What graphic card do I need? (Knowledge required)

maxitwist

I am looking for a laptop to play some games, but i dont know how powerful a card I need, and Im on a budget.
Im not looking for some serious gaming power, i only want to be able to play the games, I dont mind what settings or resolutions i need to lower it to.
Also with that in mind is that i have a xbox for primary gaming, Most of the games ill buy for this are cheap ones i see in shops that are exclusive for pc's and think 'ooh that looks cool'. What kind of card will I need for this purpose? btw, i am using this site as a reference as to the qulity of cards http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.130.0.html

However, on the uperscale of this is that id also like to, if possible, play oblivion as i have it on 360 and cant resist the possibility of all those mods. However, would this, as i expect, launch me into a whole nother range of cards? even at low detail?

Currently i am looking at a 15" hp with a 1gb ati hd 5470. I am assuming that this would suffice for both purposes? I definently cant afford anything greater anyway. I have also seen this card in a 512mb variant, would there be a great difference in performance?

x in the city

anything with 512megs of ram now would not cut the grease with much games tbh, certainly not recent games.

actually, for old games it would be fine, i mean what 'oooh yeah baby' games do you have in mind.?

ricman

its better to get the model with 1 gig video ram, some newer games ,action , fps, eg black ops cod run better with 1gig vram .Most games will run on 512meg vram, ok, you may to reduce some settings ,eg water reflections etc on games like cod 4. it should run most games at 1024 x768 resolution ok. i play all games at 1024 res to get higher frames per second ,if im using my laptop .

maxitwist

ok, thanks for clearing up the memory issue. I wont be playing shooters on this though, prefer the xbox for that, So what is the minimum card I would need to play some older games? would i need one at all? could the x4500 cut it? This is one class of games that would make up the bulk of what i would play, and the i have two in mind; oblivion and gears of war that im considering getting a graphics card for. Would you reccommend me getting the ati 5470 if i want to play these?

hopefully someone can answer these two questions, many thanks forthe first one.

Overheal

x in the city wrote: »

anything with 512megs of ram now would not cut the grease with much games tbh, certainly not recent games.

Video Memory is an annoying false positive when shopping GPUs. Yes, it's important, but not as important as the box would lead you to believe. What about the Shader model? The number of Cores? The Fillrates? How wide a bitrate is the memory pipeline? Is it 64-bit or 512-bit?

Thats how browsing on some sites leads you to think "Oh wow this IGP can utilize up to 1024MB of [shared] memory! It must be awesome!" When that spec really doesnt mean much. It means the IGP borrows memory from RAM and doesnt really have much of it's own. It also directly plays into the stereotype that the amount of memory on the card is what makes it good. It helps, but there is far more involved than that.

All that said a 5470 would do it and do it well; it would support DX11 but would not necessarily run such titles on eye-melting settings.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5470.23698.0.html

Intel GMA x4500 would Not cut it. Intel GMAs are Rarely, if ever ever designed for 3D. They are at best designed for dealing with high-quality 2D such as 1080p and Blu Ray. Once you get into 3D though, they suck.

MASTER...of the bra

Youtube vids using the ATI 5470, first one is Oblivion. I've never played it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4BzBODzgQ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUU7wgwoJnU

You never said your budget or gave link to the HP your looking at, this is a nice machine if in budget, better card again.

lebowski11

MASTER...of the bra wrote: »

Youtube vids using the ATI 5470, first one is Oblivion. I've never played it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4BzBODzgQ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUU7wgwoJnU

You never said your budget or gave link to the HP your looking at, this is a nice machine if in budget, better card again.

I'm also looking to purchase a new laptop for gaming. I was looking at the Toshiba you've linked here but was turned off by the processor speed. I like the old Total War games but haven't played them in years. The newer games in the series seem to need a processor speed of 2.4ghz or above. Is there no possible way that they would play on a laptop with a lower processor speed?... Excuse my ignorance on these matters.

Overheal

lebowski11 wrote: »

I'm also looking to purchase a new laptop for gaming. I was looking at the Toshiba you've linked here but was turned off by the processor speed. I like the old Total War games but haven't played them in years. The newer games in the series seem to need a processor speed of 2.4ghz or above. Is there no possible way that they would play on a laptop with a lower processor speed?... Excuse my ignorance on these matters.

well, i3s are going to be Intel's new Good, with i5 and i7 being better and best. Havent done too much research into them but I would think you at least want an i5 if you plan for it to be a gaming laptop.

lebowski11

Overheal wrote: »

well, i3s are going to be Intel's new Good, with i5 and i7 being better and best. Havent done too much research into them but I would think you at least want an i5 if you plan for it to be a gaming laptop.

Thanks for that Overheal. I was also looking at another laptop with a quad core 2ghz processor. To be honest I don't fully understand what a quad core processor does. Will its speed be 4x2ghz? and is it good for gaming?

ricman

For older games , non fps ,any core 2 duo 2.oghz ,512meg video ram 3gig main ram ati or nvidia card should be fine,eg spend 500 or less, quad core =4cpus, theres no game out there that needs more than 2cpus .
try to avoid intel, intregated cards ,there should be a sticker on the laptop
ati or nvidia logo.
3 or 4 core cpus dont speed up the game grahics as far as i know.
i prefer to play cod4 ,crysis on my 360 or pc , my laptop has ati radeon 3470 256meg ram it plays most games made be4 2009,except dual core 2 from crysis.they may play on a cpu dual core 2.oghz,if the grahics card is fast , some games need shader model 3 graphics card.

Overheal

lebowski11 wrote: »

Thanks for that Overheal. I was also looking at another laptop with a quad core 2ghz processor. To be honest I don't fully understand what a quad core processor does. Will its speed be 4x2ghz? and is it good for gaming?

if youre talking about an i5, i7, or an AMD Phenom II, those processors will, for heavy single-threaded tasks (like most games) power down the other cores to overclock the first core to do more work on the single thread. Thats a new refined feature in the latest CPUs

Quad core means your PC can handle a lot of seperate process all at once. On one core they usually all wait in one queue and wait to be processed. On older single core machines this meant you were hellbent on shutting down all of your processes before launching a game, now its far less important, since games will just run on a different core to the rest of your other programs.

The best way to explain the speed conventionally is your quad core would be able to do several things at once, each thing at 2ghz speed. Not a multiplier like 1 thing @ 8ghz though. I use the horsecart analogy: 4 horses can each run 20mph but they cant together run at 80mph.

Thats the basics of it. With the newer Turbo-Boost features though it's as if 3 of the horses stop eating so that 1 of the horses can work even stronger and faster than it normally could:

http://www.intel.com/technology/turboboost/index.htm (view the demo)

theres no game out there that needs more than 2cpus .

Not quite. Some already take advantage of 4; many won't support single-core, and within a couple years I suspect they won't support dual-core CPUs either.

ricman

Say your budget is 450/500 get an intel based cpu 2 or 2.5ghz ,lets say the older games you wanna play do not require triple or quad core cpus ,as posted before 512meg vram card should be fine for those older games.i doubt if older games can take full advantage of quad core cpus .as they were designed when single or dual core cpus were standard in most pvcs.

maxitwist

Okay thanks, all i really wanted to know was the minimum i would need as i was finding it difficult getting everything i wanted and something has to be sacrificed. I never though of looking on youtube for vids of the cards in action, thats a briliant idea, thanks!!

MASTER...of the bra

lebowski11 wrote: »

I'm also looking to purchase a new laptop for gaming. I was looking at the Toshiba you've linked here but was turned off by the processor speed. I like the old Total War games but haven't played them in years. The newer games in the series seem to need a processor speed of 2.4ghz or above. Is there no possible way that they would play on a laptop with a lower processor speed?... Excuse my ignorance on these matters.

Toshiba would do OP as Oblivion needs minimum 2Ghz. System requirements.

You need an i5. This Komplett one maybe. There isin't a similar one for price with good card on saveonlaptops.

Solitaire

2GHz P4 <<<<< 2GHz Core2 << 2GHz i5

Speed is relative to architecture. The newer architectures can crunch a lot more numbers in a single clock cycle than obsolete models.

lebowski11

Thanks fellas, quad and dual core makes a bit more sense now. A fine analogy with the horses Overheal... makes it clearer. These are 2 examples of laptops that I'm thinking of buying.

1.Dell Inspiron 15R
Intel® CoreTM i3 380M (2.53GHz/3MB cache)
Operating System
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Display
15.6" High Definition (1366x768) WLED
Memory2
4GB2 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
Hard Drive
500GB3 SATA hard drive (5400RPM)
Video Card
1024MB ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD5650
Optical Drive
DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD)

2. Lenova Z565
AMD Quad Core Phenom II N930, speed 2Ghz
RAM (GB) 4, 2x2GB, expandable to (GB) 8, RAM type DDR3 Memory Size (MB) 1
ATI Radeon HD 5470, Memory 512 MB dedicated
Hard Drive Size (GB) 500

These are the minimum system requirements for Empire Total War (the game I intend to buy).

• 2.4 Ghz processor
• 256MB video card
• 1GB RAM on XP \ 2GB on Vista
• DirectX version 9.0c or better
• 15GB hard disk space

Will either of these laptops run this game? I'm not looking to max it out or anything. I have no problem playing on low-med settings.

ricman

the first 1 dell, will run it fine,cpu 2.5ghz id go for that one ,try and get one that has hdmi out, if you wanna play games on tv, if you have a hdtv.

TerrorFirmer

The dell one is much better for games, pretty beefy machine overall, but obviously the value is hard to judge without the cost of both machines. Either will run that game OK.

MASTER...of the bra

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

The dell one is much better for games, pretty beefy machine overall, but obviously the value is hard to judge without the cost of both machines. Either will run that game OK.

+1, how much for the dell?

lebowski11

Thanks for the advice. I was leaning towards the Dell. It costs 629 euros on dell.ie http://www.dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-15r-combo-mod/pd?oc=n00n5052&model_id=inspiron-15r-combo-mod

MASTER...of the bra

lebowski11 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice. I was leaning towards the Dell. It costs 629 euros on dell.ie http://www.dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-15r-combo-mod/pd?oc=n00n5052&model_id=inspiron-15r-combo-mod

Only €30 more for the Komplett i5 but their customer service can be hit and miss......yea go for the Dell. Good machine.

lebowski11

Is this the machine your talking about... looks good and more importantly its not a bad price.
http://www.komplett.ie/Komplett/product/ZKB_02PC/02_NOTEBOO/05_NOTEBOO/productdetails/20074681/Toshiba_Satellite_L650_1NC_Core_i5_480M__2_66/PSK1JE_0GV011DU/default.aspx

Toshiba Satellite L650-1NC - Core i5 480M / 2.66
4 GB (installed) / 8 GB (max) - DDR3 SDRAM - 1066 MHz ( 2 x 2 GB )
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 HyperMemory

659 euros.

Chaotic_Forces

I would urge you never to get a laptop from Toshiba. See, when updating the drivers, mainly for ATI cards, you can update easily. But unfortunetly, Toshiba doesn't allow that. They only allow certain updates. And unless there is a problem, they won't let you update.

Overheal

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

I would urge you never to get a laptop from Toshiba. See, when updating the drivers, mainly for ATI cards, you can update easily. But unfortunetly, Toshiba doesn't allow that. They only allow certain updates. And unless there is a problem, they won't let you update.

Thats all laptop manufacturers, it's not specific to Toshiba. They all dick around with graphics drivers to a point.

Chaotic_Forces

Overheal wrote: »

Thats all laptop manufacturers, it's not specific to Toshiba. They all dick around with graphics drivers to a point.

Not just graphic drivers, I'm afraid. It's most drivers. I never had a problem with my Dell PC (though I got it about 6 years ago). I'm not saying anything bad about them but... updating drivers is nearly impossible if Toshiba don't "allow" them.

Overheal

that was the same with HP laptops.

Chaotic_Forces

Overheal wrote: »

Thats all laptop manufacturers, it's not specific to Toshiba. They all dick around with graphics drivers to a point.

Overheal wrote: »

that was the same with HP laptops.

Maybe but if he wants to buy a Toshiba or a HP, then he ought to know.

GreyAlien

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

I would urge you never to get a laptop from Toshiba. See, when updating the drivers, mainly for ATI cards, you can update easily. But unfortunetly, Toshiba doesn't allow that. They only allow certain updates. And unless there is a problem, they won't let you update.

It's quite possible to update ATI cards on a Toshiba laptop. You just have to bypass the updater from the ATI site and get a direct link to the full driver download instead. Then everything works fine. I have a Toshiba laptop with an ATI 5650 that's currently on 11.3 drivers.

Chaotic_Forces

GreyAlien wrote: »

It's quite possible to update ATI cards on a Toshiba laptop. You just have to bypass the updater from the ATI site and get a direct link to the full driver download instead. Then everything works fine. I have a Toshiba laptop with an ATI 5650 that's currently on 11.3 drivers.

I've tried pretty much every method and over several hours of searching; tried everything I found and nothing work.

Although, isn't the 5650 a dedicated one? Could be something to do with it.

If you want to PM me the instructions, I'd appreciate it.

lebowski11

Cheers for the advice. I was of the impression that it was not possible to update graphics cards anyway, so I think now that I'm going to go with the Toshiba. The specs seem better than the dell and the price ain't bad. Do any of you know for sure if the graphics card on the Toshiba is dedicated? From what I'm told that is the most important element for graphics cards with regards to gaming. Also anymore opinion on komplett.ie? I'd never heard of it until MASTER'S post.

Hal Emmerich

Komplett have there own forum here. Give the latest threads a read maybe.

PM some of the users that post there.

Chaotic_Forces

lebowski11 wrote: »

Cheers for the advice. I was of the impression that it was not possible to update graphics cards anyway, so I think now that I'm going to go with the Toshiba. The specs seem better than the dell and the price ain't bad. Do any of you know for sure if the graphics card on the Toshiba is dedicated? From what I'm told that is the most important element for graphics cards with regards to gaming. Also anymore opinion on komplett.ie? I'd never heard of it until MASTER'S post.

Eh... upgrade as in the drivers (software), not the physical card.

The 5650 is a dedicated one and is fairly good for the price. The only downside is that processor on the toshiba is a dual core. It's not that bad (since it's an i5), but if you could stretch it to about 800 euro you could probably get something fairly better from Dell.

lebowski11

Good idea,I'll check out the forum. Cheers for that.

Got you on updating the software, I'm very much illiterate when it comes to computers.