Game support for vista on dell Inspiron 6400/E1505

I hav a laptop Dell Inspiron 6400/E1505 and was thinking about upgrading it
to vista. but i'm confused whether next gen games like Crysis, Bioshock,or
even Gears of War, will work on it properly after I'll install vista. Its got
a Core 2 duo processor 1.8Ghz - 1.8GHz, 1 gigabyte of RAM and ATI Mobility
Radeon X1300 256 MB PCI Express card. Pls tell me whether upgrading would be
a wise decision or not!
Currently I have XP media center edition and Rainbow 6 Vegas has to be
played in 640x480 resolution keepin all other graphics options ultra high.

"raviNe" <raviNe@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EF60B1B4-FA38-48B4-877A-6ABAF3FEC8DB@microsoft.com...
>I hav a laptop Dell Inspiron 6400/E1505 and was thinking about upgrading it
> to vista. but i'm confused whether next gen games like Crysis, Bioshock,or
> even Gears of War, will work on it properly after I'll install vista. Its
> got
> a Core 2 duo processor 1.8Ghz - 1.8GHz, 1 gigabyte of RAM and ATI Mobility
> Radeon X1300 256 MB PCI Express card. Pls tell me whether upgrading would
> be
> a wise decision or not!
> Currently I have XP media center edition and Rainbow 6 Vegas has to be
> played in 640x480 resolution keepin all other graphics options ultra high.

Next Gen games like Bioshock, Crysis and Gears of War are going to require a
LOT more umph than a 1.8Ghz processor (although a core 2 duo is a good
start) with a ATI Mobility x1300, your video card, while it is PCI-E is
basically an integrated video card and not really designed for high end
gaming.

Yeah, not all the games you list are going to be playable at 640x480, so you
might be able to run some of them at 800x600 with low settings.

Of all the games you list, I think Bioshock will have the lowest system
requirements, here's the official system requirements, keep in mind the only
system requirments that have been released.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/stickershoc...led-276512.php
--
Operating Systems: Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) orWindows Vista

Minimum System Requirements:
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
System RAM: 1GB
Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600
or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
Hard disk space: 8GB free space

Recommended System Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
System RAM: 2GB
Video card:
DX9: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900
GT or better)
DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better
Sound Card: Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ series (Optimized for use with Creative
Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)

Important Note: Game requires Internet connection for activation
--

If I were you I'd stick to Windows XP, and drop in another Gig of RAM at
least. Don't worry about DirectX 10, your video card doesn't support it.
Your video card is a at the minimum, but you have a decent CPU, everything
else though is min spec for that game, and I know Crysis is going to have
crazy specs, but I'd wager Gears might be around Bioshocks range. (Unreal 3
engine)

Laptops, unless it's a $3000 gaming laptop just aren't designed for high end
gaming.

Some of the games you like are tough even on the latest and greatest
systems. (Also don't let the post about the speed of your Intel CPU scare
you, a 1.8ghz Duo or Core 2 Duo processor is faster than most 3-4ghz
processors like the older Pentium4 series.

However, installing Vista should not cause any problems and may allow you to
get higher quality textures out of the games do to the way the WDDM in Vista
can virtualize VRAM.

So you have nothing to lose, and at the most you would lose 3-5fps in even
the most die hard game compared to XP, and on a lot of games Vista will gain
you fps, especially with the newer drivers from ATI and NVidia compared to
the Vista drivers when it was launched that got bad reviews.

The only thing I would consider doing is since you are a gamer, moving up to
2GB of RAM will help a lot, even if you stick with XP.

Good Luck,
TheNetAvenger
-----
"raviNe" <raviNe@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EF60B1B4-FA38-48B4-877A-6ABAF3FEC8DB@microsoft.com...
>I hav a laptop Dell Inspiron 6400/E1505 and was thinking about upgrading it
> to vista. but i'm confused whether next gen games like Crysis, Bioshock,or
> even Gears of War, will work on it properly after I'll install vista. Its
> got
> a Core 2 duo processor 1.8Ghz - 1.8GHz, 1 gigabyte of RAM and ATI Mobility
> Radeon X1300 256 MB PCI Express card. Pls tell me whether upgrading would
> be
> a wise decision or not!
> Currently I have XP media center edition and Rainbow 6 Vegas has to be
> played in 640x480 resolution keepin all other graphics options ultra high.

> "raviNe" <raviNe@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:EF60B1B4-FA38-48B4-877A-6ABAF3FEC8DB@microsoft.com...
>>I hav a laptop Dell Inspiron 6400/E1505 and was thinking about upgrading
>>it
>> to vista. but i'm confused whether next gen games like Crysis,
>> Bioshock,or
>> even Gears of War, will work on it properly after I'll install vista. Its
>> got
>> a Core 2 duo processor 1.8Ghz - 1.8GHz, 1 gigabyte of RAM and ATI
>> Mobility
>> Radeon X1300 256 MB PCI Express card. Pls tell me whether upgrading would
>> be
>> a wise decision or not!
>> Currently I have XP media center edition and Rainbow 6 Vegas has to be
>> played in 640x480 resolution keepin all other graphics options ultra
>> high.

"TheNetAvenger" <thenetavenger@thenetavenger.net> wrote in message
news:OPWPW6z0HHA.1208@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Some of the games you like are tough even on the latest and greatest
> systems. (Also don't let the post about the speed of your Intel CPU scare
> you, a 1.8ghz Duo or Core 2 Duo processor is faster than most 3-4ghz
> processors like the older Pentium4 series.
>
> However, installing Vista should not cause any problems and may allow you
> to get higher quality textures out of the games do to the way the WDDM in
> Vista can virtualize VRAM.
>
> So you have nothing to lose, and at the most you would lose 3-5fps in even
> the most die hard game compared to XP, and on a lot of games Vista will
> gain you fps, especially with the newer drivers from ATI and NVidia
> compared to the Vista drivers when it was launched that got bad reviews.
>
> The only thing I would consider doing is since you are a gamer, moving up
> to 2GB of RAM will help a lot, even if you stick with XP.

Dude, change your name to TheMSAvenger.

More I think about this message from RaviNe the more I think it wouldn't be
worth it to upgrade. Only game that may require Vista is Gears of War, but
no announcment about that has been made yet, and DirectX 10 won't work with
a x1300 video card, so even if you do get Vista none of the games listed
that support DX10 (all but bioshock) will still run in Dx9.

So save your money, get the 2 gigs of ram and a cooling system for your
laptop because you're gonna burn out your mobo pretty damn fast playing all
those games.