Looking for a laptop

[Swampthing]

I don't keep up on laptop tech at all and frankly i have no clue about the mobile graphics cards. I'm guessing the intel HD chips are pure crap and probably want an AMD or Nvidia solution.

Anyhow, i'm looking for a decent laptop that can game at at least medium to medium high detail, that won't be insanely underpowered in a year and probably has a 17 inch screen.

Anyone have any recomendations? or should i be waiting for the whole sandy bridge mess to sort itself out?

 

[corkyg]

I would opt for a Sandy Bridge laptop. There are some already on the street.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20028200-1.html

 

[Tom]

I just picked up some Dell Inspiron 15r laptops from Dell Outlet. They have 1gb Radeon 550v discrete graphics and i3, i5, and an athlon p320. The Intels run Crysis on High, the AMD on medium. Prices were $350 to $430.

very nice laptops. Pretty sure they would outperform Sandy Bridge laptops for games. sandy Bridge is better than old Intel graphics, but that doesn't mean much since old Intel graphics were worthless.

 

[F1shF4t]

I just picked up some Dell Inspiron 15r laptops from Dell Outlet. They have 1gb Radeon 550v discrete graphics and i3, i5, and an athlon p320. The Intels run Crysis on High, the AMD on medium. Prices were $350 to $430.

very nice laptops. Pretty sure they would outperform Sandy Bridge laptops for games. sandy Bridge is better than old Intel graphics, but that doesn't mean much since old Intel graphics were worthless.

You can get sandy bridge laptops with descrete graphics cards. The ATI HD6570 in my HP is fairly descent for a laptop, was supprised how much better it is than my old DV7's HD4650.

(BTW Radeon 550v = lower clocked 4650)

 

[Tom]

You can get sandy bridge laptops with descrete graphics cards. The ATI HD6570 in my HP is fairly descent for a laptop, was supprised how much better it is than my old DV7's HD4650.

(BTW Radeon 550v = lower clocked 4650)

That's my point, that discrete graphics are more important than waiting for Sandy Bridge.

What game can you play with your HD6570 that was unplayable with your HD4650 ? I'm guessing there aren't any. You get more eye candy because of DX11, but my point was about low cost laptops, did your new laptop cost $400 ?

 

[Swampthing]

so is there someplace i can look to see the difference between mobile graphics solutions to see what i'm even looking for? I really don't want to go with the whole "higher must be better" since that's not usually the case. Like i said i have no clue which cards are even good.

The dell inspiron's only option for an upgrade over the intel is the HD5470, how does that compare to what comes on the XPS laptops, the geforce gt435?

Can't beleive how clueless i am on laptops, i've just never cared about them before.

 

[Brainonska511]

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

 

[F1shF4t]

That's my point, that discrete graphics are more important than waiting for Sandy Bridge.

What game can you play with your HD6570 that was unplayable with your HD4650 ? I'm guessing there aren't any. You get more eye candy because of DX11, but my point was about low cost laptops, did your new laptop cost $400 ?

Op wanted a laptop which would not be soon obsolete. My point is that there will obviously be better midrange descrete video cards available with SB. As far as cost goes you pay more for latest tech and even more for laptops with descent video cards.

When it comes to sandy bridge, it is a huge jump in performance for laptops. Even the slowest SB quad core is faster than any previous laptop chip. Games like civ5 which are cpu limited will work a lot better.


(To answer your question on HD6570, the biggest diff is GDDR5. The 6570 has 2.5x the memory bandwidth of 4650 with GDDR3. DDR2 version is even slower. To use Just Cause 2 as an example, the difference is 1600 x 900, 2xAA everything Mid-High compared to 1366 x 768, no AA everything Mid. Whats playable and not can be different to different people)

 

[Tom]

so is there someplace i can look to see the difference between mobile graphics solutions to see what i'm even looking for? I really don't want to go with the whole "higher must be better" since that's not usually the case. Like i said i have no clue which cards are even good.

The dell inspiron's only option for an upgrade over the intel is the HD5470, how does that compare to what comes on the XPS laptops, the geforce gt435?

Can't beleive how clueless i am on laptops, i've just never cared about them before.

You dont want the HD5470 for games. You can get the HD550v at Dell outlet, not sure about a new one.

I would check out the list of cards at Notebookcheck, it's a rough guide you can use to see where a card you're considering ranks. To play pretty much all games with decent settings you should stick to their class 1 or class 2 cards.