Graphics Card Advice

dartsfan

Hi,

I'm looking for a bit of advice on purchasing a new graphics card for my Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop as I know very little about them.
According to dxdiag my graphics card is an NVidia Geforce 8400 M GS with Approx Total Memory of 1392MB.

The System Requirements for the game I'm about to purchase are:
Nvidia FX 5900 Ultra or greater; ATI Radeon 9800 or greater; Intel 82915G/82910GL or greater.

Is my card "greater" than these?
If not, can anyone recommend a decent card I can upgrade to that would be up to scratch for other games now?
Thanks.

Matt Simis

Your game will likely run fine on the 8400, those "ideal" graphics cards are very old, so the game isnt new. Try a demo first if you can. Also that total memory amount you listed is using some of the system ram, the 8400 likely has 128 to 256MB onboard only.

Regarding upgrading - its not simple for laptops
You have to find out what size MXM (if its not soldered on) Graphics module is currently in there. I believe the max you can go is to an 8600 series, by today's standards that's not much of a leap.

You would find it far easier and better value for money to just sell and buy a newer laptop if you really need more performance.

dartsfan

Thanks for your help. I've tried a demo alright and it's a bit jerky.

One other question....how do I go about finding out the MXM Graphics module?

hurleyd

dartsfan wrote: »

Thanks for your help. I've tried a demo alright and it's a bit jerky.

One other question....how do I go about finding out the MXM Graphics module?

I think I know the game you're trying out! Your graphics card should be just fine for running the 3d engine. Not sure how well it's programmed as I've seen it be a bit jerky on a 8800 graphics card.

Silenceisbliss

the 8400 M gs card is built into the laptop maotherboard. Its unchangable unless you track down an entirle motherboard for your laptop. and the job to change the mobo is ..... not easy

TerrorFirmer

If the game is running 'jerky' it's not the cards fault, the 8400GS is an OK mobile low end card and can even run Crysis smoothly once it's on lowest settings - so you must have the settings too high rather then the card isn't good enough to meet the minimum requirement.

The minimum requirements you've given though also state that the Intel GMA is a minimum, the 8400GS is much, much faster then that as well so anything that runs even at lowest settings on the GMA would sail through on the 8400GS.

What's the game?

Silenceisbliss

pong.... *snigger*

Overheal

The 8400 Can run Crysis on the barest of settings and resolution and even still it can be somewhat choppy - though playable.