What can I play decently with a Nvidia 520m + i5 2410m

Hey, basically I'm checking out this laptop: SAMSUNG 15.6" LED 6GB/750GB COREI5 - NP-RC520-S02U | Computing, Gaming & Digital | D.I.D Electrical

I've made a topic asking for advice about what notebook to buy in that section but I'd just like to know, what can I actually expect with this laptop?

I know that the card isn't meant to be good for gaming going by your website but I'm not expecting high end graphics. I mean, YouTube videos so it doing some good things like it running Batman AA, Star Wars TFU, LFD2, Dead Rising and so on but with a Intel Pentium P6200 and 4GB. So I mean... while the games aren't getting top of the range graphics, they look good to me and run solidly from videos I've seen.

So, all in all, with the 520m, i5 2410 and 6 GB RAM, do you think I could run console ports and some RTS games like Shogun in at least 1024x768? Cheers for any help.

 

If you have even a slight interest of gaming in mind, you should avoid that, 520M is VERY WEAK card, even weaker than a very old 9600M GT, which doesn't hold well against most of recent games on the market nowadays.

Even for a casual gamer, you should look for a laptop with Nvidia 550M/AMD HD6750 or better, as for CPUs, you will do fine even with a dual core sandy bridge i3, most laptop GPUs are too weak to be limited by CPUs.

And forget about those outrageous claims on youtube, many of them are often nonsense and straight up lies.

 

I dont know the value of computers in Euros, but you might be able to find something better for that price.

From what i gathered from the webpage im guessing your from Ireland?
You could get a Nvidia Geforce 540m in the same price league.

Asus 15.6" K53SV-SX152V - i5 2410M/4GB/640GB : K53SV-SX152V - Komplett

Look around and you might find a bargain.
Also i used Komplett.ie as an example as we got Komplett.no here in Norway and its by far one of the best online stores here.
Usually takes 1 day for them to deliver the goods i order too.

 

Yup, Im from Ireland. And trust me, the prices are very high for even low spec stuff. The problem is I hate the idea of ordering online. Mostly because of the fact that returns and even waiting for orders to be delivered can cause a lot of problems. I've been thinking of ordering on there as a last resort; they're not the best with deliveries, though.

Since you say they're popular in Norway, I was wondering if you have ever dealt with them with problems and if you could give an opinion on their customer service?

 

I cant say i had any dealings with their customer support, mainly because i newer had any problems with the tech i bought there.

While its more hassle sending back tech to a online retailer, its mostly due to how you want to send it back.
Komplett.no's main storage warehouse is located in Sandefjord, and its close enough for me to drive there if needed, so around one to two hours one way.

You should either mail them up or call them and enquire about how the manage returned goods.
But by all means, if you find a bargain notebook with decent specs at your local dealer then you can buy it there.

The notebook brands i used are Fujitsu-Siemens (Notebook overheated), i3 arrendale based eMachines (Owned by Acer, works very well) and HP (Buisness class models only, very well made).
Then ofc i got my Clevo P170HMx, my new favourite computer.

 

Right well I decided to go with one off of Komplett but am still stuck on what's a better deal. One one hand, this does look good since it has a 555m (though I have no idea what the type is) and it's got an i7: Asus 15.6" X5QSF-S1123V - i7 2630/6GB/750GB : 90N5FI2D9H5512VL133U - Komplett

But I'm not sure if it's worth the extra 130 over this:
Asus 15.6" X53SV-SX288V-NL - i7 2630/6GB/640GB : 90N3GYD45H2136VL133Y - Komplett

One thing, about the higher resolution screen, if I lower it to say... 1366x768 when gaming, will it be "bad" than if I got a laptop that had a native resolution of 1366x768?
Also, will the resolution make standard DVDs look better or is it Blu-ray/HD movies only that are affected by 1920x1080?

 

assuming that's about £600 looking at euro to gbp conversion... if you're looking at playing any games at all then, as the OP said, you'd want a graphics card with a bit more power behind it...

try configuring something here with a gt540m/gt555m

PCSPECIALIST - OptimusII Laptops, OptimusII Gaming Laptops, Build Your Own OptimusII Laptop

realistically will prob be able to get something for about the same price

 

although it's not a sure thing, 1080p screens are generally better dude... the 555m is a hell of a lot better than the 540m and can be overclocked to about the same performance as a stock gtx 460m (fairly high-end laptop graphics card) and am using the gt555m in my laptop at the moment... will play most high-end games at high to max settings at 720p ish resolution.

I used the same logic when I originally got a 1600*900 screen in this laptop as I just assumed I'd never play games past that resolution anyway, but replacing the screen made a hell of a difference to general picture quality/viewing area when using the OS/web browsing etc. I'd definitely go with 1080p

 

I'll be going for the 555m, I guess.

I'm just confused since there are actually different versions and I really have no idea what one is in the Asus laptop and the MSI one here:
MSI 15.6" GE620DX-297NL - i5 2410M/4GB/500GB : GE620DX-297NL - Komplett

BTW, is a 555m with an i5 2410 a lot worse than if it was an i7 2630?

Hey, if I'm playing at 720p, will it act like the native resolution is 720p? Or will I be sort of... making things worse by decreasing it from it's native one? And cheers for the help.

 

The 555m is powerful enough that the i5 might bottleneck before it, but it's a close call, and I'm no master..

And the 720p, it looks OK on a 15.6 inch screen, and you probably won't notice it. On a 17.3" it's very noticeable.

 

555m powerful enough? Hardly. check out this link, test shows even a 560M won't be bottlenecked by a i3-2310M, let alone i5. Intel Sandy Bridge Processors Gaming Performance: Part II - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Sandybridge CPUs are blazing fast, even the low end i3s will do wonders for gaming, most laptop GPUs will become the bottleneck WAY before CPUs, unless you got a system like i3+HD6990 CF/580M SLI.

 

That is very interesting. Wish I would've known and not payed the extra 100 for an i7.. will keep in mind.

 

If you're going for a dual core an i3 or i5 are more than adequate. Otherwise, quad core is a good investment for gaming since newer games are being programmed for multiple threads.

 

The 520 is very bad for any gaming my friend.
Here are some benchmarks but they are not pretty...
NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

you can run most games on LOW with low res besides fifa and games like that

 

Versions of the GT555M (ordered by performance)
•144 cores 709MHz (GF106), 128Bit GDDR5 z.B. MSI GX780
•144 cores 590MHz (GF106), 192Bit DDR3 z.B. Dell XPS 17, Alienware M14x
•144 cores 590MHz (GF106), 128Bit DDR3 z.B. Schenker XMG A501 / A701 (Clevo W150HRM / W170HN)
•96 cores 753MHz (GF108), 128Bit GDDR5 z.B. Lenovo Y570p / Y560p


thats stock performance, the version in the l702x I have is supremely overclockable so performs pretty well... and yeah, as the OP said you'll have no problem with bottlenecking.

looking at the list above it seems MSI may be going with the 128bit GDDR5 version with 144shaders and 709mhz graphics core. This is listed on notebookcheck as the most powerful (stock clocks) version of the card

but, reading some reviews of Asus laptops with the gt555m screenshots of system info show the bus to be 128bit with 144shaders, ddr3 memory and stock core of 590mhz. This card is listed as one of the lower versions of the gt555m but should be quite overclockable so it should suit you fine.

 

Would it be safe to overclock it though, since it's a MSI? I've never overclocked anything, ever. Since laptops tend to get hotter than desktops, would it be dangerous or anything?

 

well... that's upto you, but at the moment I'm running the dell xps 17 version:

144 cores 590MHz (GF106), 192Bit DDR3 z.B. Dell XPS 17, Alienware M14x

with the memory clocked from 900 to 960 and the core clocked from 590 to 760 and have a 1 or 2 degree increase in temp at most. It seems the MSI version is already running at 709mhz and I doubt it's a different graphics chip (all the top 3 are listed as GF106)

can't say "yeah, overclocking is safe" because there's always an element of risk but it did push my 3dmark11 score from p1300 to p1800 without any noticeable temp increases

which laptop did you decide on, the ASUS or the MSI?

 

Oh I got the MSI with the i5 and 555m: MSI 15.6" GE620DX-297NL - i5 2410M/4GB/500GB : GE620DX-297NL - Komplett
I read that the MSI one has the best version of the 555m so I firgured it was better getting that than whatever Asus has.

What I was wondering about overclocking was, is there a sort of "safe" way to do it? As increase the speed little by little and seeing if the temps are safe?

 

Check out my thread about the NVS 4200M (which is the Quadro-branded version of the GT 520M) for performance figures:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...20-gaming-guide-quadro-nvs-4200m-gt-520m.html

 

yeah, the MSI one looks to be pretty decent, already clocked to 709mhz and uses GDDR5 memory... only downside to it seems the 128bit bus rather than 192 but am sure the increase in clock speed along with the GDDR5 memory will more than make up for that vs the l702x card.

providing the graphics core in that gt555m is the same as mine then I can't see you pushing it much past 770mhz without some sort of external cooling but have no idea how fast you'll be able to clock the memory at (mine's DDR3 compared to your GDDR5 version).

Yes, the "safe" way would be starting at around the same sort of speed that someone else with the same laptop has done then working up or down by 10mhz or so at a time and stress testing with a demanding game for a couple of hours, monitoring temps and looking for any signs of instability (artifacts, screen flashing, the game suddenly dropping in performance due to the gfx card automatically clocking down)

I have no idea what speed the memory will run at in that version of the card but you can do the same thing and gradually increase + test

iirc the cards are stress tested to 100degrees but you don't really want the cards pushing past 85degrees on high load, if you find that happening then clock the memory down first and try again (memory tends to get hotter quicker and doesn't give as much of a performance increase as an overclock on the graphics core). Find the "max" overclock your gt555m then you could drop the clock speeds of the core and mem by 10-20mhz to find an overclock you're happy at running for long periods of time

look at it realistically though - any overclock has an element of risk, a slightly defective chip could run for years at 590mhz but fail at 600mhz for whatever reason, it's rare but it's possible... if you're playing games that work without issue at the stock speeds then it's up to you if it's worth going from 50fps -60fps+ The reason I overclock is to make games playable at high quality settings, getting crysis2 to run at "extreme" in dx11 for example I go from 25ish FPS to 35+ with the overclock in effect, taking it to the realms of "smooth and playable" in my eyes

 

Thanks for the explanation, there. I'm interested in what you said at the end, about the extra 10 FPS on Crysis 2. Would you say you overclocked your card a lot and got "lucky" or do you think you just overclocked it slightly? I'm just wondering since if it's a small amount and I can get mine working well, then I might give it a go.

BTW, does overclocking void a warranty (I know it's probably based on the warranty type but I'm just curious as to what most companies think of it). Speaking of MSI, I mean and not the place I bought it from.

 

I dont think overclocking for an MSI laptop voids the warranty but call them up, I know most other companies dont allow it.

but hey they help build afterburner >_> only makes sense for you to overclock haha

 

Hey, not a bad idea. I'll email them while I'm waiting, cheers.

 

A lot of people have the l702x with the gt555m graphics card. In the dell forums there was a thread started a few months ago dedicated to overclocking this card with people basically posting their experiences and speeds... a lot of people went with the 760/770mhz core (or higher) so I followed suit and found that it worked fine. I have overclocked it a fair bit, it's not a small overclock considering it's a mobile graphics card with limited cooling possibilities and it's being pushed an extra 170mhz on the graphics core, although only an extra 60mhz on the memory from stock speeds but the card seems very capable when it comes to overclocking and for the first few weeks I made sure to monitor temps etc.

the fact it can be pushed so far is likely to do with there being different "versions" of this card. The one in MSI laptops seems to already be running at 709mhz and I don't think this is a different graphics chip to the 590mhz version in the l702x. It's likely that the card in the MSI laptop was clocked up to negate the performance loss from a 128bit bus compared to the 192bit bus on the 590mhz version (or the other way round, the 590mhz version being clocked down)

Technically I'm sure that overclocking would likely void the warranty, but it's a software overclock. The gt555m is optimus enabled so most laptops use the integrated intel GPU and switch across to the gt555m when needed, if you somehow managed to fry the gt555m (and I highly doubt you would) then the laptop would likely still boot up and work fine until you went to use the nvidia card. Basically you could always just uninstall the overclock software/driver and a repairman would never know