taylort232 Posted April 8, 2008 Report Share Posted April 8, 2008 I have a Vostro 1500 with an 8400M GS. My ratings are below. Is that normal for this video card? I am using the lated 174.xx drivers, and have been looking around on the internet, and have seen people getting 4.1's for their aero graphics rating using the 169.xx drivers, and was wondering if I should look at using those. I've seen a few posts on the 8400M series, but haven't found anything about this, but sorry if this is a repost. CPU: 4.6 RAM: 4.8 Graphics: 3.4 Game Gfx: 4.5 HDD: 5.4 Specs: Vostro 1500, C2D T5270, 8400M GS, 5400rpm HDD, 2gb DDR2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Photonboy Posted April 8, 2008 Report Share Posted April 8, 2008 (edited) I have a Vostro 1500 with an 8400M GS. My ratings are below. Is that normal for this video card? I am using the lated 174.xx drivers, and have been looking around on the internet, and have seen people getting 4.1's for their aero graphics rating using the 169.xx drivers, and was wondering if I should look at using those. I've seen a few posts on the 8400M series, but haven't found anything about this, but sorry if this is a repost.CPU: 4.6 RAM: 4.8 Graphics: 3.4 Game Gfx: 4.5 HDD: 5.4 Specs: Vostro 1500, C2D T5270, 8400M GS, 5400rpm HDD, 2gb DDR2 This seems to be correct. Your video card is not meant for high-end games at all. It is however fairly efficient at running Vista and has the video transcoders, which when used with the appropriate software takes the load off of the CPU. Nero (with BD/HD plugin) and PowerDVD are examples for BluRay (and HD-DVD) but we should see free software which uses the hardware video decoders even when the movie isn't in BluRay format such as AVC-HD with the Matroska container. There are still a number of games you can play. I recommend getting the free program FRAPS and trying a few demos to see where you stand. The upcoming game "Starcraft 2" will be very scalable and although you won't be able to play close to full graphics you might be able to play at an enjoyable graphics setting. Whereas you might play Warcraft 3 just fine, I doubt you could play World of Warcraft at acceptable graphics. Command and Conquer 3 is another really scalable game so you might be able to play it at a graphics quality and frame rate you find acceptable. You just might want to try Neverwinter Nights (#1) a shot; if you like the genre it's very well coded and looks great even on lower-end machines. For your next laptop, a feature that should hopefully be available is "external PCIe" which enables an external graphics card solution to be plugged in to the laptop. I'm looking for this in a desktop in the future as well as the ability to toggle between an efficient onboard video chip and the graphics solution. ATI/AMD has, or is close to releasing the latter. Again, there are fun games out there that your laptop supports just not the latest high-end graphics ones. Even my new HD3870 512MB cringes at some of those. My dad has the 8600M GS 512MB and I've read a lot of reviews so I know where you stand. -Don't sacrifice frame rates for extra quality. -Use FRAPS when setting up a game (shooters>30FPS; top-down RTS>20FPS + no "jerkiness"; use the on-screen FPS and the timed Benchmark feature) -Always play a Demo first. -NVidia site doesn't yet update laptop drivers. Only your manufacturer does, though there has been a push by a lot of people to get this sorted out because driver support is usually stopped prematurely. *Definitely, definitely keep an eye out in the future for video driver updates. -there is a noticeable difference between XP and Vista for many games (up to 20% higher on XP but most are 5% difference) -there are still noticeable video glitches such as audio/video synch or high cpu usage, mostly with high definition video. Vista Updates (Microsoft or Windows Update) as well as updating video codec packages ( www.free-codecs.com) are slowly solving this. (Ex: a "1280x720" AVC video might play using 70% CPU in Vista and 30% on the same system using XP as well as having audio synch issues in Vista. Eventually, the CPU usage will drop to about 35% and then even lower with software that utilizes NVidia's video hardware decoders.) Good luck and have fun. Edited April 8, 2008 by Photonboy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hustler819 Posted April 9, 2008 Report Share Posted April 9, 2008 What did you use to get those rating ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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