Laptop graphics capabilities

fish99

fish99

fish99

Soldato
Joined
19 May 2005
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Doncaster
Hi,

I'd like to think I know a good bit about desktop video cards, but I'm currently thinking of buying my first laptop and have no idea what the various graphics chips they have are capable of. I'm not really getting it for gaming since I have a nice desktop PC for that, but I'd like to be able to fire up the odd game on it, although not necessarily the newest games.

I was looking at some of the £400-500 laptops, for instance one, the Acer Aspre 5051AWXMI, has ATI X1100 MB 128mb shared graphics. I was also looking at the Toshiba Satellite A100-02M which has 128 mb shared intel 943GML graphics. What sort of games could something like these run - could they run Doom 3 or Fear at all? If not could they run older games like System Shock 2 / Thief 1 + 2?

Do you really have to be looking at a heftier price to have a worthwhile graphics capability? For instance something like the Toshiba Satellite P200-143 with it's NVidia GF7600 128MB. I know roughly how a 7600 128 mb should perform but not the shared graphics on the other two laptops.

Cheers,
Simon.
 
Even the vaguest bit of info would be a big help btw :)

Looking now at the Tosh Satellite L30-11G which has ATI Xpress 200M graphics, which I believe might be better than the others I was looking at, although it has a reletively weak CPU (1.86 GHz Celeron). I read a comment about Xpress 200M being able to run BF2 on low settings, but that was with 128 mb dedicated vram, not shared which would presumably bring the performance down considerably.

Not looking for stellar games performance, just want to avoid something that really stinks for gaming.
 
I may also be in the market for a laptop soon - which won't get used a lot for gaming, but I would like it to be able to play WoW with decent frame rates. (It'll likely be that and some older stuff that gets played on it).
 
fish99 said:
Even the vaguest bit of info would be a big help btw :)

Looking now at the Tosh Satellite L30-11G which has ATI Xpress 200M graphics, which I believe might be better than the others I was looking at, although it has a reletively weak CPU (1.86 GHz Celeron). I read a comment about Xpress 200M being able to run BF2 on low settings, but that was with 128 mb dedicated vram, not shared which would presumably bring the performance down considerably.

Not looking for stellar games performance, just want to avoid something that really stinks for gaming.
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Hi fish99, it all depends on your budget really. For £400-£500, you're not going to really be able to play any games apart from the real oldies and even then... visuals won't be fantastic. For £600-£750 - you could get a decent Core2Duo notebook with a decent graphics card, allowing you to load mid-range games at highish settings and the likes of BF2 on med settings... but don't quote me on that.

Anything above and you would be looking into the new Intel Santa Rosa and the DX10 capable nvidia 8400/8600 series cards.

The Xpress 200M is right down the bottom in terms of graphics performance for mobile gaming. I can't see it running BF2 too well at all, matched with a Celeron - it won't get better. Doom 3 and Fear is a no-go on this sort of system. The GeForce 7600 aren't too bad and will give you the opportunity for mobile gaming with playable framerates.

Toshiba produces pretty decent laptops. Acers provide good value but build quality are so-so. It all falls down to your budget. :)
 
Thanks for that :)

How about something like HP Pavilion DV6330 with Core Duo @ 1.86 GHz and NVidia GF 7400 128MB (dedicated). That's £575. Would you expect that to get into the 'can run HL2' performance range or am I being way too optimistic there? Specs look at least half decent from nvidias site.
 
fish99 said:
Thanks for that :)

How about something like HP Pavilion DV6330 with Core Duo @ 1.86 GHz and NVidia GF 7400 128MB (dedicated). That's £575. Would you expect that to get into the 'can run HL2' performance range or am I being way too optimistic there? Specs look at least half decent from nvidias site.
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I'm sure something like that would run the Source engine fine. Source isn't really that dependent on the GPU anyway. You may get away with high settings in that game. The HP DV6330 is not too bad for the £500-£600 region, I'm unsure as to whether you'd be able to squeeze in the newer generation Intel T5XXX series processors as opposed to the T2350.

You could try upgrading your budget for the DV6277 which is similar spec but with a Core 2 Duo T5500 - 1.66GHz.
 
Cool, that's the sort of performance level I'm looking for and the sort of price I wouldn't want to exceed. Cheers :)
 
yeah for gaming i would say stay away from shared GFX, dedicated is always going to be better. Also you can keep an eye on a certain auction webby, where you can buy better gfx cards for certain makes of laptops. But they need the pci-e expansion slot. Mines built in on my lappy (won it at work in a raffle for £3) so i cannot upgrade. I can play WC3 on low settings ok, but thats about it. Shared gfx need more ram to make the most of the gfx memory. For example if i have 512mb ram, then gfx is allocated about 64mb gfx memory. If i have a 1gb of ram then the gfx card gets 128mb fx memory.

If i was gonna buy a laptop i would be looking at the c2d, and at least a 7600gt, the rest you can change later on, hd's, dvd player etc.
 
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