Decent Inspiron 1525. Some gaming possible?

Alright so on the 19th I finally ordered my first laptop.
I went with 1525:
Street Pattern Lid
2.0 GHz (677 MHz or whatev front bus)
3 Gigs Ram
Vista Basic (Going to try to put my old hard drive with xp in it, is this possible? I know lots of drivers are needed..)
X3100 Intel Media Graphics Accelerator
80 Gig 5400 rpm hd ( I don't need a lot of space.. I have a 200 gig at ome on desktop with only 35 gigs used.. with both ubuntu and xp installed)

Basicly what mainstreamish games can I play?
and can somebody answer the question aabout the xp hardrive?

 

You can play most pre 2005 games at mid settings, but anything after 2007 is pushing it.

 

Gaming is not going to be stellar with the X3100.

 

If I'm reading this right, you are hoping to put a desktop HDD in to a laptop? I doubt that will work, as drives for laptops are different form factors from desktop drives. Desktops use 3.5" HDDs whereas laptops use 2.5". Unless you have a non-standard HDD in your desktop, you'd need to mirror your desktop HDD in to a laptop HDD to get the effect you are looking for.

 

Half life 2 (probably not the episodes), grand theft auto san andreas, far cry and anything else similar should work just fine If you want to know about a specific game.. Just google it Good luck with your new laptop

 

X3100 is not intended for gaming. Don't expect miracles. At high resolutions you'll probable experience a major drop in FPS due to insufficient bandwidth. 800x600 at medium details - this will be the playable configuration for most games. However, I have some doubts whether Far cry will run smoothly. Half life 2 will be played fine.

 

No. He is giving an example of how little space he is using in his old computer.

 

i think you can play CS

 

Alrighty thanks for the info.
Theres always WoW : ]
The example of the desktop hard drive was to show my space usage.
The talk of putting old harddrive I meant from my old Sony Vaio laptop.
I *hate* vista but don't want to go and buy XP if I don't have to.
Can I put my old hard drive in and boot xp (i know drivers will be needed)

 

Personally, I'd rather copy over all the data from the Sony HDD, format that drive, and reinstall XP with fresh drivers if you are moving it to a new laptop as the primary/boot volume. However, that might not be an option seeing as you have a Sony, and companies like that don't tend to give you install disks for windows. If you can't reinstall on a fresh drive due to such concerns, I would say...it would make for an intersting experiment to transfer your drive over.

The other things I would concider are your warranty for your new notebook and its physical constraints. Find out how both are impacted by and impact what you want to do.

 

I expect Solitare and Minesweeper to work well on low graphic settings.

 

Dawn of War (all versions including the expansions) will work ok as well in the native resolution.

My mate has a HP Compaq with an Intel GMA (not sure which but it's a fairly recent laptop so it could be the same as the OP's) and his runs DoW + expansions in mostly high settings with low shadows and a couple of other bits set to low...

 

I take it XP was preinstalled on the Sony. If so then no you cannot just put the OEM XP license onto another machine. You would also find the harddrive will probably refuse to boot into windows as it was configured for different hardware and there will almost certainly be problems with drivers being required. This may all be redundant anyway as your new laptop probably has a SATA harddrive whereas your sony probably has an IDE harddrive. Totally different interfaces and will not physically fit.

 

Ohhh... really??? (sarcasim) lol...

 

Yeah, it should work. About 25 FPS on low. The mine explosions are extremely graphically demanding.

 

Css runs full speed at highest settings, Tf2 runs good at mimial resolution, Crysis IMPOSSIBLE. COD4 Works at minimal resolution. Trust me, i have a inspiron 1525

 

I'd say go with a laptop with at least an 8400gs.

 

I would like to see CS:S maxed out on an X3100.

That would make my day.


Keep in mind, "highest settings" means native resolution, HDR, All high, 16x AA, 16x AF.

 

It does run full speed like that. Css is not at all A Demanding game.

 

Those settings bring my 8400GS to a crawl. I'd also like to see an X3100 getting 30+ fps with "HIGHEST" settings.

 

Come on man. My 8800M just pulls off those settings, my 8400M GT OC'd can barely touch AA past x4.