Geforce 5650, is it really that bad?

[Chop]

I'm looking to buy a laptop and have narrowed it down to two, the Dell D800 and 8600c. The only real difference is the graphics card, I know the Radeon 9600 is better but the 8600c is $300 more. (I'm in Africa and my choice is rather limited)

So my question, is the Geforce 5650 really as crap as everyone is making it to be? Is DirectX 9 games playable on it, and at what resolution?

 

[Connoisseur]

Actually.... it is pretty bad. Compared to the Mobility Radeon 9600 128mb, it performs a lot worse in gaming benchmarks. I'm not talking like 5-10% behind. I'm talking more like 50-100% behind the Radeon 9600 in many of today's games. Furthermore Half-Life 2 is actually playable with the 9600 whereas it's a slide show with the 5650. For proof I turn you over to the Anandtech comparison. Mobile Comparison I would personally spend the extra 300 bucks and get the radeon.

 

[Chop]

I have seen the comparison but they only show results with AA and AF, I don't really care much for those settings. I've seen other reviews without AA and AF where the Geforce wins by 5% to 10%.

I know there is a big performance gap with DirectX 9 games. The question is if these games are playable with the Radeon on a 1024 resolution, perhaps with lower settings?

I'm not really such a a big gamer but want to know that I can play some of the new games if I want.

 

[hytek369]

check out a review from tomshardware. it seems to keep up with most cards

 

[Connoisseur]

If you're into only directx8 games, then both cards should fit your bill equally as well. But if you are looking to play games like newer FPS's then I suggest the Radeon 9600.

 

[masked1]

tomshardwareguide will sort all your questions out!