![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Saturday , June 26, 2004
- Author:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Dell Inspiron XPS Notebook
Gaming on a notebook is not what it used to be, and thank goodness for that! Dell's Inspiron XPS, sporting the ATI Radeon Mobility 9700, is one of the first true desktop replacements in our experience that puts gaming on a pedestal.
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow
How we tested: Splinter Cell stayed true to form in being a system crusher. In order to achieve playable performance, 800x600 with the in-game quality setting of "Low" had to be used. Even then, performance was around the 30fps mark as you can see in the graph. No graphical errors were detected and shadows from the trees WERE working. In the screenshots you can see the frames per second counter in the corner.
For those SC fans out there, you will know Splinter Cell is very graphically demanding, but not tremendously FPS centered, meaning that frame rates down into the mid-teens are still many times playable. Of course we don't like pushing it that low, but due to the type of play in Splinter Cell, 30 to 60 FPS is simply not needed to facilitate smooth gameplay. At 800x600 the game was very playable and looked great as well. Maybe one day the game engine will be patched so that AA is fixed and usable. Note that AA is broken on both ATI and NVIDIA hardware.
As you can see from our screenshots, the game looks great on the Dell Inspiron XPS. Again, the XPS delivers great IQ that is far beyond what would be considered acceptable minimum standards.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004
How we tested: Flight Simulator 2004 played best at 1280x800 with the built in "Ultra High" game setting. Note that these are not the highest settings the game is capable of. Since the LCD on this laptop is a widescreen format, 1280x800 is the resolution that fits perfectly, and happens to be very playable. 1280x1024 appears "squished" vertically because of the LCD size ratio. No graphics errors noticed, screenshots show FPS.
As you can see, the graph performance was very smooth and playable. It did drop to the lower 30's in the beginning where the plane takes off and flies over a city, but once off the ground it was smooth sailing. With that said, there was still plenty of room for playing with settings.
The texture filtering left a bit to be desired, but you could certainly push up the AF levels and bring down the resolution to 1024x768 and find a playable setting. Personally, we found lesser impact of the jaggies at the higher resolution.