Dell D820 Owners - Question

I am starting a new job and they are giving me my choice of any Dell Latitude I want to build. The best configuration I can come up with is the Dell D820 with the Dual Core 2.33MHz chip, 2 Gig RAM, 100GB 7200RPM Hard Drive and the 512MB NVIDEA Quadro NVS 120M TurboCache.

I have two questions. The first is work related and the second is gaming related.

First... What are your impressions of this as a work machine? As far as speed, processing power and multi-tasking capability?

Second... I like to Play Battle Field 2 and Counter Strike. I was looking into getting a gaming laptop before this job and was wondering if I would still be able to play these games on this machine with the Quadro NVS graphics card? I haven't been able to find that much information on this card. Any information you can privide would be helpful. Thanks!

 

You might be able to play those games...the 120M is roughly the same as the NVIDIA GeForce 7400Go. But there might be some driver issues, so it still might not work.

The processor, RAM, and HDD are the highest specs you'll need for anything...I'd say your fine on both power and multitasking.

 

The general performance is great. 3D performance isn't optimal, but it's okay for most games. Counterstrike Source and World of Warcraft both run fine on WSXGA+. Oblivion and FEAR not.

 

I suggest that you check out the screen options carefully: there are three of them, and all have their faults.

The 1280 x 800 is dim and has poor viewing angles.

The 1680x1050 is dim on standard settings, but can be tweaked. It has good viewing angles, but color varies dramatically with angle.

The 1920x1200 is too fine: fonts are ridiculously small. You can adjust the dpi, but not all programs honour that, it screws up program window geometry, and screws up any attached monitor.

There are problems with backlighting on all of these - try to avoid SEC screens - a google will help.