ATI Mobility 3450 256 MB Graphics Card on Dell Studio 15

Alright, I looked around a bit, and couldn't find anything that matched, so here goes. I am looking to get a budget laptop. I am currently looking at the Studio 15, for $799. This comes with an ATI Mobility 3450 256 MB graphics card. I want to be able to play games from 07 on lowest settings. I will also want to play older games such as COD 1, KOTOR, Republic commando, and battlefield 1942. I would get the 1280*800 resolution monitor, so it wouldn't have to push out high resolutions. I used to have a Nvidia FX 5200 512 MB in my desktop. Will this card be comparable to the FX 5200? Should I get this one, or go for the 3650 and the 1440*900 resolution monitor for $1,025 in the Studio 17? Just so you know, I now have an ATI 4850 in my desktop for high end gaming, so that won't be a problem Thanks

But is it really worth $200 more? As I said, I'm not going to play tons of games on this thing. Does anyone know how performance is on lowest settings for newer games?

The 3450 will not game very well at all.
The 3650 is not much better since they use DDR2 for some reason and as a result it performs much worse than other laptops with the 3650 included.

The card will not at all means be amazing, but you know that already. Anyways, from what I have found here, http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-M [...] 593.0.html, it actually does not seem THAT bad...

msi gx610
hd 2600 series graphics

can find under other names at
ibuypower and
buyxg

possibly other places too... but it's inexpensive, and has a nice graphics card and overall good mid-priced setup that will allow you to play some
games.

wont run cod 4 at all. mb hl 2 on lowest

The card can run any of the games you described playably, at some settings.

My cousin runs a 9600se on his desktop, and that can crank out cod4 on low settings.

The 3650 is a little weaker than the 8600m gt, which can handle almost every game at medium

For most cases, you can forget about upgrading laptop GPU's. Some companies allow it with special designs, most don't.

Alright, thanks everyone for all their help.

While someone up there said you CAN run some of those games playably, it is only barely. I have this, and I really cant use it for much. Framerate is terrible, and even older games lag it up something awful. Spore, which isn't really that grphically challenged, looks pretty bad (the "lava" is like rainbow tv static) and even old stuff like Warcraft 3 gets nasty. Strangely, Painkiller runs better on high settings than low, but it's the only thing that does. Halo PC and World of Warcraft are UNPLAYABLE. If you can, get something else if you're a gamer.