 360 and PC.

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

And does anyone recommend installing XP instead of Vista? Won't Vista be a system hog?

 

yes, vista is, XP is better than vista for gaming speeds. but no DX10

 

Damn this game looks damn good and is very optimized. The graphics give Crysis a run for its money.

 

XP is better for gaming, but I'm running it in Vista just fine.

 

I've been playing all morning on my 1520 and I'm happy with the performance.... a year ago there was no way you could get such a decent gaming machine for the price.... buy it enjoy it yes it will go out of date.... welcome to the world of technology

 

I have a dell e1705 7900GS 256mb. Do you think COD4 will run fine on my laptop? Will upgrading the ram to 2gb or 1.5 gb help? Thanks

 

my 1720 with similar specs ran it perfect on default settings(All medium) and a 12x8 res

 

Yea, you should have no problem with that video card. You might get a couple of hitches if you have 1gb RAM as opposed to 2gb.

 

so anyone suggest i upgrade to 2gb ram from 1? Will this make a big improvement?

 

Yes, it will give you a significant boost. If you are using Vista, definitely make that upgrade...you will be glad you did.

 

mine is not vista but xp media center. will it also have the same effect?

 

8600m GT is more than capable of handling COD4. Trust me, I know after a 3 hour playing streak (wow that game is awesome)!

 

I was running the demo on a system almost identical to yours and had the game at 1650 res with details high med and kept the game above 25 fps.

Getting 2 gigs of mem would help a lot.

 

would disabling anti aliasing allow it to run smoother? it's already a very demanding game, and i can only play it in 1200x800. i played it in 1440x900 and the game crashed! i hope to be able to play the game when i play it, but yeah, if i can't handle the demo, then theres no chance for my system to run the full version.

what is ragdoll? what other things can i disable to make it run smoother?

2.2 core 2 duo
1gb ram (gona be 2 soon)
256 8600m GT

 

Disabling Anti Aliasing should definitely help framerates. Give it a shot. Also try to tune down shadows and shaders to see if it helps.

 

sssoo...its been over 3 months since that thread opened up and i am wondering if anybody know how this graphics card gonna fare in the upcoming games like Mass effect...Starcraft 2...Grand theft Auto V...and others that i dont know of yet...

Also...i am having a hard time deciding if i should just try to sell my couple of months old laptop for about $800 (loss of $300 from what i paid) and buy the Gateway FX which is sitting at about $1350....or wait around on my Dell laptop till it becomes extinct in a year or so and then invest in the latest laptop/PC....aaarrrgghhh decisions....

 

I think Starcraft 2 will not be very graphically intensive as it's an RTS and it's made by Blizzard.