NVIDIA integrated 6150se, piece of crap?

[Nobahar]

I got my computer and it had this in it, I didn't buy a video card for the PCI-e yet- but wanted to test this card out, since it should be better than my Radeon 7500 from ages ago.

But because of Vista, Direct X 10, NVIDIA's shitty drivers, or this card I can't play the games I used to without jerking framerates. Doom 3 was unplayable. WoW jerks around alot on the lowest settings. And all the new hotfixes and the newest beta drivers 163 something haven't fixed the problem yet.

The thing is, I'm not sure if getting a new video card is going to significantly improve my game experience because of Vista.

[DMB2000uk]

The card wasn't mean to play games to start off with, so vista will kill it even more >_<

If you tried playing those games you mentioned with the 7500, it would have defaulted to a DX7/8 path, but i believe the 6 series defaults to DX9, so is killed instantly with trying to push too many pretty pixels.

As a temporary hack, you might be able to force the games to run under DX7/8 mode, but it would probably need inf hacks, adding a special flag to the startup icon or changing in from the in-game console.

Dan

PS. A reasonable dedicated graphics card will definitely help. You will loose out on performance compared to XP, but it will still be more than several times better than your current card (even under vista).

[Nobahar]

So, do you know how it would be possible for me to run a lower version of direct x? I have no idea how to start doing what you said.

I was thinking of loading up ubuntu and running WoW from wine, probably would perform better.

[Apoptosis]

The 6150SE is integrated graphics in the chipset on the motherboard that is sharing your system memory... Performance is going to be sub par for gaming as the 6150SE wasn't designed to game it was designed for playing solitaire on Windows XP...

Here are my results with the 6150SE on Company of Heroes from this article...



and FEAR...



As you can see I got 8FPS in COH and 21 in FEAR... look on the bright side... at least you don't have the 6150...

Time to upgrade to dedicated graphics via the PCI Express slot if you want to play known 3D game titles, which is pretty much any game ...

[Nobahar]

I haven't kept up to date, what mid-range card would you recommend? I don't really care if it is ATI or NVIDIA, but under 100 bucks- enough to give me 35 fps on World of Warcraft is really the minimum for what I want.

Also, I'm not sure but I am using a slim case (a little less than 4 inches in width, so I'd imagine I have somewhat less space for a video card). That's not going to be a serious problem for finding a card is it?

[Apoptosis]

well... For under $100 a DX10 card is out of the question and DX9 is in...

You can picked up a used GeForce 7800GT and a 7800GTX for under $100 now if you can find a legit one for sale, which would be a great card for WOW. Any of the ATI X1900 or X1950 series cards would be great too.

[Sparky]

If you're not going to game with Direct X 10, just pick up a 7 series card like Apoptosis suggested.
I just built my Mom a new PC using Asus M2NPV-VM with NVIDIA 6150 on board graphics, AMD 5200+ & 2GB Corsair XMS2 PC6400 and it wasn't even worth the hurt it put on the system RAM so I just stuck an old PCI NVIDIA 5200 / 256mb card in it. She will NEVER game with it but the graphics were much smoother on videos than with the on board graphics

[Nobahar]

Thanks, yeah I'll look into one of those cards around when I feel like resubbing to WoW, I'll probably wait until Wrath is released- I guess I'll keep my eye on legit trader for a 7800 then. Hopefully one that is still not imploded from overclocking :p

Will that card fit in my 4" wide case?

[Apoptosis]

Take a tape measure and measure from the PCIe slot to the edge of the case and I'm sure someone can confirm it for you. The width shouldn't matter as it would be the height I would thing... a 4" wide case though.... that's crazy small

[Nobahar]

I don't like using laptops and I tend to move around alot, particularly since I just graduated so I wanted to have something a little more friendly to take with me :p

[vicaphit]

i had the 6150le in my card and it really chugged in CoH and Fear. It was playable, but really wasnt pretty!

Some of my problem was the ram, it was sucking a quarter of my ram and CoH loves ram.

[Nobahar]

I have a question, how does the 7800GT or GTX compare to the 8300GT or 8600GT?

[DMB2000uk]

I have a question, how does the 7800GT or GTX compare to the 8300GT or 8600GT?

Not sure about the 8300,
but the 7800GT is about 10% better than the 8600GT.
And the 7800GTX 256MB is about 20% better than the 8600GT
(the 7800GTX 256MB is pretty much the same performance as a 7900GS to give you another option)

Dan

[Nobahar]

That's interesting that the higher end 7-series is better than the mid-range 8 series.

[DMB2000uk]

That's interesting that the higher end 7-series is better than the mid-range 8 series.

Yeah, it was kind of disappointing when they first launched, as I was hoping that a mid 8 series would have clearly beat my current high 7 series, but they didnt >_<

Dan