600m as gaming machine?

My friend has a 600m with the 32 MB 9000. He can play Halo at 1024x768 with High Textures High Particles and Specular on at 30 FPS. Doom III runs at 18 FPS on 640x480 low with all effects off

Ati 9000 is based on direct x 8.1 technology and should be about as fast as a GeForce 4 of similar statistics otherwise.

I had a desktop one before but sprung for the slightly better nvidia brand at the time. 64 mb of ram will play all games 1 year old or more well. Recent games will probably chug.

You'll be able to play older games just peachy, like Starcraft or Warcraft III or Quake III or whatever. Doom III and Half Life II calibur games will probably stink. WoW will run okay but slow ish, most likely.

Afriend of mine has a 600m and he now regrets it and is looking to upgrade. He plays City of Hero's and the 600m just doesn't cut it.

Martian

I personally like the 600m. It combines mobility with performance. It is a relatively light laptop in my opinion and can preform decently with games. Playing CS:S and Lineage 2, I don't know about "higher end" games though.

Martian is right, I wish the 600m had a better video card. However, it is capable of playing most games (even on battery), they just won't look as pretty as on a 9800 Pro.

I would say it's fine for RPGs, but not for FPSs.

If you have a friend in the states then have it shipped to them and then they ship to you, i live near buffalo if your in that area of canada you could ship it to me and pick it up

My problem

Oh its funny how history has a way of repeating itself. I posted this same exact question on this forum a little more than 6-7 months ago. I decided to go ahead and buy the 600m despite the neysayers that said it won't run any of the new games at all (or not well enough to play). Well 6-7 months later, Doom III, Half Life II and Rome Total War later, I'm here to say I'm very happy with my purchase of the 600m. Its a 1.7PM, 512MB, 64mb Radeon 9000 system. I'll be completely truthful, the laptop does pale in comparison to desktops and the power of the newer video cards in the 9000 series and 8000 series laptops. But I was able to run Doom 3 well (low settings) (play on LAN games in my college often), Half Life II VERY WELL (medium settings), Rome Total War well (Medium settings) and Sims 2 VERY WELL (high settings). Yes this system isn't going to win you any awards but if you don't want to carry around the 8600 (which is big I will admit, everyone around me either has the 8600 or the 9100) it is a GREAT option. There is a noticeable difference in the sizes of the 8600 and the 600m. So much so that you can take one to class and the other you'll be hard pressed to. I goto a university where in some of the classes the desks are too small to accomodate the 8600 without tipping. If you want mobility and gaming this is a great option, despite what people say. It will run most of the new games (albiet on low settings) and let you carry it around with alot less hassle than the bigger dell laptops.

That said, if you don't plan on moving around, get the 8600 and te new 9600 128MB cards or the 9100 but if you need mobility and the ability to use your laptop in class, buy the 600m, you won't regret it.

Aj

Well, I don't know if I am an expection here, but the 600m has been giving me problems with gaming. Although my 600m plays Counterstike Source at med-high settings very well, fps drops to unplayable levels randomly. I dont know if this is a graphics card dificiency or BIOS etc, nonetheless it is a problem for me. Even lower than recommended video settings did not resolve the problem.
Anyone have this same problem?

My 600M plays games for awhile then slows down to 2 FPS and the lag is horrible. I am not happy using it as a gaming machine but it has other strong points such as being light

600m is heavy for its size and it doesn't give u much performance. Dell calls it 4.5 pounds but its easily 5.5 pounds. With 5.5 pounds, u can get much better gfx.

That system setup looks pretty great. Hopefully your machine doesn't have the severe overheating/slowdown problems while gaming.
I bought a 512mb PC2700 sodimm for my 600m and tried running it alone without the second 256mb PC2100 sodimm it came with. The ram didn't run any faster when booting like that according to the bios, however I could definitely tell a difference in speed and hdd usage when having the extra 256mb in -- so just try and get as much ram as possible. I don't think getting 1GB or more would be going overboard.

The only laptop that is in a similar category to the 600m is the ibm T4x series and the compaq NC6000 series. Since the 600m is much cheaper than either of those with a higher end graphics card (next step up is a radeon 9600, right?) I think it is an okay deal. It'll be funny if dell releases a 610m next year that has a radeon X300 or X600 mobility that closes the gap between it and the ibm and compaq.

With an ati 9000 series card you won't really be doing any serious Doom III or Half Life 2. Personally i would save up some more money and go with at least a 9600 series graphics card in a 8600, despite the fact that the 8600 is seriously overpriced here in canada. If you are gaming i would not concider anythign under an ati 9600 carded machine, and i would personally want at least a 9700....im a university student and i know about tight funds, but seriously save up and get something that will last you into the future better than a 9000 series card that is already on the way out for the most part.

The 600m isn't the best gamer...no.

But there is a big difference in performance with the 64MB card...as to having the 32MB card...the video RAM is faster overall.

Here's a half-life 2 DEMO screenshot I took on my 600m(don't let your browser crop it):

http://sterlin.mine.nu/public/d1_tra...ion_020000.jpg

And a DOOM III screeshot:

http://sterlin.mine.nu/public/2.PNG

BTW...HL2 runs better than DOOM III on this laptop, as you can probably tell by the screenshots...both of which I took!

A couple of people have mentioned this here. Is it a known problem with the Dell 600m?

I've experienced intermittent slowdowns (to the point of being unplayable) on my 600m while playing Battlefield 1942. I assumed they were caused by the processor protecting itself from overheating by slowing the clock speed, which Intel CPUS's will do. But I've never heard of it before until reading this forum. Each of the half dozen times I've seen this, the cooling fan was running at max speed, and the bottom of the notebook was very hot.

I know that, in general, small notebooks are not good machines for processor intensive computing. For one thing, battery endurance is cut drastically. But they also have thermal dissipation problems. I once tried running the UD Cancer Research program on my previous notebook, a Compaq Presario, and quickly uninstalled the program, for fear of damaging it. Programs that keeps the CPU running at 100% (games, distributed computing projects) don't seem to do well on small notebook machines.

I got horrible in-game problems like that when i tried upgrading my BIOS....so i downgraded it again and now....it's good again!

It will on any system, this is where HL2 really shines. It was developed to run on alot of older hardware. When starting HL2 for the first time, it will detect your card and configure itself to be optimal for your hardware. Doom 3 on the other hand was not, and made in OpenGL. Its hardware requirements are alot stiffer.

Half Life 2 developers really put alot of thought and effort into this game, and I applaud them. Of course they did this to sell as many copies as they could. Many folk like myself cant go buy a $500 card for every new game that comes out.

Now, eh, what should/could I do about the intermittent slowdowns while gaming?