Laptop Video Question: Geforce4 420 Go-V 16 meg

#1 pr-man

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Posted 28 October 2004 - 05:59 AM

Ok I just picked up a used but perfect condition Sony Vaio PCG-FR130

AthlonXP 2000+ 1.667ghz
512 megs pc2100
40 gig HD
cdrw/dvd
Nvidia Geforce4 420 Go-V 16 meg
14" XGA

Latest drivers for the video are the 56.83 nvidias which I believe are 2003 so thats cool but wondering what kinds of games I will be able to play well with it, im not expecting anything over 1024x768 because of the XGA limitation.

I was hoping for quake 3, ut 2003, maybe some Morrowind etc. obviously no doom3 or farcry LOL

#2 peterh

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Posted 28 October 2004 - 02:46 PM

I suggest downloading 3D Mark 04 or 05 and test the speed of your gfx card from http://www.futuremark.com/download/.

Then you might have a better idea whats its capable of.

#3 Sampson

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Posted 28 October 2004 - 03:13 PM

Most games don't perform all that well on a laptop. Sony Vaio's are a good case in point. Sony is quite proprietary and the drivers are often tweaked for performance for their machines. Nine times out of ten they are biased toward DVD and media presentations. Games are not a priority. You can take peterh's suggestion, but don't be surprised to find yourself coming back to this board wondering why your DVD is not performing adequately after installing a particular game.

#4 adamvjackson

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Posted 28 October 2004 - 03:57 PM

You should be able to adjust the detail level in Quake 3 to be plenty acceptable for occasional playing. For much more, it will probably not have enough video memory.

Either way, try it, and let us know

#5 jmmijo

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Posted 28 October 2004 - 05:19 PM

Actually that should be a decent rig for a lot of fairly recent games. My dad has an old Gateway Solo 9300, it only has an old P3-600 with 256MB of ram and a shared 16MB graphics card. Of course he mainly plays the HOMM series of RTS's so there isn't a whole lot of power needed.

I also agree that the Sony Vaio's are tweaked towards DVD playback and presentations, however I still like and prefer an ATi graphics card for DVD playback

Also note that 3D Mark 2003/2005 are really geared towards the higher end desktop/notebook range of machines, basically 3GHz+ boxes with 512MB or more and higher end graphics cards.

I prefer to use 3D Mark 2001-SE for a better DX8.xx benchmark, this is most likely the type of games you really want to run on that machine anyway...