Quote Hi there,

I am looking at buying a new latop - a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 - which has the following graphics card:-

NVIDIA® GeForce® MX250 with 2GB GDDR5 graphics memory

Is this card compatible with Powerdirector 365 and/or Powerdirector 17? I am not really sure what the difference is between Powerdirector 17 and 356 is - at this stage I am thinking of going for 365 but would like to know if the card is compatible with both.

Thanks in advance .. Anita

Compatible.....sure. It's not a very powerful card though. It's a class 2 entry level Laptop card, but it will handle PD.....just be prepared to edit at lower resolution settings in the TL and don't expect fast rendering. As for your other question...PD17 is the stand alone product, and 365 is the subscription version. If you want constant content updates, then go with the 365, otherwise, stick with PD17.

Quote
Compatible.....sure. It's not a very powerful card though. It's a class 2 entry level Laptop card, but it will handle PD.....just be prepared to edit at lower resolution settings in the TL and don't expect fast rendering. As for your other question...PD17 is the stand alone product, and 365 is the subscription version. If you want constant content updates, then go with the 365, otherwise, stick with PD17.

Thanks for such a quick response .. can handle it taking a while to render and editing at a lower res - as long as th output is still great quality. The laptop is a very good deal atm with i7 processor and 512Gb SSD hard drive and they actually offer the option of PD 17 as an add-on so provided that it is compatible and produce good resultys (though at a slower rate) I think I will go for it :

hi again,

would the Intel® UHD Graphics 620 with shared graphics memory be a better grphics card?

Thanks,
Anita

Quote hi again,

would the Intel® UHD Graphics 620 with shared graphics memory be a better grphics card?

Thanks,
Anita

As this is an Integrated Graphics Card, the UHD Graphics 620 doesn’t have any memory of its own. I would always go with a dedicated graphics card. Therefore, the MX250 would be a better option.

Thank you 🙂

Quote hi again, would the Intel® UHD Graphics 620 with shared graphics memory be a better grphics card? Thanks, Anita

AnitaJ, I'd probably do some searches and reading in these forms on laptops and discrete graphic cards with PD. More often than not, PD is not configured to use the discrete GPU via Nvidia Optimus. Because of that, PD will simply use the iGPU regardless of which discrete GPU you purchase. The UHD Graphics 620 iGPU which is part of the Inspiron 7000 i5-8265U CPU will be used by PD by default. However, many other applications can take advantage of the discrete GPU.

There are laptop BIOS settings that one can utilize to disable the iGPU so it will always use the discrete GPU but to my knowledge the Inspiron BIOS does not have that feature, unless changed recently. In Dells laptop product line, the Precision series typically have this feature.

Jeff

Quote

AnitaJ, I'd probably do some searches and reading in these forms on laptops and discrete graphic cards with PD. More often than not, PD is not configured to use the discrete GPU via Nvidia Optimus. Because of that, PD will simply use the iGPU regardless of which discrete GPU you purchase. The UHD Graphics 620 iGPU which is part of the Inspiron 7000 i5-8265U CPU will be used by PD by default. However, many other applications can take advantage of the discrete GPU.

There are laptop BIOS settings that one can utilize to disable the iGPU so it will always use the discrete GPU but to my knowledge the Inspiron BIOS does not have that feature, unless changed recently. In Dells laptop product line, the Precision series typically have this feature.

Jeff

Yep, this is a well made point.

Thanks everyone for your input. I ended up going with the initial model that I enquired about - the one with the NVIDIA® GeForce® MX250 with 2GB GDDR5 graphics memory

I figure for my needs it should be enough and am comforted by the fact that Dell actually offer PD17 as an add-on for this model.

Thanks again,

Anita

Quote Thanks everyone for your input. I ended up going with the initial model that I enquired about - the one with the NVIDIA® GeForce® MX250 with 2GB GDDR5 graphics memory

I figure for my needs it should be enough and am comforted by the fact that Dell actually offer PD17 as an add-on for this model.

Thanks again,

Anita

PD17 will run fine on that rig. You won't know whether it will utilize the MX250 until you run PD17 and then optimize it for use on your computer. Within PD17, you go to Settings.....Hardware Acceleration and click on the 'Optimize' button. Then you're good to go. PD17 doesn't utilize my NVIDIA GTX1060 card, but it renders quickly using the i7CPU. Enjoy your laptop and PD17.