SZ 6 Series: Gaming?

Anyone play any games with their sz 6 series? This line has a fantastic nVidia card, but only 64 mb. According to systemrequirementslab.com I can't play any of the newest games even on the minimum settings on my 691n/x. I'm trying to decide whether to get a new wireless mouse for my notebook or if I'd be better off buying a new videocard for my desktop.

I've heard of others running bioshock on an sz, but perhaps an older model with 128 mb. Anyone have any input? Any gamers want to list any newer games their sz 6 will adequately run?

 

Downgrade from Vista to XP and systemrequirementslab.com will now say you have 256MB of VRAM instead of just 64MB (cos XP doesn't need as much RAM as Vista, so the unused RAM can be allocated to the gfx card)!

I had Unreal Tournament 3 on it when running Vista, and it ran quite well, but not perfect. However I think it would run perfectly under XP!

Then when I installed XP I also installed The Orange box and completed Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2 and Portal. All of them ran VERY smooth!

I am now in the middle of playing Call of Duty 4 and it runs very smooth too!

Change from Vista to XP...it makes a HUGE difference!

 

As much as that sounds great (and believe me, I thank you for the information and do sincerely appreciate it), I'm too damn stubborn to do that. I hated XP from the moment it came out. It's the Fisher Price toy of operating systems. Aside from the fact that it uses more resources and not every piece of outdated hardware is supported I don't know why anyone complains about Vista. I actually can't imagine going back to xp. I installed vista (on my desktop that I built back in 04) just a bit over a year ago. It boots faster, runs smoother, and looks much nicer than xp.

 

Vista...boots faster and runs smoother than XP???

I think your in a dream world mate! XP SP2 is extremely reliable, robust an a lot quicker than Vista!

Put it this way...

Windows 98 had 20 million lines of code

Windows XP has 35 million lines of code

Windows Vista has 50 million lines of code

The more lines of code, the more complex and demanding the OS/application. So when you say your PC is quicker with Vista I think that its all in your head.

If you installed a fresh copy of XP SP2 and timed it, then did the same with Vista, the Vista installation would DEF be slower.

And I timed my machine to boot up when running Vista, and have done the same with XP.

The XP installation loads 40 seconds quicker than the Vista one! With all the same apps, startup progs, etc, etc!

Dont take offence mate, Im just stating that when you actually time it, XP is quicker, even if Vista "seems" quicker to you....

And some of my apps wont work in Vista, hence the move to XP. That and the fact the Vista crashed on me an I almost lost all my stuff! Luckily I managed to back it all up before formatting, however I got about 1,000,000 errors every time I boot up Windows after that crash!

 

The GPU that you have right now contains 64 MB of dedicated VRAM, and that's all that really matters. In both Vista and XP, the system can dynamically allocate shared RAM to the GPU, however, the shared RAM operates much slower than the dedicated RAM and will not help performance much.

The difference in framerates between Vista and XP is maybe 3-5 FPS. The important thing is keep drivers up to date.

 

Yes it does operate slower than the dedicated VRAM, but it def does improve performance, and it is noticeable.

 

For a 8400m GS, anything above 128 Mb will be near useless. And that's for dedicated VRAM. Clock speed is much more important at those levels of RAM.

 

XP the fisher price of OS's, then along came Vista the Teletubbies of OS's!!!

 

It serves gaming quite well. If you use the right drivers (169.04xp) overclock and you will get good performance even if it only has 64mb dedicated ram (GDDR3/600mhz) compared to 8400M GS models with 128mb dedicated ram (GDDR2/400mhz).

If you get the SZ with the LED backlight it also helps to improve the game experience picture clairty and contrast. I recommend using XP as well, since this is a low-end card you will want to reduce any extra load on the card as much as possible.

I`ve been fairly content with the performance of Rainbow Six Vegas, Oblivion and Colin McRae DiRT on this machine as it been a nice improvement over the SZ previous Geforce 7400 Go graphics. I am starting to see the plus of Vista, only because of DX10 thou as i notice PCSX2 with GSDX in DX10 mode will run some games a lot faster.

 

And yes Vista does boot faster on my machine. While it may take longer to load all the startup programs that I desperately try to keep to a minimum, elapsed time to the login screen is almost half that of xp. While some of my older hardware pieces are not supported in vista I've found that it runs much more stably than xp. No random freezes or lockups in games. No erratic behavior with media or public folders. I realize that I'm biased and stubborn, but I really have HATED xp since it's release.

Still I hear you when it comes to increased performance in games. Makes perfect sense. The deal with dx10 only running on vista is very unfortunate as well.

 

The one complaint that is driving me nuts with vista... why does it take me song long to get connected to a wireless network???

 

Whats long for you? I usually get connected within 10 sec from the comp becoming usable. Bt works all the way from start.

 

try this...

Taken from here.