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Geeks and gamers: Help my son, please

14 comments on Geeks and gamers: Help my son, please

Geeks and gamers: Help my son, please

: For his 13th birthday, we got our son, Jake, a new Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop. The problem is, it won’t play some of his games and is jerky on others because, apparently, the built-in, top-of-the-line video card on the motherboard isn’t game-friendly.

Help. Is there some adjustment we should make? Is this a hopeless laptop for games? I know nothing about such things. So please help. Details here on Jake’s blog. Please leave comments with helpful advice there. Thanks.

: UPDATE: I’m now told the problem is that we got a Celeron instead of a Pentium. Dell is great! They agreed to an exchange with not an ounce of fuss. But before I do this, tell me if that’s right.

14 responses to “Geeks and gamers: Help my son, please”

  1. Dobeln Avatar
    Dobeln

    Hi!
    Simply put – Onboard video (Pretty much any laptop graphics chip that’s not from nVidia or ATI) will always perform terribly for 3-D games. The 64-MB shared memory chip on the Inspiron 1150 is no exception. Celeron or Pentium won’t matter much – the Inspiron 1150 will always deliver sub-par 3-D game performance, provided that the game runs at all. Sorry :/

  2. kingdom2000 Avatar
    kingdom2000

    With games the deciding factor on performance is CPU speed, RAM, and graphic card.
    Since using World of Warcraft and the like need to meet some basics:
    for CPU you want a laptop of at least 2ghz in speed, so don’t get a laptop with the Pentinum M chip. For RAM you need at least 512, but with option to upgrade to 1gig if have the money.
    The real crunch is the graphics card. It cannot be integrated. It needs to be a seperate card with at least 32megs of memory. 64 or more is probably better.
    If truly want a laptop gaming machine your best, but expensive way to go is http://www.alienware.com, there they build laptops for gamers and in some models have it so can easily update the graphics card.
    Hope that helps.
    Depends on the games he is trying to play. Generally speaking also if the graphics card is built into the motherboard or is a seperate piece.
    If its built in, its going to suck for most games. If its seperate, it may be enough, again depending on the game.
    If he is a hard core gamer that goes for the latest and greatest, your more expensive, but best bet is http://www.alienware.com. Most of their machines are designed for games and best of all depending on which version of the laptop can get one that has an upgradable graphics card. By that I mean that is its easily switched out with a newer versions as become available or needed. With laptops, that is not usually as easy to do as with a desktop.

  3. kingdom2000 Avatar
    kingdom2000

    ^ Oops not sure how I did that wierd doubling thing, sorry.

  4. Jim S Avatar
    Jim S

    Jeff, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the previous posters were right. The guy at Dell is correct about needing the full Pentium instead of Celeron but it isn’t the whole story. The 1150 only comes with integrated Intel graphics that share the main system memory instead of having dedicated video RAM. What you really need if he’s going to be playing graphically demanding games is some other model that has dedicated video as an option. While the people posting that Alienware makes the best gaming laptops are correct Dell does still make several models that should do the job as long as we’re not talking about trying to play Doom 3, Far Cry or Half-Life 2. Call Dell back and ry to get someone (even if you have to insist on getting a supervisor on the phone) who can help you with determining your best option on this given what you’re willing to budget.

  5. Jim S Avatar
    Jim S

    P.S. (so to speak) Dell does make a gaming laptop that will play those games I mentioned…it’s just twice as expensive as the 1150 models.

  6. Idealist Avatar
    Idealist

    Jeff,
    The problem with the Inspiron 1150 isn’t just that it has an onboard video card, but that it is a particularly bad onboard video card. Intel video cards are notorious for both compatibility problems and poor performance. In general, if your laptop does not have graphics provided by either ATI or nVidia, you won’t be able to use it to play most games.
    If you want to stay with something from Dell, I’d recommend going up to the Inspiron 600m, which is a couple hundred dollars more expensive but should be more than suitable for any game currently on the market.

  7. dobeln Avatar
    dobeln

    Just want to quibble a bit with something kingdom2000 said: (sorry… ;) )
    The Pentium M cannot be compared directly against the Pentium 4 or the Pentium 4 M MHz for MHz. The Pentium M is a much more efficent, shorter pipeline design (Much like the AMD Athlon 64 – Gets more work done per clock cycle), while providing low-power operation.
    The slower models of the Pentium-M are indeed not really for games, but the somewhat newer ones should provide more than enough punch.
    In fact, the Pentium M might very well replace the Pentium 4 in the future, even in desktops, as the P4 line has hit the wall, frequency-wise, while the Pentium M appears to have plenty of headroom left…

  8. Carole Avatar
    Carole

    As with all the other comments, the Celeron is not the problem. We use Celeron’s in all our “game machines” and as long as it is a 1.5G Celeron or above (we use 2.6+), the main factor in gaming performance is the amount of system memory (512mb is ‘ok’, 1G+ is best) and video memory (today’s games want at least 128mb and a relatively new model of ATI or Nvidia).
    In general, PC latops just don’t cut it for gaming.

  9. ajf Avatar
    ajf

    Laptops aren’t for gaming. Period.
    For gaming you get the kid a tower and pop a 128M ATI or NVidia card in… Or better yet, just get an XBox.

  10. Tony Gentile Avatar
    Tony Gentile

    Hey Jeff, been a while. Hope you’re well.
    As several others have pointed out (but just to take a position):
    1. On board / built-in video cards are a non-starter. If you see “shared video memory”… run.
    2. Hard-core gamers buy desktops (so that they can upgrade components that improve game performance), or, rediculously expensive laptops.
    That said, I bought a workable gaming laptop for myself in December; a Dell 8600 (not 9600) with a 128 MB video card, 2 GHZ Centrino, 512MB of RAM and WUXGA 15.4″ screen.
    Out the door price (machine, shipping, tax in CA) using the continuously updated discount codes located on Techbargins.com (no relationship with them) was approx $1650.00.
    Not sure what your budget is… but aside for being a bit bulky for a laptop (mostly due to the 15.4” screen), I’ve been very happy with the machine’s all-around performance.
    FWIW…

  11. Christian Avatar
    Christian

    I am also having the same problem with the Inspiron 1150. I have spent several weeks with dell trying to figure out how to make it work. Their customer service on this issue has been the worst I have ever seen. Even with a 2.8 GHz processor, 512 mb Ram, and 64 mb of video ram games really do not work. The Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller is the biggest piece of garbage ever placed into a computer. Of course when you get something like this from dell they do not tell you how bad it is or that you will be unable to upgrade or replace it.
    Well, thats my piece. Be very careful with Dell, they dont make everything known.

  12. Jesse Avatar
    Jesse

    For hardcore gaming laptops aren’t the answer. But if you MUST game on a laptop get something from Alienware.com. Load up as much RAM as it will hold, and tone down the eye-candy using the games’ menus.

  13. Fcb Avatar
    Fcb

    Celeron vs. Pentium is eminently feasible, Jeff: Celeron is a stripped-down, low-cost Pentium which does not play games nearly so well.
    I echo much of what has been said about laptops and gaming: you are always going to be constrained by those built-in video cards. Every so often – usually once a year – some “advance” occurs in video technology occurs that new games exploit, that you don’t learn about till you get the game home and discover it just won’t run without it. So you either buy a new video card or you never play a new game again (pretty soon all new games rely on that feature). Can’t upgrade a laptop like that, not easily.
    Not to say they’re not useful, nor that you can’t play anything on them; but they’re not really built for games.

  14. lucklucky Avatar
    lucklucky

    No it’s not right to change the processor only.
    Like others have said you’ll have to change to another notebook with DEDICATED graphics card. ATI or Nvidia will work great.
    With current performance there is no reason for a notebook to not work with games. Celeron isnt the top of the line but at 2.6Ghz will work ok. Maybe all options in a graphics intensive game cant be put on but just that.
    About Alienware reference above, i think they only assemble Clevos notebooks(Taiwanese builder that sells it’s production to assemblers all over the world) Compare with Sager, Eurocom and others that do the same because Alienware is too much expensive.