Laptop Graphics ???

[coneypark]

Hi folks,

Was wondering if you can help me out. I am looking to buy my first notebook and am totally lost about what graphics card I should be looking for?

I will play some games on it and want it to play them ok when i do. I'm not really into shooters or such-mostly WOW or Civ IV at the moment.

Can any of you give me some advice as to which graphics card I should be looking for?

Thanks
John

 

[SiriusB]

Well obviously youll want the best graphics you can afford. Problem is unless it has been designed as a gaming laptop you wont see any ground breaking gfx cards on most notebooks.

All I can suggest if gaming is important is to at least make sure the graphics has its own memory and it isnt integrated.

SiriusB

 

[Naffa]

My laptop has an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900. I think me and benjo worked it out to be about on par with a 9600SE. I played CS 1.6 on it flawlessly and suspect it could run Source on low. My laptop is a work one so I didn't buy it for gaming potential.. Just an added bonus that it would play CS.

 

[fyrewhyp]

Hi there,

I'm not sure what your budget is but we've had a couple of the Samsung X60's come in to my work and I've been using it to play Fear on during my lunch breaks I understand they have a a top range graphics card in them and they are dual core. I can look into it more if you want being as I work for the company I just haven't bothered much due to me being in the plasma's section.

But as far as I can see it plays FEAR just as well as my desktop here does which I've spent a hell of a lot more money on

 

[Styles]

Hi,
I have an Advent 7079, with an ATI 128MB X700 PCI-E card.

I've just finished F.E.A.R this week, which I ran on high settings at a resolution of 1280 x 800 (by editing the config file). This ran excellently.

I'm currently playing Half Life 2 through again, becuase after playing F.E.A.R i thought I may as well! I'm playing this on 1280 x 800 (widescreen laptop) with everything on high, as well as 16x AF and 6x AA and it runs beautifully.

The main problem playing graphically demanding games on laptops is the heat they produce. If I play a game for a while, and then feel the underside of my desk it will be very warm. I tend to rest the laptop on something so that the fans are completely clear and have sufficient clearance.

I've not found a game I can't play on this yet. Played through Quake 4 on high, Doom III on high, etc. All these on the same res.

Cheers

 

[squiffy]

Definietly go for ATI X700 as a minimum, 128MB or ideally the one with 256MB dedicated memory. At least that'll offer good performance/price. There's also the Geforce 7800GTX Go but that'll cost you. The newer ATI's are slower, from what I've seen (1400) A laptop with the X700 should be discounted now. Some have the X800, usually the modular GFX options though.

It's not just the performance issue, but drivers. For instance I have a certain GFX (SIS) yeah bit poo and all of the older games works, if set to reasonble level, but I might have some Opengl problems which aren't fixed in the newer drivers.

As been said the faster cards chuck out more heat, and have shorter battery run times. Add a Desktop class Prescott and that 9 cell battery lasts for 5 minutes!

 

[coneypark]

Thanks for the replys -some useful info there. Was getting confused with all the diffrent cards that these notebooks have-wasn't sure what was pants and what was ok. Think I will have a look at them again - games arent the most important issue but it will be a desktop replacment and I just want to be able to play games without having to reduce to much detail.

Thanks again for all the help