32 or 64mb enough for a GF4 mobile?

[Shaocaholica]

My pop is getting a laptop thru work so its pretty much free and it can be no more than $2500. Plus we get tax exemption and educational discount 😛. I was looking at the Toshiba 5105 vs the Dell 8200. The toshiba is the best buy but its GF4 440 only comes with 32mb of ram. Since the LCD is 1600x1200 native I'd like to run all my apps and games at that res. The Dell also has a 16x12 LCD but its GF4 is 64 MB. Will I need those extra 32MB? Will I regret not getting the Dell with the extra vid mem? I play a lot of games but Im not sure if many need the extra mem.

 

[TheCorm]

The 64mb will run a bit better but for general desktop/apps use I doubt you will notice a vast difference. But, as for running games at 1600x1200......it may be a GF4 but it's still an MX, I would say 1280x1024 it should be okay but for smooth 1600x1200 you would need a proper GF4....which ain't in the laptop variety right?

 

[bigshooter]

You will definitely need the 64 megs of ram. The geforce4 2go or whatever it's called is basically an enhanced geforce2, but it's still the fastest mobile graphics chip out. The reason you need the ram is when you play games at less than 1600x1200 resolution on your laptop screen, things look all chunky and blocky, or the screen size actually gets smaller at lower resolutions, depending on the chip and hte drivers. With 64 megs of ram and the better memory controller on the mobile geforce4 you should be able to run 1600x1200 no problem as long as you don't turn on all the pretty stuff and leave it in 16bit color, which to my knowledge isn't as apparent on a laptop display as it is on a monitor. Of course if you hook up an external monitor you can lower the res to 1280x1024 or 1084x768 and turn on all the pretty stuff. If you can wait and see if someone benches the new Dell 8200's and see how the NV17 mobile chip and the pentium4 work.

edit: As for desktop applications, you can run your desktop in 32 bit color at 1600x1200 with pretty much any amount of memory available. Technically you only need 6.5megs or something like that, but an 8meg card would do fine, not to mention a 32 or 64 megger.

 

[Mavrick007]

I'm just curious why you would want to run any game or application at 1600x1200 res on a laptop lcd? The largest laptop lcd is still only 15.1" right? That 1600x1200 would just be too small for most people, plus it will slow down your games with basically the GF2 cpu(which is what the NV17 is comparable to).

 

[Sunner]

I doubt games will run very good at 1600x1200 with a GF4 MX.

And like Maverick said, 1600x1200 on a 15" display... ouch! Thats gonna be way too small IMO.

 

[Shaocaholica]

Well, most vendors don't even offer the GF4 with anything but a 15" (1600x1200) LCD. I wish it was 1280x1024 but no one offers a LCD in that res for a laptop, let alone one with a GF4. And Im not streching the screen, that just looks ass.

 

[Mavrick007]

Just cause they offer the 15" lcd in 1600x1200 doesn't mean that you can't use a lower res.
That's just the max res that that vid display will allow. I wouldn't suggest running it at the max res, if you even use 1280x1024 on a 15", I would be surprised. Plus, running your resolution lower will work better for your apps and games anyway.

 

[bigshooter]

Because LCD's have a fixed number of pixels, in most 15" cases 1480x10xx or 1600x1200, then running at a lower resolution will make things look blockie. The only way to get a decent picture is to run at the native resolution. Some displays actually make the screen smaller too, so when you lower to 1084x768 you only use 2/3 of the screen space. The rest is just black, kind of like when you shrink your screen on your monitor.

 

[ElFenix]

the card doesn't have enough fill rate to run FSAA with any balls, so getting 64 megs is kinda pointless. also, the gf2go was plagued, there was simply all sorts of bad things that happened to it. i'd go with the radeon, ATi has soo much more experience in the mobile market. no one has done a similar hardware review of the two chips, but in the only head to head review (a toshiba with a gf4go vs a dell with a radeon 7500, different hardware but same price) the radeon handed the gf4 go its ass.


and i'm sorta wary of the p4-m at this point. 1.6GHz p4 isn't all that fast. 1.2 p3 is most likely faster. they might be right about even. heh, with dell you could buy one of each and return the slower one or the one that's battery dies faster within 30 days.

 

[anthrax]

Couldn't you run your games at 800 x 600 res and you will avoid the problems with interpolation of the pixels....?
Of course the games won't look that great at 800 x 600 on a 15.4 inch LCD but it would decent and you will be able to get a decent frame rate..

 

[anthrax]

actually...if you plan to play any games on it make sure its 1600 x 1200 ..and not 1400 x 1050.....
1600 x 1200 scales well into 800 x 600 ....
1400 x 1050 doesn't....most games don't support 1400 x 1050.......
Those mobile GPU should be able to give you a decent framerate at 800 x 600....