Dell Graphics options...

Hi all.....I'm looking at some of the newer Dell options in the Inspiron and Studio lines.
I'm a little confused about the graphics card options...
It seems like the two cards you can upgrade to are the Radeon HD 4330 (256MB) and the HD 4570 (512MB).

The thing I'm a little confused about is that my 7 year old Dell Inspiron laptop has a 8600M GT card in it, and according to the following webpage:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4570.13885.0.html

my 7 year old card is just as fast as these two newer cards! Am I reading the chart wrong?? Does it perhaps not take into consideration the amount of RAM on the newer cards (does it make that much difference?)??

Thanks!

 

Your inspiron is not 7 years old. the 8600M came out in 2007.

EDIT: sorry forgot to mention, yes the chart may be also wrong.

But it is worth upgrading from the 8600m to an ATI GPU because the 8600m is known faulty.

 

agreed.

and not early 2007 either. that was the summer.

 

I just went and looked in my email for my invoice from Dell. When I ordered my Vostro 1500, I had the option of 8400GS or 8600GT.. That was in Sept, 2007.

But the real question here is.. Do you have a time machine, and if so, can I use it?

 

hah yeah- i'm also curious about how you thought you 8600m gt came from 7 years ago (2002-2003)

that was geforce 4-5 / ati radeon 9000 series era

 

OK OK, will double check and post back shortly!

 

Well you're not totally out of sync despite the timeline issues

Dell cut the graphics options on the Inspiron line since they wanted to move the whole line into a "budget" segment of the market. The Studios were a bit higher grade and the Studio XPS are the top grade of the consumer market.

Now, the HD4330 will perform worse than your current 8600M GT, but the HD4570 should perform similar if not slightly better(despite the bus width) if the resolution is kept lower. Nonetheless if I was considering an upgrade in graphics, the HD4670 from the Studio XPS 16 would probably be the most noticeable.

 

OK, just checked, my service tag is B43VH41.
When I look at the driver selection on the Dell site, it doesn't even list a card with '8600' in it, although I really thought that was what mine had, thought it was an 8600 with the letters GT....
The laptop is from 2003 I believe.

 

Have you tried downloading GPU-Z to tell you which GPU you have? I know some of the older Inspirons came with 8600M GTs as a few of my friends have those.

 

Heh. I know what the problem is.

You own a Inspiron 8600.

Not graphic card 8600. Your graphic card is a ATI 9600 Mobility, probably Pro, and you bought it in 2004.

 

Nice catch dtwn.. I bet that's it.

 

Oh it is, I checked the service tag.

Plus I used to own one.

Until Eurocom lost it.

 

Stupid Eurocom.. From what I've read, things haven't improved much.

 

Well, they accidentally recycled it. :laugh:

But that's off topic.

 

But when I check the service tag, and go to video drivers, it lists like 5 different card models...no?

 

Dell provides options for various cards when ordering, much like you mentioned for the new Dell in your original post. You should be able to just go to device manager, and it will tell you the card you have.

 

Try your service tag here.

If you look at the model type, it states Inspiron 8600. Click on system configuration, and you'll find that there are two lines stating

If you google ATI M10 or the part numbers, you'll find links like this one.

http://www.ambry.com/page/search.asp?partnumber=F3515

The hardware configuration of your 8600 is almost identical to mine, except I use the UK keyboard, and I had a 1.6Ghz CPU. Aside from that, I also got the 9600 Mobility as well as the modular bay for the compact diskette. (Saved my life when I was in Thailand).

 

OK,ran the GPU-Z utility, it says I have a ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo.
Does that utility just look at device manager, or is it really looking at the card itself?

Not sure why I thought I had a 8600 card...

 

Because the machine is a I8600?

The utility attempts to look at the card, which is why sometimes newer cards are not recognized (yet).

 

I recommend the ATi 4570 found in the Studio 15. I owned one, and even the 256MB version was more than capable of most games. The week before the laptop died on me, I was playing MW2 and Left 4 Dead 2, both very new games, quite comfortably.

That said, the 4330 in the Inspiron is actually the same card as the 4570, just underclocked. With an overclocking utility, you can get it to basically "become" the 4570.

 

i recommend the studio 17 at least with an ATI 4650... u can play many games on high with this and it isn't crippled like the 4570...

 

You sure you don't mean the 4530?

 

inspirons have 4330.

 

The 4570 is not crippled. I'm pretty sure if a GPU can play Modern Warfare 2 at 720p resolution with all high settings and get a consistent comfortable frame rate, it fails to qualify as "crippled".

Nope, the 4330 and 4530/4570 (at least the Mobility versions) share the same core.

 

I think by "crippled," he meant crippled by the 64-bit memory bus.

I do agree that the Mobility HD4570 is a very good card today. I wish my Studio had that instead of the HD3450.

Off topic: Mastershroom, how did your new Studio die? I thought you got it new from the system replacement?

 

It does pretty well for itself despite the 64-bit bus width. It's somewhat compensated for by the fact that the memory is GDDR3.

Cause of death is unknown, but it failed to work after I tried swapping the CPU, memory, and hard drive. That pretty much leaves the GPU or the motherboard itself.

And it was refurbished when I got it, and only carried over the leftover warranty from my 1535, which expired in September.

 

Oh I'm sorry to hear that... After all the troubles you've had with Dell, they ended up giving you another lemon system.

I don't believe the HD4570 has any defects though ... I was all set on getting an 8400M GS until the nVidia problems came up.

 

Damn, I suppose my 3650, which was a fairly good card when I got it, is now beaten by a budget Inspiron.

 

I wouldn't say that. The 3650 is still a pretty capable card, and I'm quite certain it beats the 4330, and is probably somewhat better than the 4570 as well, although its hard to say. Your 3650 has DDR2 memory, but a 128-bit bus width...the 4570 has GDDR3 but only 64-bit bus width.

 

I was just browsing at the Asus G51VX laptops with the GTX 260M card. It seems to score about twice as high in the 3D test compared to the higher end cards that Dell offers in the Studio line.
Is there really -that- much noticeable difference???

 

The GTX260 is a high end notebook GPU while the HD4570's are mainstream GPUs. The Dell Studio line isn't a performance system like the Asus G51VX.

 

Understood. Just wondering what dfference someone would notice when playing a game like flight simulator.

 

You would, but for flight simulators, they also tend to be relatively heavy on the CPU, so if the GTX260m was coupled with a relatively weak CPU, you might wind up being limited by your CPU rather than the GPU.

 

Yeah, it depends on the game really. Flight Simulator won't gain quite as much going from the ATi 4570 to the GTX 260M as, let's say, Modern Warfare 2.

 

For the best and chepest gaming option , i recommend having an ASUS G51J with Core i7 processor , NVDIA GTX260M , full hd screen etc... It $1499 and u can get it cheaper on some online stores... You can play most games on max details and max res.... for future proofing , it's worth the cost if u can afford it.

 

Probably better than the 4330 and 4530, but it's only just behind the 4570. It actually scores worse in 3DMark06.