will Intel GMA 950 be sufficient?`

I recently purchased a new dell xps m1210 and I'm very anxious for it to arrive. I was wondering if the integrated graphics which I bought will be sufficient for my needs. I will mostly be using this notebook for taking notes, instant messaging, email, writing papers, occasional DVDs, listening to music, and surfing the web. Battery life is a extremely important for me. I am not a big gamer and the only game that I would sometimes play is Halo. Nevertheless, I've heard various sources say that the integrated graphics card is not really any good even for basic tasks in vista. I'm no expert on graphics cards so if someone could tell me if I'm ok with the integrated graphics or not I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.
Here are the specs:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0o GHz processor with 4MB L2 Cache, 667 MHz FSB)
• Vista Home Premium
• 2GB Dual Shred Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667 MHz
• Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• 120 GB 5400 RPM SATA HDD

 

Now I don't have experience with the GMA 950 and Vista directly, but for the tasks you mention I can't see you having problems. Aero Glass needs hardware support, but it really isn't as demanding as a game.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3539

If you scroll down to the Vista performance scores above you'll see that there are an HP and Gateway system that both have less RAM and weaker processors than your system and they score a 3.1 which should be fine for Aero Glass.

For Halo, if you are talking the original version I don't see any problems either since it's such an old game. It's good that you have 2x1GB of RAM since that ensures there is extra RAM to share with the GMA 950.

 

Thanks a lot. Do you by any chance know how much memory you can dedicate to the integrated chip? I was thinking 128MB but I'm not sure.

 

Actually the GMA is not great with Halo, despite it's age. It will run, but the framerate won't be great and will be prone to dipping to unacceptable levels during intense sections

 

Well, I once tried Halo on an HP Pavilion with an ATI 200M with 128 MB dedicated and on another HP Pavilion with Intel GMA 950 and the GMA performed even better than I expected under Halo.

It ran at 800x600 with all settings to medium. The ATI could only go up to 640x480 with med settings. Framerates where so so on both systems but the GMA felt a bit more fluid. Another title I tried was NFS Most Wanted which "ran" on both but again, the GMA performed a bit better than ATI 200M.

I didn't ran any benchmarks on both since I was only "testing" how they will feel under such games.

Nevertheless, you should keep in mind that both cards mentioned here are the lowest-end in integrated video cards.

Best regards,
RayanMX

 

The GMA950 will run halo fine, as long as your willing to set everything to low, including resolution. It will also be OK for Vista.

 

http://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/applnots/30750801.pdf

Here's Intel's whitepaper on the implementation of shared memory on the GMA950, but you probably don't need all the details. In summary, there are several modes that can be set in the BIOS, but I'm pretty sure all the manufacturers use the same mode and this is pretty much the best option anyways. What it is is basically, 8MB of RAM is allocated to the GMA 950 at all times. When you are running more graphics intensive tasks, the driver will automatically allocate up to a total of 224MB of RAM depending on demand such as how much the graphics app really needs and how much RAM your other applications are demanding. That should be more than what the GMA 950 can really use, but the dynamic nature of the allocation and the fact that you have 2GB of RAM, means that it shouldn't have a big deterimental effect on other applications.

I should note that the above is true for the driver implementation on XP. The case should be very similar for Vista. The only thing is that by default, now Vista dynamically allocates system memory for GPU use for any graphics card not just low-end graphics cards. However, since the GMA 950 is already using shared memory, I doubt Vista would allocate anymore than the driver maximum.

 

Alright thanks. I still think I probably should have spent the $139 dollars for the better card, but I'm on a tight budget and it's good to know that I shouldn't have any major problems with the essentials tasks and processes.

 

Well if this helps some, a recent update pushed the max from 128MB to 224MB. No idea how this helps as my X60 is not my gaming PC.

 

It's fine, congrats on your purchase.

 

Well it might have been better to get less ram and a better video card. You can easily add ram in the future. If you want to you can return it to Dell within the first 30 days I think it is and get a different one.

The thing is usually the chokepoint is the gfx card, so to get a good processor and good ram, but a bad video card isn't a good idea, because the computer can't use the good ram and good processor when the videocard is slowing it down so much. It woudl be better to get a good processor, moderate ram and moderate gfx card. (you get what I am saying??).

This is mostly what I have learned from my times on this board (which isn't too great). I am not an expert by any means, but what I have said is true. And I have a feeling that although you think you'll only play halo, you might want to try somethign else out, and it would be nice if your new laptop could actually play it.

 

It has always been 224mb, not just recently...

 

wrez - Why did you decided to purchase the laptop first then ask the question later? Anyways, I just hope that you are happy with your purchase. Good luck.

 

It is a little silly to ask this AFTER you bought it however

 

Oh. Still, not my gaming PC.