thinking about dell inspiron 9300 how is the 128Mb radeon mobility X300?

[donjonson]

does anyone have any links to benchies or perhaps some personal expierience?
thanks

 

[KeithTalent]

I have one in my Inspiron 6000 and it works ok for what I use it for. I play mainly Halo multiplayer and CS: Source, though I have the BF2, FEAR, and UT2004 demos and they play great as well, as long as you turn down most of the eye candy. If you are brave you can do what I have done and overclock it with ATITool; I got the core up to 350 and the mem up to 250. It can go way higher and still be stable, but I need this laptop to be fully functional for quite a while longer and I don't want to fry it before I can easily afford a new one.

Also, I installed the modded mobility catalyst drivers which is easy to do if you look here: Rage3D

All of these things have allowed me to increase my gaming performance by quite a substantial margin, YMMV.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, KT

EDIT: Just wanted to point out that I think you should get a better card in there if you can, but if you can't you are not totally screwed by having this card.

 

[donjonson]

thank you that was very helpfull

 

[KeithTalent]

No problem Don. Enjoy your 9300 if that is what you end up getting; that 17" screen is a beauty!

 

[Salil]

Hello Keith,
How did you upgrade the memory and clock speed without opening the laptop case? I believe you are using a laptop right?

 

[mwmorph]

overclocking is software based and forces a card to run faster than it's bios tells it to.

as for the x300, it's really pretty slow. Think geforce 3 slow. It wont run games at native resolution but it will run most games, jsut at minimum resolutions(doom 3 at say 640x480 medium or low)

 

[Ichigo]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
overclocking is software based and forces a card to run faster than it's bios tells it to.

as for the x300, it's really pretty slow. Think geforce 3 slow. It wont run games at native resolution but it will run most games, jsut at minimum resolutions(doom 3 at say 640x480 medium or low)

The X300 is basically a 9600, so I've heard. So where'd you get Geforce 3 series?

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Ichigo

Originally posted by: mwmorph
overclocking is software based and forces a card to run faster than it's bios tells it to.

as for the x300, it's really pretty slow. Think geforce 3 slow. It wont run games at native resolution but it will run most games, jsut at minimum resolutions(doom 3 at say 640x480 medium or low)

The X300 is basically a 9600, so I've heard. So where'd you get Geforce 3 series?

speed wise. The x600 is a 9600 with a agp to pcie bridge, a x300 is closer to 9600se. A geforce 3 is a comparable performance card to the x300.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: Salil
Hello Keith,
How did you upgrade the memory and clock speed without opening the laptop case? I believe you are using a laptop right?

Yes I am using a laptop, for now. This is the utility I used:
ATITool

It's pretty straightforward, but I recommend doing a lot of reading before you go crazy
You should make sure you are comfortable playing with this stuff before you dive in. There is a lot of useful information out there, with both encouraging and cautionary tales regarding overclocking of any kind.

KT

 

[Salil]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent

Originally posted by: Salil
Hello Keith,
How did you upgrade the memory and clock speed without opening the laptop case? I believe you are using a laptop right?

Yes I am using a laptop, for now. This is the utility I used:
ATITool

It's pretty straightforward, but I recommend doing a lot of reading before you go crazy
You should make sure you are comfortable playing with this stuff before you dive in. There is a lot of useful information out there, with both encouraging and cautionary tales regarding overclocking of any kind.

KT

but how did you upgrade the memory of the video card?

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: Salil

Originally posted by: KeithTalent

Originally posted by: Salil
Hello Keith,
How did you upgrade the memory and clock speed without opening the laptop case? I believe you are using a laptop right?

Yes I am using a laptop, for now. This is the utility I used:
ATITool

It's pretty straightforward, but I recommend doing a lot of reading before you go crazy
You should make sure you are comfortable playing with this stuff before you dive in. There is a lot of useful information out there, with both encouraging and cautionary tales regarding overclocking of any kind.

KT

but how did you upgrade the memory of the video card?

With ATITool you can adjust the core and memory speeds. It is extremely simple, almost scarily so.