Need advice on Laptop graphics

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by michael78, Aug 26, 2006.

  1. michael78

    michael78 Terabyte Poster

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    Guys I'm looking to buy a laptop but most of the £700 priced laptops have intergrated graphics so I'm a little put off cause I want it to do work on as well as play games on it. Are the latest intergrated graphics capable of playing 3D games. I'm not bothered about the settings not being on the highest settings but just want it capable of playing games like Call of Duty, Civilization 4 etc.

    Mainly the laptops seems to come with the Intel GMA 950 chip or I can spend a little more and get one with an ATI X1400 chip.

    Any advice would be most welcome as I know nowt about graphics cards...:rolleyes:
     
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  2. michael78

    michael78 Terabyte Poster

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    anyone???
     
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  3. ffreeloader

    ffreeloader Terabyte Poster

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    Slypie,

    I bought the laptop at the following link for the equivalent of about 650 British pounds. I don't know if it's what you're looking for as I don't game, but I can play DVD's at full screen with no dropped frames at the default 1440x900 resolution. I have read where other people use them for intensive graphics work too so while it might not have the card you're looking for it is pretty good at graphics.

    http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/cto/computer_customize_components.do


    Here is a link to the hp.uk site with an equivalent for 900 British pounds including VAT.

    http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/21675-38187-38191-38191-38191-12358768-73180335.html
     
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  4. Bluerinse
    Honorary Member

    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    I am not a real gamer but I do like playing Doom3, COD and COD2 and from my experience they will only run, meaning play at all, if you have a proper dedicated graphics card with it's own decent chunk of memory (256MB).
     
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  5. michael78

    michael78 Terabyte Poster

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    I probably wouldn't play games like COD and Doom on my laptop but would like it to play say the latest RTS and RPG games like civ4 and Lord of the rings: battle for middle earth 2. Would the latest intergrated graphics cards be able to play games like those?

    Freddy, my max budget is £700 but cheers for the info...:D
     
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  6. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    IMHO games and laptops don't really mix - whatever reviews may say.

    The problem is that there are two conficting forces.

    1) For a laptop to get good reviews it must have good battery life, which precludes current draining stuff like high processor speeds and fast graphics.

    2) For games you need very good graphics, and good processor speed, which take lots of power.

    Very few laptops have decent graphics because of this, and those few are *very* expensive.

    I have always argued that the requirements of a games-player should be divorced from that of a laptop-user, but many don't want to hear this and ignore it. :p

    Harry.
     
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  7. michael78

    michael78 Terabyte Poster

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    I agree 100% that laptops don't make good gaming machines. The reason I want a laptop is because I will be probably doing a lot of travelling to London and staying over night so I want to buy a laptop that I can play games on. I'm not bothered if I have to play them on the worst settings but I just want to be able to play the latest games to kill time whilst away or on the train. I hear conflicting reports that the latest intergrated graphics whilst not the best will play the latest games. I just want some advice or someone to clear this up for me as I don't want to make a £700 mistake...:D
     
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  8. elli5on

    elli5on Kilobyte Poster

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    Depending on what you mean by ''gaming''... If your into it big time the best one to buy would be alienware.. Im a big gamer but alwys use desktops. Upgrading is a key thing these days. Especially for gaming.
     
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  9. michael78

    michael78 Terabyte Poster

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    I only want it for gaming when I'm stuck in hotels twiddling my thumbs. I would only be playing games like civ 4, Lord of the Rings 2, total war:rome etc. Nothing that I would call too graphically intensive. I'm just not sure if intergrated graphics would even be able to manage them types of games...:rolleyes:
     
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  10. elli5on

    elli5on Kilobyte Poster

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    You my find that they will play the games, But if you turn up AA and filtering that the game will begin to stutter. More memory would be used also so your RAM would have to be of decent calibre. This one would be good for you.. But expensive...

    Dell XPS M1710 Pentium Duo T2600

    Running an nvidia 7900gtx gpu, with 2gb RAM running @ 533mhz. But for £1700, Bit steep
     
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