Laptop graphics

[time]

I'm looking at laptops with usable gaming graphics. The choices are nVidia 7300 or ATI X1700, in Acer, Asus and Lenovo models. I think they're all 128MB VRAM, although the specs for the X1700 state 512MB.

On a 1280x800 screen, what's the difference likely to be?

There's also the Core 2 Duo vs Core vs Turion (vs Celeron) issue, if anyone's got any info on that. TIA.

 

[Mercutio]

The Core2 will be faster and better battery life...
I suspect the ATI will be better, but only modestly. The better direct match for a FireGL5250/x1700 is almost certainly a 7600. In any case, graphics will be good enough for last year's DX9 stuff.

 

[Pradeep]

Core2 or Turion if you want 64 bit capability, Core Duo is 32bit only.

 

[Sol]

My x1400 laptop plays most current games tolerably well (BF2142, Dark Messiah). I can't play at native resolutions because my laptop is wide screen and most games either don't support 16:9 or actually crash quite a bit, apparently due to poor drivers or DirectX support for 16:9 (The nvidia might actually be better on this front but I couldn't say for sure). The most annoying thing I find is load times (especially in games that are supposed to be seamless) so if you must use a laptop for gaming think 7200RPM drive. 2-3GB RAM is also a must, I think the graphics chips in notebooks are much nastier on main memory due to not having much of their own so some extra there should really help performance and stability.

 

[time]

For all intents and purposes, non-widescreen laptops with any kind of graphics capability have disappeared. :boom:

I know the X1700 is more powerful than the GO-7300; what I don't know is whether the difference is noticeable. Given that the 7300 is essentially a 6200, I imagine it's not going to set the world on fire.

 

[ddrueding]

If you want to know what a 7300 is capable of, I just installed one in one of my machines. Let me know what you would like to see.