Laptop Graphics Cards

antijoke · 14 Sep 2010 at 13:59

Now when it comes to laptop graphics cards I am a total noob, there are so many different variants/built in shared etc etc that I need some advice.

My laptop (5 year old beast) has now gone down the swanny, it had a Radeon X600 256MB RAM (please try not to laugh) and the laptop I am looking to replace it with has a Mobility Radeon HD 4250 with 512MB RAM built in.

I am not looking nor expecting to set the world on fire with the new card, but what I do not want is to find that I cannot play games like HL1/HL2, AVP (1999 version) AVP2, C&C original games (upto Generals) being able to play RA3/C&C3 would be a bonus but not expecting to be able to run those.

Would someone be able to offer a little reassurance as to the actual performance of the Mobility Radeon HD4250?

olivier renault · 14 Sep 2010 at 14:49

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Radeon-HD-4250.29664.0.html

It's very low on performance, but good enough for the games you mention. In fairness, even a onboard GMA4500 would be able to cope with HL1-generation gaming, maybe even HL2.

antijoke · 14 Sep 2010 at 15:04

That's a page I have read, but didn't really know how to interpret the figures and relate them to what I have now.

I'm not really interested in modern day gaming on it as I'm more of a console gamer now

o) and as long as I can play the oldies that I like going back to then I am happy.

Thanks for the comments.

hp7909 · 14 Sep 2010 at 15:25

anticonscience said:
That's a page I have read, but didn't really know how to interpret the figures and relate them to what I have now

Going by the charts (here) on that site, your X600 is Class 4.

Maybe go for one with a Class 2 GFX spec = will help keep the laptop equally or for even much longer e.g. NVIDIA GeForce GT 320M (here)

olivier renault · 14 Sep 2010 at 19:37

roughly :

HD5650 = GT335M -> high settings gaming.
HD5470 = GT320M = 1/2 HD5650 -> medium settings gaming.
Ion = HD4250 = 1/2 HD5470 -> low settings gaming.

you can expand the "show comparison chart" to get a better idea against the competition. But don't expect anything but low settings gaming on the latest games, even then it will occasionaly struggle.

Previous generation, DX9 games (HL2 and so on) will play on medium-low settings I recon.

Even older generation games (Diablo II, Quake 3, Half Life), will play on high comfortably.

RTS games shouldn't be too much of a problem. They are CPU bound usually anyway.