• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Laptops graphics cards

Phoenix211

Phoenix211

Phoenix211

Associate
Joined
28 Mar 2004
Posts
1,989
Hey

my uncle has decided he wants a laptop to play dvds and games

Kinda games hes thinking is strategy games and some golf stuff. Problem is, he might buy some driving games too.

Whilst I know a little bit about laptops, im not too clued up on the graphics for them. I know intergrated is bad for games but whats a good chip. Ive seen nvidia 6400 and the Radeon® X1300 but i'm not too sure if these are good enough because I have no idea how powerful they are.

Am i looking at things I dont need to, is intergrated ok for those areas of games?

limit for a lappy is prob £800 I would say
 
Laptops, notebooks, wotever you call them, are not really games pc full stop. Integrated graphics are normally poo, however the nvidia go 7 series isnt to bad, or the x1600 ati jobby, but neither are brilliant
 
probably something around the 9700pro performance would play C & C Generals fine. i think if you can get a x700 thats around the same performance if not better not sure of what that would could be compared to on the nvidia side.
 
go for nvida or ati mobile graphics on laptops, and the more you pay, the better in general the graphics will be. look for onboard ram, and not ones that use the actual computers ram to feed it. yes the latest generation of nvidia/ati graphics will play C&C Generals fine, even HL2 quite well, and im going on the x1600 ati laptop i used a while back.
 
The mobility xpress 200m on my laptop is about the equivalent to the x300 desktop model which is not too bad when paired with a 3500+ processor :p

Plays DoD:S/CSS etc all fine with mostly max details at 800x600. Some games however run awfully slow even at 800x600 with lowest settings, such as flatout. :o
 
A laptop with ATI X700 will be more than good enough for most games,
including Doom3. Lower resolution, no AA.

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx

And the 7800GTX Go can slaughter some desktops. Look for one of the faster Turions with X700. The new ATI are slower, at least the lower end ones (X1300 is slower than X700) Need X1600 at least.
 
For about the £930-£950 mark you can get a Fujitsu-Siemens Laptop with a nVidia GF Go 6800 with 256MB GFX Ram.
 
these are the games it will be playing

Football Manager 2006
Age of Empries II
Command and Conquer Generals
Theme Hospital, Theme Park World or Rollercoaster Tycoon 3?
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06

so an ati x700 could do those?

what about the 200m thing or a ati x1400?
 
No problem at all with those games, if you google search for X700 mobile benchmarks you'll get a idea that newer FPS's like Doom3 are playable, so older games set at full detail no problem. I wouldn't bother with the ATI X200 or X300's. The ATI X1400 is slower than than X700 AFAIK.
 
squiffy said:
No problem at all with those games, if you google search for X700 mobile benchmarks you'll get a idea that newer FPS's like Doom3 are playable, so older games set at full detail no problem. I wouldn't bother with the ATI X200 or X300's. The ATI X1400 is slower than than X700 AFAIK.
Click to expand...

but would the 1400 still be able do you think?
 
http://www.notebookforums.com/

For more knowledgeable notebook people. :) Basically though load up on RAM, 512MB at the very least.
You will be able to find a gaming notebook for under that, easily. £700 should get you a Acer 5024 (heavily discounted) 100GB HD, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI X700, 15.4" widescreen.
 
Fuzz said:
For about the £930-£950 mark you can get a Fujitsu-Siemens Laptop with a nVidia GF Go 6800 with 256MB GFX Ram.
Click to expand...

I have a fujitsu siemens amilo d1845, 3.2 p4 mob, 512, 9700 mob gfx.

Plays games ok but more ram would be better.

Installed oblivion on it and at 640x480 med settings it is just playable but there are long pauses when loading between doors.

Only thing I would say about this laptop is that the design isn't too great and it gets very hot!
 
That sounds like not enough RAM or HD read rate problem. You could use a external hard disc with the game installed onto that (use a 3.5" desktop 7200rpm) The differences between laptop drives and desktop drives is considerable.
 
ArchAnGeL said:
I have a fujitsu siemens amilo d1845, 3.2 p4 mob, 512, 9700 mob gfx.

Plays games ok but more ram would be better.

Installed oblivion on it and at 640x480 med settings it is just playable but there are long pauses when loading between doors.

Only thing I would say about this laptop is that the design isn't too great and it gets very hot!
Click to expand...


The heat is more due to the fact that you have a standard desktop P4 in there which kick out a lot of heat.
Laptops with mobile versions of CPUs like a P4-m or P-m kick out a lot less heat and are better on battery life as well.
 
Fuzz said:
The heat is more due to the fact that you have a standard desktop P4 in there which kick out a lot of heat.
Laptops with mobile versions of CPUs like a P4-m or P-m kick out a lot less heat and are better on battery life as well.
Click to expand...

even with that in mind, it's still a roaster.

Forget having it on your lap (not advised anyway as air intake is on the bottom)
 
Thats one of the benifits of the new dual core cpus. Coz they're running slower they produce less heat but same amount of processing power.
 
Fuzz said:
Thats one of the benifits of the new dual core cpus. Coz they're running slower they produce less heat but same amount of processing power.
Click to expand...


EH?

They don't produce less heat because they run slower. They produce less heat because they operate at a much lower voltage.

Even with that said my Toshiba Satellite with its Dothan 1.6ghz processor (Centrino) it still gets hot.

My laptop can run most of the latest games at decent settings and it only has the 9700pro mobility card in it. (basically a 9600XT rebadged).

Swat4, BF2, HL2 all run fine at medium settings with some AA and AF (although I do have 1.25gb of ram).

To OP:

For the games suggested a X1300 would play them (barely). Try to look more towards the X700 / X1600 or the 6600go (If you like nvidia).

All of these will play the games your uncle wishes to play at medium to high detail settings without much tweaking.

However make sure you have at least 1gb of ram.

On my laptop BF2 was unplayable until I got more ram. Before I had only 512mb and I was getting like 5fps on any setting. Sticking more ram in brought this up to playable (25FPS +) even at much higher settings.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom