Is Window media center XP good for games?

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

The original 200m was roughly equivalent to an ATI 9700 in performance. Very small amount of on-board video RAM and the rest shared with system memory. Not a very good gaming setup.

Not sure what ATI has done with it since -- 128MB of on-board would seem counter to what they were trying to do with that product line.

Edit: Kinda confusing. Looks like the 128s let you dedicate up to 128 MB of system RAM for the video card, rather than dynamically sharing memory. You can set it to also share on top of the 128 but it seems to actually worsen performance, especially on machines <1GB of RAM. Still using older technology, too, so some games have issues with all the bells and whistles turned on. Performance with current games said to be acceptable with lower detail settings.

If you've got a specific model in mind, I could dig some more. One problem with the integrated stuff is it can vary greatly by vendor, and they all play cagey and get all marketing-speaky on you.

 

[drothgery]

Hmm... this guy http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=E1505S2&s=dhs might work if you make sure to get 1 GB+ of RAM and the option Radeon X1400. At least, it'll be better than Bilzzard's "recommended" specs for WoW in most respect (though the video's about a wash).

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Hmm... this guy http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=E1505S2&s=dhs might work if you make sure to get 1 GB+ of RAM and the option Radeon X1400. At least, it'll be better than Bilzzard's "recommended" specs for WoW in most respect (though the video's about a wash).

'Hypermemory' is ATI marketing-speak for 'half as much RAM as it says'. An x1400 with 128MB of Hypermemory only has 64MB of memory, and pulls the other half from main RAM. Likewise, the 256 is 128 dedicated and 128 from the system. Performance wise, you take a big hit when it goes off-board. Though 128 dedicated should be sufficient for most stuff out now.

Also, whatever you do, don't get an XGA widescreen display. The lower resolution blows chunks. Move up to SXGA if you can.

 

[drothgery]

'Hypermemory' is ATI marketing-speak for 'half as much RAM as it says'. An x1400 with 128MB of Hypermemory only has 64MB of memory, and pulls the other half from main RAM. Likewise, the 256 is 128 dedicated and 128 from the system. Performance wise, you take a big hit when it goes off-board. Though 128 dedicated should be sufficient for most stuff out now.

Also, whatever you do, don't get an XGA widescreen display. The lower resolution blows chunks. Move up to SXGA if you can.

Hmm... I was thinking that an X1400 probably has a much better chance of getting decent framerates at 1280 x 800 than 1440 x 900.

 

[Mycanid]

Hey there Ken ... one possibility you might try is from Acer.

Here is a one day sale deal with a nice graphics card and a core duo processor in your price range (before shipping and tax, of course)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16834115246

If you miss it the other acers at newegg or other places (like buy.com) with dedicated ati memory are often under 1100....

Anyway, it's a possibility.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Hmm... I was thinking that an X1400 probably has a much better chance of getting decent framerates at 1280 x 800 than 1440 x 900.

You can always run a better display at a lower resolution, but the cheaper one won't scale up

The 1280x800 is ok for full-screen gaming, but everyone I know who has one hates it for non-gaming use since they are used to 1280x1024 or higher. Losing 25% of your vertical resolution sucks when menus and toolbars and all the other crap still take up the same amount of space.

Not insurmountable since you can reconfigure some things , but I spend a fair bit of time advising people on this, and when I show them their options with a 1400x1050 display vs a 1280x800, they universally prefer the former.

 

[KenM]

I was looking at this HP: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...t&productCategoryId=cat01174&id=1140393565053

has WXGA display whatever that means.

 

[Mycanid]

Looks okay to me Ken. If it were me I'd go with the x1600 dedicated memory, but that's just me. But Roderigo obviously knows more about the whole field of laptop buying right now, so I'll defer to whatever he says in this matter....

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I was looking at this HP: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...t&productCategoryId=cat01174&id=1140393565053

has WXGA display whatever that means.

In this case, it means 1280x800. HP uses WXGA to mean different things on different models. Can't say for certain what the memory configuration is on the video; 'dedicated' sometimes means on-board, but sometimes they mean 'we've dedicated 128MB of the system RAM to the graphics board'. Short of seeing one and poking at it, I don't know if there is any way to tell for sure.

The hard drive on that model is dog-slow, however. 4200 is as slow as it gets; most modern laptop drives are 5400, and high-performance ones are 7200. For comparison, nearly all desktop drives are 7200, the system drive in my PC is 10,000, and servers are usually 10,000 to 15,000. I yanked the 4200 that was in the laptop I got two years ago and replaced it with a 5400 and noticed a significant improvement.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

But Roderigo obviously knows more about the whole field of laptop buying right now, so I'll defer to whatever he says in this matter....

Heh..I had two people call me at work today about buying laptops, one of whom was looking at that exact same model. Must be a big sale at BestBuy or something.

The other guy that called was one of my gaming buddies, and he was looking for a high-performance gaming laptop. By the time we were done we were well north of $1500.