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Laptop gaming/graphics chipsets - what are your experiences?

I

indd

Senior member
I'm going to buy a laptop sometime relatively soon and I was trying to do some research. It would be cool to do some gaming, and I haven't seen much info about how well laptop graphics chips did (also with memory and bus restrictions due to power consumption). As a point of reference of my gaming expectations, my current system is a Celeron 450 with a Voodoo3 2000. The performance under Unreal Tournament isn't too bad. It's a little laggy sometimes, but for the most part the performance is decent.

Here's some info I got from looking at some company websites and the 2002 PCWorld notebook roundup.


Chipset - example systems

ATI Mobility Radeon M6 - Dell Inspiron 4100
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 - Dell Inspiron 8100
ATI Rage M3 Mobility - Winbook Z1
ATI Radeon Mobility - HP Omnibook 6100
ATI Rage Mobility M128 - Winbook Z1 Celeron 750
ATI Rage P/M Mobility PCI - Fujitsu Lifebook C Series
NVidia Geforce2 Go - Toshiba Satellite 3005-S403, Gateway Solo 9550se
S3 Savage IX +MX - Gateway Solo 3450
S3 SuperSavage/IXC SDR - IBM Thinkpad T23
S3 Twister - Chem USA Chembook 3830
Trident CyberBlade Ai1 - IBM Thinkpad R30
Trident CyberBlade XP - Toshiba Portege 4000


These are all chipsets from current laptops, and there seems to be a lot of redundancy. Anyone know more about these chipset families (like the Mobility Radeon/Rage, S3's and Tridents)? I'm also interested in any laptops as old as around a P3 500.

Can anyone share their experiences with gaming on laptops? Anyone know of any hardware sites that have reviewed laptop graphics chipsets?

thanks for any help..
indd

EDIT: better title
 
If you really want to game, get a Dell Inspiron 8100 with either a Radeon 7500 or a Geforce2Go, preferably the 7500.

Everything else falls way behind in 3D performance.

I have in Inspiron 8000 with a Geforce2Go and I can play Wolfenstein at 800x600 with most of the eye candy on with no slowdowns.
 
after doing a bit of research, it becomes an obvious choice.
dell 8100/4100 with the 32 meg gf2 go.
blows everything out of the water.
something like close 100fps in quake3 at decent res.

but i can imagine the radeon 7500 is good too.

steer away from anything else, i.e. s3, rage mobility, neomagic, etc.
 
I got an off-topic question:

Does mobility Radeon and/or GeForce2 Go have dual-display capability with extended desktop? In other words, can I attach an external monitor to the laptop and gain more desktop space?

My current laptop uses i815EM. It works well for my needs since I don't play games, but I get annoyed at times because it doesn't support extended desktop.
 


<<

<< Radeon 7500 or a Geforce2Go >>

unless you want to play any games at the lowest settings... >>




I have a 32mb ddr Geforce2 Go right now, I just bought the Radeon 7500 upgrade, it should be here by febuary... The Geforce2Go can play anything, and looks great when playing games at 1600x1200 (UT) but sometimes you'll get a performance hit and you'll have to go down to 1024x768. Hopefully with the Radeon, I'll play em all in 1600x1200.
 
Everyone's responses are greatly appreciated.. I'm also wondering if I go with an older laptop (maybe from Celly 500 to P3 800) how gameplay is. I mean the chipsets were definitely not designed for doing graphics (especially games).. but were games playable on older lappies?

I'm trying to decide whether to go for a $700 with a used laptop (that I could buy in the next month or two) or wait a few months and go for a higher dollar new one.. it will actually be used more for work (development), but I'd love to have the option to game.

thanks again..
indd
 
bump for more questions

Anyone tried the Toshiba laptops (3000 and 5000 series) that have the 16MB Geforce2 GO chipsets?

Are there any other laptops that have either the Geforce2 GO or the ATI 7500? Especially the 7500..

thanks..
indd
 
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