[Shevek]

The time has finally come for me to get a new laptop, and I'm super excited to get a graphics card that can finally handle all the eye candy I've missed in 3.6.10+ (I've been running on an ATI x1600 for years). I seem to have a problem, though. When it comes to NVIDIA cards, I pretty much can choose the energy efficient GT 330M, which reportedly is not a great card for any sort of games, the GT 285M, which is sort of a brute force last generation gaming card, or the GT 480M, which as far as I can tell is designed as much to melt one's laptop as to make pretty pictures. On the ATI side, the HD 5750 looks like it's much more what I'm looking for: relatively low energy/heat, but good enough for games and advanced enough in its software support that it may not be obsolete for a few years. So my question, since I run Linux, is can I trust the ATI drivers? I don't want to get burned again like I did with the x1600.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

First don't get a laptop if you want a good video card.  It's not like they give you a choice or update drivers. 

[General Battuta]

I've been using a desktop 4870 and now a 5850 for more than two years with no problems whatsoever in FSOpen.

However I really don't trust laptop graphics.

[Fury]

If you run Windows to play games, don't expect to get drivers up-to-date drivers. You need to research first if the laptop in question can run properly on generic drivers offered by NVIDIA and AMD. If they don't, you'll be forever stuck with driver releases from OEM manufacturer. And they don't release ****. For gaming, play it safe and use a desktop computer instead. Or get a console. The latter of course won't do any good for FSO.

If you run linux, which one is better is a matter of principles. NVIDIA has superior proprietary drivers, but AMD has released specs for their cards and thus AMD open-source driver development has been booming for long time now. AMD open-source drivers are developing at rapid pace and is likely to overtake proprietary drivers sooner or later. Whether this is soon enough for you and whether you care for open-source is up to you.

For gaming on linux right now, I'd pick NVIDIA. For principles of supporting AMD for releasing specs for the cards, I'd pick AMD.

Still, the only thing worse than getting windows laptop for gaming is getting linux laptop for gaming. If you're dead set on getting laptop anyway, do your research and find out if generic graphics drivers from NVIDIA or AMD work on the laptop. If they don't, you'll find yourself screwed and ripped off. OEM manufacturers don't care for games past marketing and won't update drivers unless they really have to, which is almost never.

[Shevek]

Yeah, it's pretty set that I'm getting a laptop. I need the mobility for many of the other things I will use the computer for, and I don't have the budget to get a desktop as well.

Fury – Do you have a read on the relative merits of the drivers (both open source and proprietary) for NVIDIA and ATI? I've been trying to figure out what the deal is with the open source ATI drivers, but I'm just getting confused. Are they good enough to use for FSO, or are they a ways out from really being usable?

Also, worrying about generic graphics drivers is just a Windows thing, right? I'm assuming that since most OEMs don't officially support Linux, so I doubt they provide drivers for it.

If I go the NVIDIA route, what could I expect out of the GT 330M for the foreseeable future with regard to FSO (graphics quality levels, frame rates...)?

[Fury]

Honestly, I would really, really suggest looking for a laptop that is lightweight, has long battery life and doesn't generate much heat. Those are what you need if mobility is what you require. A good GPU and CPU will negate all that and make the laptop far less mobile.

If you're going for the linux route, you need to at the bare minimum research how well the laptop runs linux. Not all of them do it well and may have problems with archaic hardware such as wifi, certain buttons and other features that may greatly reduce usability of the laptop. Laptops these days have a lot of proprietary **** only the OEM manufacturer knows how they work and provide needed drivers for. Meaning the more barebones the laptop is, the better it will work on linux.

I do not know how well AMD (ATI) open-source drivers work on FSO. You'd need to ask someone who has tried, and I don't know who has. Like I said in previous post, if you want to play games on linux NOW, you're better off with an nvidia card and their proprietary drivers.

But eh, I hope you'll reconsider getting a cheap barebones laptop suitable for your mobile needs. Then save the remaining money and use it to buy a desktop gaming PC sometime later down in the road.

[Klaustrophobia]

i've never once had a driver related problem playing games on my laptop with ATI x1400.  i really don't think mobile drivers are that big of a deal, since you're nearly always limited by the hardware itself. 

[Fury]

X1400 is low-end and otherwise crap, so obviously that is going to be the first limiting factor. But Shevek here, is planning to get a laptop with a decent GPU, which means the hardware is capable and the deciding factor will be drivers.

[Hades]

Actually, from my experience (which isn't very much) is that mobile gpu drivers aren't really as scarce as everyone seems to thing. Nvidia constantly updates theirs. Not sure about ATI, however, their newer cards are better than anything nvidia has to offer.

[Fury]

This wasn't about availability of generic drivers, this was about them properly supporting the OEM laptop in question. Reasonably many laptop models have non-standard implementation of GPU, which makes generic drivers unlikely to work.

[Glowhyena]

A laptop is limitation.

[DarkBasilisk]

You can get a kickass gaming laptop, if you're willing to pay through the roof. I uh... got a $4000+ laptop when i went to college. Works great for everything : gets high fps on Dwarf Fortress, runs FSO on highest settings, etc etc. It's just heavy as hell, costs a ton, and can have heating issues at times. Once i looked at what i could have gotten if i threw 3/4th's that much money at a desktop I facepalmed and resolved not to do this again any time soon

[Nuke]

the problem is that drivers put out by laptop manufacturers are customized variations of the drivers of the chip manufacturers, which are designed to meet certain requirements of the laptop. so while they have fairly good chipsets, they are limited by how often the manufacturer updates the drivers, which is sadly not frequent enough. is no longer up to the chip manufacturer support the drivers, and even if they wanted too they dont have access to driver modifications the laptop manufacturer made. also it seems that the support life of laptops these days is less than 2 years.

i kinda wish laptops would have more standardized, interchangeable parts, much like desktops. they can start by making the graphics chipset modular. alienware did something like that, but i very much doubt that it was accepted as an industry standard.

laptops can still get good performance with games though. mine can still run crysis. but newer, less demanding games struggle to run on it. and when buying a laptop, might as well go for a good gpu. id rather have a good gpu with ****ty drivers than a ****ty gpu any day.

[Shevek]

So you guys convinced me to do some more research into my desktop options, and for better or for worse I opted to go for a relatively cheap laptop, and to spend the money for a more expensive desktop later. No FSO for me for the moment, since I'm now running off an i3 laptop with only integrated graphics, but I wouldn't have had time anyway, since it's the semester. I'm looking at going for an Athlon II X3 445 or Phenom II X3 740 mini-cube desktop with a GTX 460 in a couple months.

Thanks for the help!

[Admiral LSD]

The GTX 460 is a pretty good choice right now. Sure, it has the same problems with power consumption and heat output - something you'll want to think about going for an SFF build - as the other GTX 4xx chips, but is in the same performance class as the Radeon 5850 while being quite a bit cheaper. Just make sure you get the 1GB version. The 768MB version can be had cheaper, but is clocked slower.

AMD CPUs, on the other hand, are a lot harder to recommend. They look cheap on paper, and perform reasonably well when you're actively able to utilise the extra cores (which most people aren't), but if you're able to then you're better off looking into the Intel Clarkdale (i3) range. They are more expensive (around USD$30 more for the i3-530 than the 740 Phenom II), but will generally outperform the AMDs overall while using less power and putting out less heat, the latter being important for SFF setups.

[Shevek]

Hmm, the reason I'm thinking AMD is that I saw very encouraging looking benchmarks for those particular CPUs (passmark value in particular). As you say, the Phenom II X3 740 is similarly priced to the i3-530, but everything I've seen has compared its performance to the i5-655K. I will definitely be able to use the multiple cores, as one of my main uses for the machine will involve running Windows in KVM-QEMU; I can dedicate one or two of the cores just to that when I'm using it. I'm probably going for an external exhaust version of the GTX 460, which should help with heat, and definitely after-market fans and thermal compound. My girlfriend just ordered a machine with similar specs, so I'll be interested to learn from her experience.

[Astronomiya]

The GTX 460 is a pretty good choice right now. Sure, it has the same problems with power consumption and heat output - something you'll want to think about going for an SFF build - as the other GTX 4xx chips, but is in the same performance class as the Radeon 5850 while being quite a bit cheaper. Just make sure you get the 1GB version. The 768MB version can be had cheaper, but is clocked slower.

No it doesn't actually.  It's GF104, not GF100, and as a result uses much less power than its cousins.  It delivers performance a little bit under a 5850, uses less power, and runs cooler.

[Admiral LSD]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2901/1

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2972/the-rest-of-clarkdale-intel-s-pentium-g6950-core-i5-650-660-670-reviewed/1

While neither lists the precise CPUs you're looking at, but performance probably won't be that much better compared with either of the two closest that are listed (the Phenom II X3 720 and the Athlon II X3 440) to shift the results back into AMDs favour by any substantial amount. Outside the multithreaded tests, the AMDs struggle to keep up with the Intels and where they are able to beat out the nearest Intel competition, it's not by enough to make the increases in power consumption and heat worth it. The key there is multithreaded. If you aren't using all the cores at the same time, the more efficient architecture of the Clarkdales is able to have AMDs aging K8 cores eating its dust.

No it doesn't actually.  It's GF104, not GF100, and as a result uses much less power than its cousins.  It delivers performance a little bit under a 5850, uses less power, and runs cooler.

You know, you're right, but not by much. It runs a couple of degrees cooler than the 5850, uses a little less power at idle, but load power is still in the 5850s favour. However, it's hard to pin down a specific set of power levels and heat output figures for the 460 because (deliberately I suspect), like all the Fermis, they're binned based on voltage which directly affects power consumption and heat output.