[Lucika]

Hi guys! I am a technical dinosaur.
Last time when I bought a laptop it had a video memory of "256 MB" but it turned out that it has no video card at all but it drains my processors capabilities, or so I've been told.

What are the good graphical cards nowadays? (And is there any way to subvert the "IntelZillion XYZ6000" into something like =128MB, like in the old times?)

[Dark RevenantX]

The answer to that question is: no, memory is almost completely exclusive to actual computing/graphics power.

GeForce 9600, GeForce 9800, Radeon 3750, Radeon ~4700, etc. should be good laptop specs.  The best way to look around for good cards is browse www.newegg.com.

[Rick James]

Please note that there are some differences between Radeon and Geforce cards. Geforce tends to have better OpenGL support, but subsequent driver updates have a nasty habit of fixing some issues and unfixing others.

[asyikarea51]

For me I'd recommend a GeForce of some sort, especially if you plan on putting FS material on it. Though I've yet to own one in anything mobile...

What I have access to atm uses some ATI card that FS constantly and consistently crashed on. Now thankfully the manufacturer had a driver update (just had to install the mediavp shader fix for the overly-bright electrical damage effects), but what if it didn't?

I couldn't use the ATI driver either because the card was a hack of some sort...

Though anything ATI-powered looks a tad bit prettier to me, no idea why.

[Fury]

Last time I checked Radeon 4000 series had better power and thermal management than GeForce line. Those will be an important factor on laptops no matter what you're doing with it.

[colecampbell666]

What price range and size are you looking for? If you want gaming power, I'd suggest a destop, but if you need portability, a laptop is good too. The 9600 is a pretty good laptop card, I'm running it right now and it handles whatever I throw at it.

[Dark RevenantX]

Aside from the white glitch, I've run into no problems with my HD 4870.  However, I'd hate to see that thing as a laptop card (it's huge).

[colecampbell666]

ATi laptop cards are always considerably reduced from their desktop cards of the same name.

[Lucika]

What price range and size are you looking for? If you want gaming power, I'd suggest a destop, but if you need portability, a laptop is good too. The 9600 is a pretty good laptop card, I'm running it right now and it handles whatever I throw at it.

Portability is necessary.
May I guess that one of the things that you throw at your card is FSO 3.6.10?
GeForce 9600?

[Fury]

ATi laptop cards are always considerably reduced from their desktop cards of the same name.

Of course. Same goes for GeForce cards too. You'll never get top performance out of a laptop because of heat and power issues.

[colecampbell666]

Actually the 9600M GT has only about 5-10% less performance than the desktop version.

What price range and size are you looking for? If you want gaming power, I'd suggest a destop, but if you need portability, a laptop is good too. The 9600 is a pretty good laptop card, I'm running it right now and it handles whatever I throw at it.

Portability is necessary.
May I guess that one of the things that you throw at your card is FSO 3.6.10?
GeForce 9600?

3.6.10, Bioshock, Orange Box, Sins of a Solar Empire, FSX... It handles them all at 1920*1080 full detail/AA/AF.

If you want best bang for your buck, the Acer 6930 is a good deal. I have the bigger 8930.

What's your price range?

[Lucika]

What's your price range?

Well, I try to count it HUF into USD...
If i say that 200 HUF = 1 USD, then it's something like 750-850$. I'll check the correct state of these currencies tomorrow, now I am going to sleep.

[colecampbell666]

Try the Gateway m6882-h, the Acer 6930, or the HP DV5T.

[Aardwolf]

Do NOT get an Intel integrated GPU

[JGZinv]

Agreed, stay on the opposite side of the planet from Intel integrated, or the new names
for ATI or Nvidia integrated. Although not as bad, it's still integrated.

Personally I had a sager np5797 with the latest nvidia chip released in April,
and it ran everything swell, including Crysis on all high settings at 1680x1050.
Check YouTube and you'll see my videos if you are in doubt.

The keyboard was terrible and the cost too high though, so it went back.

I prefer Nvidia, I've had 3 ATI systems and I was let down by the support or drivers
each time.

Don't have a notebook suggestion as I'm back in the market myself, but check out
the notebookreview.com forums, and post in the "what laptop should I buy"
section, you should get some good responses.

[eliex]

Intel integrated GPU's 

If you get a laptop at a reasonably price, it is unlikely that you will be able to play FS with all the graphical upgrades, as well as modern games on max settings (but you can always turn it down a tad.)
With a laptop, ATI cards drain battery life considerably slower compared to nVidia cards but support less open-source drivers.

If you are going to carry your charger everywhere you go, I'd recommend nVidia . . . if not ATI.

[captain-custard]

no laptop was designed for gaming with just using the battery in , so personally id stick with nvidia , but dont forget that a nvidia 9600 mobile is no where near the same specifications as its desktop amesake , have a good look around....

now the thing that i think is really important with the laptop if your going to spend a ew hours gaming with it is how does it cool down , look for good ventilation on the laptop it might not be pretty but generaly there is no way of controling the fans on the laptop so they tend to run hot after a while of hard graphics based workload.......


other than that good luck

[eliex]

I mean, it depends on what Lucika will generally use his laptop for. If he uses it as an all-purpose utility, then no game would really perform well there - if it specifically meant for gaming, I'd recommend a desktop and if he's got a sound system, monitor, mouse and keyboard, a mini-powerhouse could be bought rather cheaply.

[Herra Tohtori]

With a laptop, ATI cards drain battery life considerably slower compared to nVidia cards but support less open-source drivers.

On Linux, NVidia cards only support 3D acceleration with NVidia's restricted (closed source) drivers. ATi/AMD's cards have both the restricted and open source driver options, although for 3D acceleration the open driver is still not quite equivalent to the restricted ones... but getting there.

NVidia cards just have a history of producing less problems with what I do with my computer, so I have a preference to them, but next time I'll be looking at a GPU... I'll definitely include some ATi cards in the pool of options.

Of course, if you just use Windows, the open/closed source driver thing has no importance to you.