Dell Inspiron 6000 for gaming ?

Hi

I'm considering buying a new laptop this summer, and a dell laptop is my favorite option. I've read great reviews about the inspiron 6000, and how great its battery power is, and I can buy it jam-packed with features at a great price from dell.ca.

I'd like to know more about its gaming capabilities; despite the great reviews, they all point out that its not great for graphics instensive applications, and it did not show great results with the cnet lab tests with UT 2004. But all these opinions and reviews are based on a 1.6 Pentium M system with the intel integrated graphics.

Has anyone read a review or actually know how it ranks up with the new option of an ATI Mobility Radeon x300 with 128 MB DDR, and up to 256 MB of shared?

Thanks
yazz

 

Its 128 MB of dedicated memroy, and up to 256 MB shared ...


* I'd appreciate any feedback from anyone who owns the 6000d on how it runs games like Doom 3, NFS underground 2 and HL 2

 

X300 isnt all that great some versions of it offer Shared, and dedicated solutions, Shared is horrible for Gaming. Look for totally dedicated graphics and not Half and Half.

 

2nd that

 

Integrated graphics wouldn't run the game very well, if at all. The x300 would be a lot better, and could run it at decent frame rates.

 

Hey guys, just bought a I6000 for $1300. I also bought Half Life 2 and am just waiting for Dell to complete the order and ship it to me! The specs I picked out are:

Pentium M 760 2ghz / 533fsb
512MB Ram (400) - I'll be upgrading this myself, wasn't worth the dell price.
60GB 7200rpm HD
ATI X300 PCIe 128mb Dedicated Card

I looked relatviely hard at what processor to pick with it, and I saw that the 760 was probably the best bet for gaming. I found some great tests, if I can find all the links I'll edit them in. This one (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2342&p=15) puts the Pentium M in a desktop setting against other desktop processors. It's suprising to see that this pentium m, while in a desktop environment, beat out the Pentium 4 3.4ghz processor in some games and came very close with others. Will report back once I get to test it out myself.

 

If you want a good gaming machine it would be better to get a good graphics card instead of a good processor. Most games rely on graphics cards, and not on processors hardly at all.

 

Yeah, but more or less, in notebooks, you need a good combo of both. In games, the higher the processor the better the FPS (along with the better video card as well). There really isnt much of a choice for video cards anyway, atleast from Dell. You can always try and install a better one later on.

 

Even so, it would be more worth it to spend the money on upgrading ram or hd speed than processor speed for gaming.

 

I just posted a thread asking advice on how to soop up my gateway desk top because i want to install the "nvidia geforce 6800 ultra" I have a good video card now also by nvidia. but although i am not close to a pc surgeon i can tell you it is about your graphics card and ram. there is nothing more frustrating than crashes while playing,not to mention annoying lag. but of witch come from not enuf PC etc. to run the game smoothly and seamlessly.
bigtyme

 

Actually, Happysquidman, benchmarks have shown that Half-Life 2 (And probably other games based on the Source engine) are CPU Limited. And the UNREAL Engine also needs plenty of CPU Power.

 

just search the forums a bit for x300 and Half life or couterstrike source.

I currently play half life 2 and CS SOURCE (on a 32 player server) at default settings and 1024x800 widescreen on my x300 128 pentium m 730 512mb dual channel DDR2 standard ram.

I get about 40-60 FPS range, usually 60 but every now and then if there is alot of smoke or intense action, it could go down to 40 or 30 which is still incredibly playable. It also runs fairly well with 2xaa and 2xaf, but it runs much smoother by lowering the texture quality down a bit to medium or so.

i am a hardcore gamer, I didn't expect much from the x300, and i came out very pleased with it. It is more than enough for playing todays games at their standard or medium settings. Next gen games, probalby only at lower resolutions...but that is very far away from now.

 

A 1.6 ghz PM processor will be fine for basically all games. A 2.0 ghz one isn't really necessary.

 

Well, when buying a new computer/laptop, I want it to last a while. It seems that whenever I bought a new computer, it would be good for a year, maybe two, and then it starts where the minimum specs are getting higher and higher, to the point where you really can't play games like they are supposed to be played. Something that might be sufficient now, most definatly will not be within two years, while something that is amazing now, will hopefully be sufficient within two.

I've found it better to first get the best processor rather than better ram, simply because RAM can always be upgraded later, years later actually. Ram is definatly a big big part of playing video games, but don't buy it from Dell. Newegg.com has 1gb PC4200 (533) for $115, while Dell has an upgrade from 512mb ram to 2x512mb ram (400) for $100. That is why I brought up the subject of processors instead.

With the video card, I've heard that the ATI x300 is sufficient enough, though I wish they did offer a better one for the 6000.

 

Well, I've been running several games on my i6000 from Dell, and I have to say that I'm impressed. My system, with 1 Gig of RAM and the included graphics card, is working much, much better than my desktop, which had 512 MB of RAM, and a brand new nVidia GeForce 128 MB graphics card in it...I wouldn't worry about not being able to play most games, although I'm sure something like Doom 3 would stress the hell out of it, but I haven't tried anything above Command & Conquer: Generals on the highest settings.

Dell I6000
15.4" WXGA
Pentium M 715 1.5 GHz
1 Gig DDR2 SDRAM
60 Gig HD / 9 Cell Battery
Win XP Home
__
Ahh, doughnuts; is there anything they can't do?
--Homer Simpson

 

Well, I recieved my laptop yesterday, and I must say I'm impressed. I've been running far cry, world of warcraft, and some other games great. I'm definatly going to upgrade the ram, 1g will help running the highest quality alot. I can run them now, but it is a little slower than one step below. Overall, very very happy.

 

Yeah, I haven't heard too many complaints about the i6000 for gaming, it's really good. I've been playing Rise Of Nations (on max res) on my LAN for a couple of days now, and if anything, there's the once-in-a-lifetime one-second wait for my desktop to process something, the laptop is always ahead of itself!

Dell I6000
15.4" WXGA
Pentium M 715 1.5 GHz
1 Gig DDR2 SDRAM
60 Gig HD / 9 Cell Battery
Win XP Home
__
Ahh, doughnuts; is there anything they can't do?
--Homer Simpson

 

I have an I6000 with 512 mb DDR2, the 1.5 ghz pentium M, and the 128 meg x300 PCIe card, and I've actually been a little disappointed with the gaming performance, even compared to what people with near-identical systems have said. I can play UT2k4 on ABSOLUTE lowest settings (resolution included, so it's 640x480) and the framerate is decent most of the time, but it still gets frequent jitters bad enough easily notice and distract. I played the first Splinter Cell game fine and high settings, but it's rather unimpressive anyway. CS:Source can be played at ABSOLUTE lowest settings again, resolution and everything bottomed out, and it runs decently on a near-full server, still with the occasional jitters. Star Wars Republic Commando (by the way an excellent game), cannot be played in single player even at lowest settings, but the multiplayer, which has considerably less video effects, can be played very well, although at the lowest settings it doesn't look very good at all. World of Warcraft, now there's a game that absolutely CAN NOT be played on my 'top. At absolute bottom settings, the frames are down under 20, and it constantly skips. I have considered that perhaps there's actually something wrong with my system, because several games seem to run well, but still skip every several seconds, as though it can run the game fine but just craps out periodically not because of an increase in graphical requirements at a certain stage in a game, but because of some defect. Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?

 

Baddox, are you sure you even HAVE an ati x300 in your 6000? Maybe u are talking about battery performance or something? Because you are dead wrong about the x300 128's capabilities on CS Source

I play CS Source at medium settings, 1280x800, on a 32 player server and I get around 40-60 FPS

 

Is the x300 soddered onto the 6000 board or is it replaceable with another PCI-E device such as the Go6800.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by lesarrow

 

See, I just installed LOTR: Battle For Middle Earth on my i6000, been running it on High settings, and I'm getting very good results, although there are some moments when I'm loading a saved game when it starts to lag a little until the computer can get it's wonderful 1 Gig of DDR2SDRAM up and running at full. But the game runs flawlessly, short load times, never lags in actual gameplay, and I've never had a problem. Soon going to install C&C: Generals and see how that works.

 

Hi, I know this is an old thread. But all of the questions for gaming on the Inspiron 6000 aren't dead yet. I have an I6000 with a 64mb X300 in it and was curious if there is any way to get that upgraded to a 128mb or better. If anyone knows can they get me the link?

Thanks

 

Yea, you can upgrade to the 128MB version that they used to offer with the i6000, although I am not sure the best process to do so. You cannot upgrade to anything better. Perhaps contact Dell. I know you can find the cards online at e-Bay, but maybe Dell can get you a new one. Hope that helps.