notebook video cards for gaming

[techgamer]

Hello,

I am more of a PC person and do not know much about laptop manuf or how certain brands only get certain cards in their lapotps. I'm using the below benchmark to find a laptop i can game on. Preferably looking to play SC2 seamlessly on med/high settings on 1600x900 reso. looking to spend under $900

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

I think I would prefer a geforce GTX 260, 280, 285 from what I've read but I can't find very many out there. Here is what i've found so far as options from newegg. is the ATI 5650 or 5730 good enough for SC2? Tiger Direct search functions are terrible as you cannot search by gpu and I don't know where else to go. the direct sites like hp/dell etc do not seem to offer very good gpus for gaming.

please help. thanks.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220821
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220733
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115864
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115866


or should I just bite the bullet and spend $1,100 on a new 5870 or gtx 460/480

 

[bryanW1995]

if you want sc2 at that high of a res on a lappy you need a quad and a higher end mobile gpu. 5730 is ok but not for 16x9. tomshardware gpu charts also compare mobile graphics.

for mobility looks like 5870 is the unchallenged top dog.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-radeon-hd-6870-radeon-hd-6850,2782-7.html

that asus quad for 869 looks good

 

[cusideabelincoln]

A Core i7 mobile should be the fastest for SC2. The game only uses two cores an the i7 mobile gives a generous turbo boost with just two cores in use. Plus the extra on chip cache the i7 has over the mobile i5 should also give it another advantage.

The difference between the 5730 and 5650 is going to be clockspeed. I think laptop manufacturers can change the 5650's clockspeed so you won't really know what you get unless you go on hand or read specific reviews.

 

[hawtdawg]

I have a C2D, and 4870's. I play in windowed/fullscreen usually, which only uses one GPU, and at 1920x1200 with ultra settings, the game plays pretty smooth. I would think that at medium settings, the 5730 would be fine at 1600x900.

 

[Matrices]

You'd be wrong, since the mobile nomenclature for graphics is deceptive: the names of the chips do not correlate to their desktop counterparts.

The highest-end ATI mobile GPU, for instance, is called the 5870m. It is in fact a downclocked 5770. That's still plenty of GPU to play most games at 1080p or 900p with AA. I wouldn't go lower than a 5850m on the ATI side.

The Nvidia laptop graphics naming scheme is even more deceptive. I wouldn't get anything less than a 460m.

 

[RaistlinZ]

^^ I really hate how they do that. It tricks the customer into thinking they're getting desktop-like GPU when they're really getting something two steps lower than they'd expect.

 

[hawtdawg]

You'd be wrong, since the mobile nomenclature for graphics is deceptive: the names of the chips do not correlate to their desktop counterparts.

The highest-end ATI mobile GPU, for instance, is called the 5870m. It is in fact a downclocked 5770. That's still plenty of GPU to play most games at 1080p or 900p with AA. I wouldn't go lower than a 5850m on the ATI side.

The Nvidia laptop graphics naming scheme is even more deceptive. I wouldn't get anything less than a 460m.

Perhaps I forgot to mention that I have 4870M's (not that it matters since both desktop and laptop versions have 800 shaders). the 5730 has half the shaders that my 4870s have but is also clocked 100 mhz higher stock and likely has some good headroom to be overclocked further. If one of my GPUs can run SC2 at 1920x1200 with ultra settings then my money is on the 5730 running it fine at 1600x900 with medium settings.

for further comparison; We have a spare computer in my house that we set up just so a friend could play SC2 with us. It has an Athlon 4000 (single core) and an ATI x1950 pro. It runs the game fine for the most part on medium settings at 1280x1024. There is some slow down, but it's definitely CPU related.