Laptop graphics

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Jan 18, 2002
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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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