Nvidia 8400M performance, general discussion

even though dell uses ddr2 for 8600M GT, it's still much faster than a 8400M GS

 

I just want to know two things
Doesn't this game support DX10?
Will I be able to run this game with good grahics and high frame speeds?

 

Is it at all possible to change a video card inside a notebook? I've never heard of it.. but can you? What if I wanted to stuff an 8600GT into an Inspiron 1420? Or what if they release a card small enough to fit in a 1420 later down the road?

 

It is possible, sometimes. In this case you could only do so if Dell later releases another card specifically manufactured for the same motherboard that's currently on the 1420. Since it's main selling point is being cheap and power effecient, I don't see that happening. Also read the following threads:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=41454
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=1562

 

The intel Core 2 duo T5450 is for the Santa Rosa chipset. It was released in Q2 2007 for OEM's only.

REF: Merom-2M

Model Number sSpec Number Frequency L2-Cache Front Side Bus Mult Voltage TDP Socket Release Date Part Number(s) Release Price (USD)
Core 2 Duo T5450 1667 MHz 2048 KiB 667 MT/s 10x 1.0375 - 1.3 V 34 W Socket P Q2 2007 OEM

 

Hey all,

I've just finished public school here in Denmark and am about to start on a new (high school-like) education. For this I'll need a laptop. I've been looking at two Dells, namely the Inspiron 1520 and the XPS M1330.

As I see it, the XPS M1330 would probably be a better choice, due to its smaller size (portability would be appreciated, though the Inspiron 1520 wouldn't be that bad either). Of course, I also think it looks great, which definitely isn't a con.

I can configure the two to pretty much equivalent configurations, except for the video card, where the Inspiron 1520 obviously has the upper hand (a 8600M GT). Now, I won't be doing any heavy gaming, but I do play World of Warcraft regularly, and would like for it to run well. I don't need max settings, but somewhere in the middle would definitely be nice (and of course I want to retain a decent framerate). Most importantly, however, I don't want the "freezes" I currently get when I enter virtually any major city (it's pretty bad on a GeForce Go 6100; integrated, I know, so I'm assuming either video card would be a step up?)

I'm basically looking for advice here. Should I go for the XPS M1330 and get a stylish, light computer at the cost of its video card; or the Inspiron 1520 which isn't as light or "purty," but has a significantly better video card?

(edit) oh, right, I'm most likely configuring either laptop with 2 GB RAM and a Core 2 Duo at 1.8 GHz.

Appreciate any help. Thanks in advance!

 

get m1330, WoW is already pretty old so 8400GS should do fine with medium settings. no experience tho.

 

The game runs pretty well on my go7400, there are a few times where it slows down, but still playable. I would think that you shouldn't have too many problems with your 8400.

 

You will be able to run the game fine with good gfx AND a good fps. Before I got my 1520 with the excellent 8600M GT.....I played CnC3 on my Vaio that had a GMA 950 and it ran on Medium just fine.

 

Could these games play well on a m1330?

Far Cry
Splinter Cell Seires
CounterStrike
Every star wars game ever made- and to be made
battilfield 2142, vietnam
Red Faction
If i played them, i'd only need medium settings

 

What GPU? Is it not X3100 or 8400m GS 128MB ? looks like maybe! Nice photo you are a handsome fella!

 

8400m GS 128MB, 2GHZ, 2GB ram

 

Low-med settings, probably a resolution below the native resolution, and low eye candy should give you playable frame rates.
CS is an exception- It would run fine on the highest settings...

 

so would they look pretty crappy? And what about upcoming Directx10 games?

 

DX 10 games are pretty much out of the question. No Crysis/ Lost Planet/ Alan Wake for the 8400GS. It is one step better than the very lowest, so....

 

Actually, since I can play those at high to max settings with my Sony (nvidia 7600), the 1330 should do the same to a little better...it has slightly better performance than my laptop on graphics.

 

I think Star Wars: X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter vs. Jar Jar, to be released in 2015, will probably not play all that great on the XPSM1330.

-Zadillo

 

The 7600 should be rather better than a 8400 GS. For one, it's got a 128 bit memory bus. Then, in terms of pure processing power, the 8400 loses ot. To top it off, it can't even beat the 7600 in synthetic benchmarks..

Have you tried any game on a 8400GS yet?

 

8600gt on the dell 1520 handle those star wars games aright?

 

I can't think of any Star Wars game currently out that the 8600M GT wouldn't be able to handle. The 8400M GS frankly should be able to handle most of them just fine.

I was just making a joke above (since you included "every Star Wars game to be made in the future")

There is an upcoming game, The Force Unleashed, that is probably going to be a bit more demanding though, but I don't know what the requirements are.

 

i searched over the net for the requirements of that game- couldn't find it either

 

Mine is almost the top of the line and there is not one benchmark that will say that the 7600 will beat dell's GDDR3 version of the 8400. Traditionally the 7600 would have the same performance of the 8500, if it existed; but the improvements on the 8xxx series is enough to have the 7600 equal to the 8400, regardless of the bus width.

The reason why the performance is better is because the 8400 has 3 more vertex shaders than the 7600...a built in cripple to the 7600 and lower. They both have the same number of pixel shaders, though.

 

The 8400M GT- yes. It would certainly better the Go7600. I am very doubtful about the 8400M GS, though. I have had a 7600 GT in my desktop, and have played on a friend's 8500(desktop, i.e.) It sucked, simply put.
I'll test out as many games as I can over the weekend, on my 1330. Will post the results so you can compare them to your Go7600.

And, er, brush up your dx10 knowledge. There are no VS/PS anymore. Dx10 is unified architecture. The 8400 has a total of 16 pipelines, as opposed to the 12/5 in the Go7600(and 16/6 in the Go7600GT).

 

Vista 32 bit reconizes 3.36 gigs of Ram, so at most, get 3 gigs, dont waste that other 60 bucks on another gig.

 

thats inaccurate.
8400M GS is not top of the line, 8400M GS is a budget card if you look at the entire PC gaming industry.

8600GT have 32 shaders, and a 7950GT have 24 shaders, by your logic a 8600GT should be much better. However in reality, 7950GT is a far more powerful card than 8600GT.

 

can a 128mb 8400gs with 2 gig of memory on vista play WoW w/o lag on native settings?

 

Yes, that shouldn't be a problem.

 

Yasutah or w/e, you should be able to play every game you listed on Max settings with the 8400 M barring any future Star Wars games. Anyone who say's you can't run games like Red Faction on Max is mentally challenged. A 4 year old game can certainly run on Max on a 8400M GS.

Question to other 8400M GS users: What driver are you using from laptopvideo2go?

 

Methodis: Red Faction doesn't work on nVidia 8000 series graphics cards, including the 8400 GS for laptops.

As for the drivers I'm using... 163.11.

 

better be able to play starcraft 2 at smooth framerates, and ill be happy thumbs up to blizzard for releasing games with low requirements

 

Hi, can anyone say how the 8400 GS with 128mb compares to a Radeon X700 with 256mb?

 

Well I meant in general anyways. A 6 year old game will certainly run more then "low to medium" settings :/.

 

Whats the benefit of running the tweaked drivers vs stock drivers that come with the laptop. I read up on the diff with the INF and such but can someone point out specific benefits?

 

The stock drivers are often quite old. Using a modded INF file allows you to install the very latest drivers on your laptop, even if your OEM doesn't officially have those new drivers available for your machine. Also, if you read the laptopvideo2go forum's, some drivers are known to work much better on certain games, so if there's a certain game you play alot, it might be beneficial to get a modded driver known to give good performance in that game.

 

Alright fellas.. for those who think that they can upgrade if dell releases a better version of say 8400 (so assuming they upgrade from GS it goes to GT) for M1330 or any other graphic card for w/e model you have, it's not really possible and here's why.

1:12:19 PM You would I be able to upgrade my video card if there is an upgrade available?

1:13:27 PM CA SALES Jeff 2280 Video Card upgrades in notebooks are difficult, and not supported by us.

And there you have it folks. The myth has been dismissed. Dell will not offer any upgrades from your current card even if they release a better graphic card for the very same notebook. So once you buy our laptop, you're pretty much married to it.

 

Well, first of all, everyone knew that if an upgrade was possible, it probably wouldn't be supported by Dell anyhow. So that's not anything new. Second of all, the real reason why an upgrade won't be possible, is that it's seriously doubtful that a chassis that small can handle the heat from a 128-bit card.

 

The 8400m GS is a great card regardless, much better then my desktops 7500LE. The 7500LE couldn't run STALKER with any lighting, and if I tried it, it'd take eleven minutes (literally) to load the game, with a playable rate of about 2 FPS. This laptop handles STALKER with lighting and takes about ~1 minute to load.

 

Maybe those who have a laptop with the 8400GS could show us some benchmarks and pictures of games so everyone can get an idea of how well the card performs with todays demanding games.

 

I can do it; is there a benchmark program I can run regardless?

 

Do you have any recent games you can try out? You can use FRAPS to record benchmarks of the frames per second. Or, I believe some game demo's, like FEAR and Lost Planet include built-in benchmarking programs.

 

I have STALKER, BF2 Complete, CoH, RCT3, The Movies, AOE3, HL2 (would rather not bother installing that).

Just request and I can grab some for you guy's.

 

Excellent
Try out STALKER, BF2, CoH, and AOE3 if you have time.

 

I don't have Photoshop installed so warning - huge pictures.

Company of Heroes, Low:
Settings:


Benchmark:


Quality:


Company of Heroes, Medium - High:
Settings:


Bench:


Quality:

 

Wow, very nice pics
What setting did you prefer playing at?

 

Well, I haven't configured it to my liking yet, but I'll say probably the higher of them since it's not that bad of a performance drop.

 

nice, any more screens

 

I'll take some tonight or later tommorrow in BF2 + STALKER. STALKER runs beautifully though and BF2 is so far so good.

 

okay thanks, cool. I'm thinking of upgrading from my current laptop to this one, the only difference being the graphics card and i don't know if I should or not.

 

running cs 1.6 and CS:S on 100 fps? because thats really the only games I play,and is the GMA X3100 good enough for 1.6 running 100 fps?

 

um...... why do you want 100 fps?,

but to answer ur question......maybe it might on lower settings (i think)