Issues with nvidia gt540m? gt525m better?

**tim44** · August 28, 2011, 02:02 PM

Hi people,

I'm in the market for a new laptop at the moment and I'm fairly settled on the Dell XPS 15. The particular build I'm after comes with the option of either an nvidia gt525m or for £65 more an nvidia gt540m. The 540 seems to be the better card for general gaming but when I googled it in relation to total war games I found quite a lot of results that said this card will not work with total war games due to some sort of fault that causes total war games to fail completely, mainly Napoleon. (which happens to be my favorite

)

Apparently the issue is caused by the card not being recognized by the game and only the far worse onboard graphics system being recognized instead. This also cannot be fixed by driver updates or manually selecting the correct card, from what I have read.

So my question is would it be better to get the slightly worse card, the 525 which doesn't seem to be having these problems, or would you still advise me to get the 540 on the off chance that the fault doesn't affect me?

**irishron** · August 28, 2011, 02:09 PM

Right now, the 500m chips and the Warscape engine are not friends. Most if not all with the 540m or lower are playing on the integrated chip on low settings.

**tim44** · August 28, 2011, 02:37 PM

Well that's depressing.

Do we know if this is currently being fixed?

**irishron** · August 28, 2011, 02:40 PM

Search the 540m in www.notebookcheck.com and it is not doing good against any of the 3d games being released since last year.

**tim44** · August 28, 2011, 02:52 PM

Really? I'm seeing quite a lot of green for high settings. Not very high, but still not bad.

How long has this problem been known about?

**irishron** · August 28, 2011, 05:15 PM

Since Empire was released.

**tim44** · August 29, 2011, 07:36 AM

So in other words this is never going to be fixed?

Bit off topic but would a Radeon HD 6490 even be worth considering for playing Napoleon? (On high) According to notebookcheck.com it ranks lower than both the 540M and the 525M but it's the only card that comes with laptops in my price range.

**karamazovmm** · August 29, 2011, 08:02 AM

nope. for something close to the gt 540m you have to go for the 6630m, 6650m, for much better power go for the 6770m (20-30% increase)

whats your budget?

**tim44** · August 29, 2011, 08:06 AM

Around the £600-£700 mark.

**karamazovmm** · August 29, 2011, 09:23 AM

try the hp dv6

**tim44** · August 29, 2011, 03:33 PM

Yeah I've had a look at the DV6 line, they're quite nice but unfortunately the only models I could find with graphics cards better than the 6490 were unavailable in the UK.

**karamazovmm** · August 29, 2011, 04:49 PM

the problem is that the only pcs that I know with non optimus enabled gpus are much more expensive, and with your budgets those options are out of range