Will a chipset Intel® GM965 with a graphics card Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 run sl ?

[sfornal10]

 I am only going  to be using sl for 8 more weeks until my class ends

Will a chipset Intel® GM965  with a graphics card Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 run sl ? I am thinking about getting a gateway 141 x laptop / tablet and I want to make sure it will run second life bc I have to have sl for a class.  There is the specs.

http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/2008/ViperSR/2906010R/2906010Rsp4.shtml

Here is the xl version it might work better.  It has Intel® PM965 chip set and ATI Mobility™ Radeon® HD X2300 256 MB PCI Express graphics

http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/2008/ViperSR/2906011R/2906011Rsp2.shtml

 

The laptop I have now is a gateway m1617 and it has a ATI Radeon x 1270 graphics card. Does this one have similar preformance as the ones mentioned above ?  Or is it better ? Also I keep getting kicked out of sl a lot when I use my laptop is there bc I have a low functioning graphics card ?  Thanks for the help.

 

[Rolig Loon]

In general, tablets are not adequate for running SL viewers.  Also, you should be aware that SL residents have had recurring problems with "switchable" graphics chips, which are designed to save power (battery life) by dropping into a low power consumption mode when you are running applications like e-mail and your browser.  If you do a little research on the Internet, you will find that those chips have a habit of locking in the low-power mode and not letting you run applications like Second Life or other high-graphics programs.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

The Intel GMA 965 is a chipset built into the computer's motherboard (not the CPU).  It's one of the last on motherboard graphics accellerators that Intel produced.  It will not handle any of the newer viewers that show mesh (or other features in SL).  You can, however, run  a viewer based on the very old and obsolete SL viewer 1.23..........at low settings. 

I want to say the chipset is junk but that's unfair.  The graphics adapter does what it was designed to do very well.......basically just displaying on a monitor what your computer is showing (word documents, simple business graphics, simple 2D games, web surfing, email, and streaming media).  Try to get a 3D graphic to display you start to run into issues........the card just is not made to handle that kind of graphic rendering (it's too weak to quickly and properly render that type of graphics).  On a program like SL with the very intensive 3D graphics it just will not do it worth a flip.

Run away from that computer......run fast.  That is, of course, you intend to use it for SL.  You will be very disappointed.  I doubt it will let you log in before a complete viewer crash (and, if it does, you are very much at risk of an operating system crash).  For SL a GMA 965 is junk.......don't waste your money on any computer with that chipset in it unless it has a better discrete card installed it too.

[Nalates Urriah]

Peggy Paperdoll is being subtle.

You need to look for a laptop/notebook with an nVidia graphics chip. These are typically reported as M460 or M560. I suppose the M stands for the power saving MOBILE version of the chip. Whatever, the HD Graphics found in Intel based notebooks are NOT adequite for SL. Some will run SL, but not well.

You can get reasonably priced notebooks from Geeks.com. The i3 and i5 based units are usually well priced. Finding one with a graphics chip is hard. But, from time to time they have them.

[Lindal Kidd]

Generally speaking, I would avoid machines with Intel graphics, and get one with a AMD/ATI Radeon or Nvidia GeForce graphics card.