Laptop onboard video selection, which is better.

[rancherlee]

I'm looking at several Laptops in the 1000-1200$ price range and All of them seem to have either a 4/8meg Virge (sp?) or 8 Meg ATI Rage mobility (I remeber seeing like a M6 and M1 is there different versions of the rage mobility?) Which would be the best one to get. I plan on using the laptop for business presentations and a DVD player, but also wouldn'y mind playing a game or 2 of Q3A on the road

 

[AT]

Look into GeForce2Go and Ati Radeon Mobility. I have GeForce2go on my Dell Inspiron 8000 and with 850MHz PIII most games run okay and DVD is not bad either. Dont have personal experience from Radeon Mobility but from I heard i's even better.

Edit. Just found review review that should be informative.

 

[jschuk]

The 8MB virge is capable, ask Hans007 how his does with Quake. His Portege 34??CT has the 8MB S3 Virge MX/IX. I have personally ran MadOnion's 3DMark 2000 on units with the 8MB S3.

 

[vss1980]

In terms of 3D speed the options are between the S3 Savage IX/MX, ATI Mobility Rage/Radeon, Geforce2 Go.

The Savage IX/MX is about the same speed as a Savage 4 graphics chip - I say about because of the way it shares memory with the system memory, etc.
I think its the IX which has memory integrated with the graphics chip for frame buffering, etc., as this means its not fighting for memory bandwidth with the CPU and other things.

ATI Rage Mobility is a bit of a mix. Be careful, they have a low performing mobility part which I think the M1 comes under. The ATI Mobility 128 is an acceptable graphics chip and is based on Rage128 Pro technology.
The Mobility Radeon is obviously based on the radeon core so has ability to perform.

The Geforce2 Go is also a capable part, but there are 2 different versions. One has 64-bit DDR memory interface, the other 32-bit DDR memory interface and hence a lower memory bandwidth which will effect games. This is the same sort of situation as the MX400 and MX200 on the desktops.

In terms of which is the best at the moment, the Radeon mobility seems to have the performance edge.

 

[rancherlee]

The 3 main ones (Laptops)I'm looking at Are a Sony FXA-47 which has a Athlon 1gig which has the ATI Rage M1 x2agp (8meg)( older models had a M6 version)
Compaq athlon 1gig with VIA ProSavage KN1334 x4agp (says something about shared memory)
and the HP with 1gig athlon with Trident CBXP x2agp (8meg dedicated)
I'm completly lost when it comes to notbooks as I've never owned one before and Have build my home systems and haven't been around for about a year since I built my last box (my current desktop is a SlotA tbird 750 oc'd to 1050 and a Radeon 64vivo) I WISH I could build a laptop