Dell Inspiron 1501 - Graphics Card Question

Hello, I've just ordered a Dell Inspiron 1501 with an optional upgrade to 1 GB RAM. I was wondering what kind of games this POS graphics card can take.

"ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 with 256MB HyperMemory"

Thanks. Other specs are:

80 GB HDD
1 GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm
15.4 Inch Wide Screen XGA Display
Mobile AMD Sempron Processor 3500+

 

It's a midrange card that will handle games decently, especially if you use modded drivers. Spend on 2GB of RAM if you can, but do this aftermarket.

 

How about Counter-Strike Source? I have an R32 laptop that can play it (though a bit choppy, but playable). It's an old ass one, probably 2003 or something. 256MB RAM on it.

 

Umm.. that's not mid-range. At all. You'll probably be able to play games 3-4 years old but anything newer and it will struggle.

 

CS 1.6 I guess?

 

How do you figure? I also assumed modded drivers in my original post.

To put things in perspective for you - I ran Oblivion (intensive graphical game) on my current notebook, which sports 64MB dedicated + 64 dynamic memory to yield a total of 128MB. It way a weak experience, but I got 20 fps or so. Imagine doubling the total memory. Remember I ran Oblivion on really only 64MB of dedicated.

 

How the hell did you manage that? Care to hook me up with some drivers please? Thanks. Oh, and let me guess, I need to be running Linux? Can you post your complete laptop specs?

 

Actually, Oblivion can be run on a Go 6150 if you play with it enough. You have to install the Oldblivion patch, but it does play just fine (not very attractive, but fine).

 

You don't have to, but it might help.

 

You can probably play games such as Pac-Man, Pong, Dig-Dug, Frogger, Solitaire, and Asteroids, but you'll be lucky to run a current game or a game 3-4 years old at your laptop's native resolution. For the most part, yes, current and even 3-4 year old games will play, but they'll look like crap doing so. If you're desperate, just spend the money on a console and play games on it, your laptop is not made for it. (Just being honest).

-Josh

 

I've got a slightly faster version of your card (OCing FTW) and I'll tell you that CSS is playable at 800*600 medium settings with 40-50fps.

That should tell you the power of said card.

 

Thanks for all the replies. Where do I find these modded drivers, and just how old of a game are we looking at? I have an Intel duo core, GeForce 8800 GTS, 2 GB RAM and all the good stuff on my desktop computer, so I don't need to do my gaming on it. I was just wondering what kind of games could it play at a playable framerate? So you're saying 4 years old? HL 1, AvP2, all the goodies will riun then? And you said even the newer games will run but it will struggle, as in have poor framerates? If my R32 can play CS:S then I'm sure this one will at least play it a bit better. If anyone could confirm this, I'd appreciate it. Thanks again!

Thanks Adinu, but isn't that Over Clocked and *much* faster than what my card would be?

Did you over clock it yourself or was it store bought?

 

Not that much faster. The stock clocks of the x1100 is 300MHz core, and the x1150 (what u have) is 400MHz. So it's a good increase for mine, but not that much over yours. It's a 50% OC on mine, and only a 12.5% over urs.

I did OC it myself using winclk522. It was an easy bump up with no artifacting or heating up. You should be able to do the same for urs, but I doubt an extra 50MHz is gonna do a lot, but for me the 150MHz bump is more significant.

Also, I have 667MHz ram, I don't know if urs is that or 533. Since it's shared ram on the gpu, the ram clock will be that of the system ram.

 

LOL! The "Oldblivion" patch? If that's a spelling error, it's the funniest one I have come across in a while. I know my GeForce 6200 GO is OLD but sheesh...a patch for us old notebook users...

Linux always helps

 

So can anyone confirm this?

 

Actually it's not a typo - Oldblivion is designed for users who want to run the game on older hardware that might not be officially supported or even work at all, or in the case of the 6150, increase frames for a more playable experience.

 

No but I'd believe it all the same, I ran CS:S on my X200m with slow memory and it ran at 800*600 on a mix of low/medium.

 

That's great to know, thanks guys for all your help. If you have any suggestions on games that are playable, I'd like to know, I want to pack it full of them.

 

You could run pretty much anything from say, 2005 downwards. Half Life 2, Battlefield 2, Far Cry, Call of Duty....the list is endless, although titles like Battlefield 2 won't run at good settings, the rest will, and there are plenty of others that will too as long as you're aware of your limitations...some recent releases will also work, depending on what they are - C&C3 will work fine for example, but something like Call of Juarez probably won't...logical enough...

It'd be easier for you to name what games you want to play, and we can tell if they'll work or not, and if so, how well they do.

 

How about these games?

America's Army

Counter-Strike: Source (already answered)

Battlefield 2

GTA San Andreas

Doom 3

UT2004

Rigs of Rods
http://rigsofrods.blogspot.com/

Thanks Havok

 

Yeah they'd all run - BF2, whilst it would run, wouldn't be very pretty - but as long as you adjust settings accordingly, you'll have no problems playing any of thoes games smoothly.

Other then the Rigs of Rods...haven't a clue about that!

 

I played Doom 3 also, and at 800*600 medium settings I was getting 25-30 fps, but surprisingly it was smooth gameplay.

Idk why, but D3 works fine with 30fps, but in CSS or CS1.6 anything under 45 seems very stuttery (is that even a workd)

 

@OP - Your choice in a graphics card is just fine. Go ahead and order it.

This is what I thought it was.

 

I ordered it about an hour before I made this thread! I guess I wasn't thinking ahead. Well it's very good to know that because it was the only graphics card that comes with the Inspiron 1501.

 

Well, being able to run decently is one thing, but calling that card "mid-range" is another when there are so many cards that are better than it. Especially since most people buy for the future, I'd hate for someone to buy a card now thinking it's mid-range and it doesn't do much in the future in terms of cranking out a decent FPS. It won't scale as well to new games as other cards will.

 

no i have one and i can play empire earth 2 age of empires 3 and many others opt for the turion mk-36 or dualcores if you can

 

That's not true at all. I have an inspiron 1501 running the same graphics card, with a X2 processor and 2 gigs of ram, and I can run Team Fortress 2 decently on medium graphics settings at 1280x800 resolution. I'm even running vista home premium. I've had very good luck with my laptop, I'm very pleased. Although, if I could upgrade my graphics card, I definitely would...