NEW Latitudes on the way!

OMG.... Would you guys STOP AT LOOKING AT BENCHMARKS!
You need to look at REAL WORLD results. Benchmarks are easy to trick to skip test and falsify results. I have a sphere made of 10 000 polygons... if I (the driver) tell the GPU to draw 5 000, would you see the difference? No, not even up close. There is fog, on the back, barely visible, I remove the fog.. would you notice unless you do a side-by-side picture comparison or know the benchmark by heart?

notebookcheck.net is NOT a review site.. it's a database from collection of reviews and reported tests. You don't know how they have been executed, you don't know which driver where used, you don't know which Windows they use, you don't know the system configuration.
What if all Quadro NVS 160 used the (and they are) Quadro drivers instead of the Geforce drivers for games? What if all Latitude E6400, the only laptop with the NVS 160M has 1GB of RAM on it, running Vista? You don't know this. We can ASSUME that the Intel GPU runs Win7, as its a recent chip... That is about all.

Yes their is a LARGE difference between Geforce and Quadro drivers. My games on my laptop are much slower and choppier with the Quadro drivers., especially the Dell ones. As I don't use CAD software, or 3D drawing software, I use the Geforce drivers.

And who cares about battery life. I have 10 hours and half on my Latitude E6400 9-cell battery (a month old replacement) - 4GB of RAM, Win7 64-bit, 5400RPM HDD 160GB. Nvidia GPUs, like ATi, have power management systems built-in. They consume much less power when you are not playing games. The wattage you see on Nvidia or ATi page are PEEK power. That is if you run something that uses every feature of the GPU to the max.

I would prefer to have a GPU that draws my games properly, no trickery, that it runs on any software that uses the GPU, provide me with full OpenCL and/or CUDA support which allows software that uses these feature to take advantage of and provide me more performance (simple examples: After Effect, Photoshop, Badaboom, among many others), than use this mockery called Intel graphic solution, which doesn't provide any of that, and with the same promise since the X3100 of OpenCL, that is NEVER delivered, and promise of full OpenGL and DirectX which is also NEVER delivered.

Which is more efficient?
2W to turn on 2 light's or 3W to turn 6 light's
That is exactly the different in power between Intel graphic solution and low end Nvidia/ATi graphic cards.
People jump to the 2W, as it's OMG 2W... but is it more efficient when running 3D or advance 2D drawing? hardly. While the Nvidia/ATI solution will finish the task faster and reduce power consumption, the Intel solution lags behind at full power.

 

I do care about thickness, in that I actually do NOT want the laptop to be too thin. Very thin laptops are less sturdy and their palmrests get warmer. But I do care about weight.

 

Just to show how 3DMark should be ignored...
Result

Notice my score...2437. While notebookcheck.net says 1900 for the same GPU.
And as you can see from the details, the main problem is the RAM speed, DDR2 only, and the CPU is pathetically slow. I am sure if I had a Core i7, it won't be bottleneck my GPU and provide superior CPU performance score, boosting my score near as the Intel 3000 HD.

And THAT is assuming that the 3D mark 06 benchmark was done with default settings (which probably was not), and that the Intel driver doesn't do tricks (which it does, big time).

So, my point is that:
> Notebookcheck.net is not a reliable source
> Benchmark score doesn't mean anything, as just massacre the notebookcheck.net 3DMark 06 score of the same laptop model and graphic card.
> Drivers do mater.
> And compared to in game result... despite a lower score at 3D mark, I get better performance in StarCraft 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Street Fighter 4, compared to Intel fastest graphic solution.

 

No reason to draw this out. We don't agree.

As for 3DMark06, it is effected by the CPU, so the numbers drift. But the difference between 1900-2500 and 4000-5000 can't be easily dismissed. As for gaming benchmarks, I sent a link to them. No one said Notebookcheck is the gold standard. But it is more reliable than a single users observations.

In the big picture the NVS-160m, 310M, 5470, HD300 are all low end graphics solutions, whether they are discrete or integrated. They all are relatively energy efficient. They are all far superior to older integrated solutions like a GMA500 or even a 4500MHD. They are good for mild graphics uses and low end games. The point is they are all in the same ballpark, making it silly to have a "discrete" option that is not a class above the integrated graphics.

Now the lower end 2nd gen i3 and bottom rung i-5 will have the HD2000, which is a step below the other optioon but more energy efficient. But if you want to go a step up it would seem to make more sense to spend $70 on an upgraded i5 w/ HD3000 than to spend the same money on a switchable graphics solution.

 

Given IE9 will introduce hardware acceleration... the browser moves graphics and video processing from the CPU to the GPU... will every user soon have good cause to consider a discrete GPU, i.e it's not just for CAD and games anymore?

GK

 

With model names like Elite and HP Envy, HP must be marketing to Apple customers.

GK

 

Actually, just came across some relatively good news. Notebookcheck finally added some more info on the NVS 4200. It will be based on the 520m. So 1/2 the cores of the 420m but much higher clockspeed. That means they slot its performance as midway between the 420 and the 415. So a bit faster than the HD300.

Like other "business" versions the drivers will be optimized more for thngs like CAD than games.

here is some detailed info on the 520m, which is supposed to be nearly identical:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

Flash gets offloaded to the GPU. But that is the case whether you are using a dedicated or integrated card.

So if you have decent integrated graphics (even the 5700MHD that comes with 1st generation i3) than the integrated graphics can easily handle the flash/browser processing without needing the CPU to do any extra work.

It is only very old integrated GPU's (say the X3150 that comes with atom netbooks) where the flash can't offload to the GPU.

For example- I have a desktop with a 8600GT GPU. Midrange at the time I bought it 3-4 years ago. But a new 2nd generation SandyBridge chip with HD3000 integrated graphics is superior. It does not matter that one is "dedicated" and the other is "integrated." They both have their own GPU. Yes, the drivers will be better with the dedicated model. But drivers only get you so far.

 

Very glad I decided not to wait on the E6420. Ugly thing.
On the other hand, the new elitebooks from HP (see today's anandtech article) looks pretty damn nice for my Ivy Bridge laptop refresh in a year.

 

Do you want a block of foam for your laptop? You have to make a trade off sometimes...