Vista Graphical Concerns

I am interesting in buying an HP Pavilion dv2000t for college. I'm pretty much set on it as I have heard mostly good things about it and I love the styling. My question though is related to the graphics cards that can be put into it. I am wanting to put the dedicated Nvidia GeForce Go 7200 but I have read that it gets a lower Windows Experiance Index score than the Intel GMA 950.

Is the dedicated card that bad or are the drivers just not up to par with Vista yet?

Thanks

 

If you're only planning to run the AERO interface in vista, both the 7200 and the gma950 will do. However if you're planning to run games, the 7200 will be much better though it's still a very low end card.

 

Go7200 is two times more powerful, and would handle Vista Aero without problem. As long as you stay away from 3D games, you're good

 

Well, there's two answers to your question: 1) Yes, the drivers are that bad right now, but 2) It is a SLOW card (compared to other Nvidia cards). I don't know exactly why the WIE score is so low -- it always was throughout the beta, and new drivers really haven't changed that much. I'm not sure what exactly Windows is measuring to come up with its score, but the results don't really coincide with results from other tests.

Compared to the Intel GMA 950, the Nvidia Go 7200 is about 2 times as fast for gaming performance, though it depends on the game -- not awful performance, but nothing stellar. Both run aero fine, with no real problems. My advice is that if you play games or deal with high-def video or video editing, get the Nvidia solution and ignore the score. Otherwise the Intel solution is fine for Vista.

 

I will be playing some games on this and will be doing a little work with video and the like, but what I will be doing the most that needs a dedicated card to run better is Photoshop. I do a lot of photo-editing and image creation. I also dont want my RAM to be accessed by an integrated card just so I can watch video.

 

Based on your use, I would definitely get the Nvidia card and just ignore the score. Be aware though, that the Nvidia solution uses shared memory as well -- I believe it only has 32 MB dedicated, and then pulls additional memory from system RAM to make up whatever it needs.

 

Unfortunately both video cards are intergraded in some way or another. The Intel is 128 MB integrated and the Nvidia is like 32MB dedicated + 96MB intergraded. I choose the Nvidia as the lesser evil. It's hard to find a 14" laptop with it's own dedicated video card. I run video and Photoshop at the same time with no problem and seen no slow down. I haven't done any video editing through. It's all and all not a bad card. It also looks great when connected to an external monitor or an LCD TV.

 

Ok then. I've made my choice. I'll go with the less bad Nvidia. Thanks for the help guys. I'll have to post here when I get it.

 

Just a noob question, how do I add the other 96MB of RAM to the 7200? I tried searching, and couldn't find where to do it on a dv2000t home premium vista 32-bit. Thanks!

 

It should be in the BIOS under Advanced options.

 

I checked there, but couldn't find it. Plz help.

 

How much ram do you have? I have an ATI card and nVidia may be a bit different with memory allocation requirements, so it could depend on the amount of actual system ram before any futher amount is used for TurboCache.

In any event, there should still be a graphics card entry in your BIOS.

 

I have 1GB of Ram, and only 32 MB dedicated Nvidia Gefore 7200 video. I've heard that 96MB of RAM can be allocated to video.

 

What does Vista say your total system ram is? If it is under 1GB, then your card is already using the extra 96MB.

 

Right now it says 1022 MB of RAM, and besides, when I ran the Vista Upgrade Utility on CNET, it also only detected 32 MB of video from the 7200 GO.