8400M GS vs HD 3200 compared to 9300M G

Hello. I'd like to know which one (8400M GS / HD 3200) is better for gaming? I'd also like to know whether 9300M G is better than them (or the better one of them). Thanks in advance.

 

I'd say the hd3200 is slightly better than the other two cards. The 9300m g is basically the same as the 8400m gs but uses slightly less power. The real-life performance difference between those cards is negligible though.

 

So there is no point in spending significantly more money on 9300M G (compared to 8400M GS)? Is their performance exactly the same the only difference being better battery life (9300M G)?

What would you recommend (for best gaming performance):
HD 3200 with AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core
or
8400M GS / 9300M G with Intel Core 2 Duo?

 

Yeah there really is no point in spending much more money on the 9300m g. Their performance should be almost exactly the same.

We haven't seen many benchmarks for the hd 3200 so I don't know exactly how powerful this card is but I think I'd still recommend the hd 3200... but like I said I'd need to see more benchmarks for this card, right now I have to base my opinion on 3dmark 06 scores which are not the most accurate but in this benchmark the hd 3200 outscores the other cards by a small margin.

 

I'd go for the HD3200, the first awesome integrated GPU. It performs better than an 8400m GS, though I do not know how it compares to the 9300m G, I'd bet about the same.

Any of those three choices will probably perform well, though the 9300m G and HD3200 are the newer tech, so I'd go with either of those.

 

lol dont scrimp on your graphics if its that important
make sure you get kit that can handle the job at hand.

good luck

 

i'm not convinced on the 3200 being better then an 8400. that was only one review that suggested that, and thats pretty far out to say that a one generation up integrated is better then the last generations low mid end dedicated. especially since the HD 3XX0 series is based on all the last generation cores with some small changes.

 

Actually several reviews all suggested the same... also you need to consider that the 3200 is basically the same as a previous gen dedicated 2400 which in turn was very similar if not slightly superior to the 8400m gs... but like i said before, we'd need a few real-life benchmarks to be more certain.

 

You can find the benchmarks here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

 

Notebookcheck is squirrely. I wouldn't trust much that they say.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is the latest news about some of the older generation nVidia cards being defective (the heating/cooling cycle apparently affecting the packaging), although it also seems to depend on the build of the laptop. I would personally go with the HD 3200 just to avoid all the problems with the nVidia cards altogether, but I'm just the paranoid type. Supposedly, the 9300M should not have the heat problems the 8400M GS has.

 

It has 40 spu's like the HD2600 so is probably just a little less powerfull depending on clock speeds but the lack of onboard memory will probably cripple performance significantly.

Go for the 8400m GS. No question for me

 

Not exactly fair comparisons as a number of the reviews done were comparing the HD3200 coupled with a superior CPU and the 8400M GS with a weaker C2D.

I think the HD3200 is great and all, but I'm not sure if it actually outperforms the 8400m GS. I'm more inclined to think that performance is similar.

Take the statistics from Jerry's review of the dv5z for example.

HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200) 1,599 3DMarks

HP Pavilion dv6500z (2.0GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60, NVIDIA 8400m GS) 1,551 3DMarks

Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB) 1,408 3DMarks

As you can see, the dv5z beats both the dv6500z and M1330. However, it also uses a newer, better CPU (definitely when compared to the dv6500z, not so sure about the M1330).

Oddly enough, for 3dmark05, the M1330 actually outscored the dv5z.

Still, the HD3200 is an excellent buy if you don't mind the possibly weaker or superior performance. You are likely to get a better price and possibly better battery life. It seems too close to be certain.

 

Extending on what you said, the Turion Ultra has a TDP of 32W while the C2D has a TDP of >35W (>35 since NB must be included) so power consumption should favor the AMD chip, (also the AMD should be able to undervolt to reduce power consumption and heat farther than the Intel chip since I believe the voltages are still unlocked). Also, there are separate power planes for the each CPU core and the NB so power should be able to be saved there as well.

The HD3200 is also an integrated GPU so power consumption and heat should be better than the 8400m gs, thus further increasing the AMD lead for battery life.

CPU performance however will lag a bit behind the C2D but will still be perfectly fine for basically everything you need (if it wasn't, why wouldn't you be getting something more powerful).

Basically, your best bet would be the AMD laptop for better battery life, price and performance (especially once drivers mature for the HD3200 since the 8400m gs is probably getting near to maximum potential).

 

I wasn't so sure about the battery life, as Jerry's review mentioned that battery life was rather poor for the dv5z.

 

Honestly I don't see a point in the 8400m gs at all. It's just the old version of the 9300m g but it's running hotter and less efficient. Also I don't think that processor performance has any impact on actual gaming performance so I think that for someone on a budget, the hd3200 with an amd processor is the best buy while someone with a slightly higher budget should benefit from a 9300m g with intel cpu.

 

9300M uses less battery (ie good for laptop users)

 

First, thank you all for your time. You've been very helpful.

I read a review by studenbuyingguide which said that HD 3200 is comparable to 8400M GS. However, the 3dmark06 score suggested 8400M GS being better.

What do you think? It sees to me that the difference between HD 3200 and 8400M GS/9300M G is considerable.
About battery life. Is AMD/HD 3200 really that better? Here's what I know from my research. 6 cell batteries, internet/office usage:
AMD/HD 3200 (HP tx2500z) - 3h40m
Intel/8400M GS (Dell XPS1330) - 3h30m
Intel/8400M GS (Asus U6s) - 2h30m
Intel/9300M G (Asus U6sg) - 2h40m
Note that (even tested on the same notebook - Asus U6) 9300M G doesn't seem to be less battering-draining than 8400M GS. Why is that so? It's supposed to be better, right?
Anyway, considering that 8400M GS/9300M G seems to be more powerful than the HD 3200 and that AMD/HD 3200 doesn't seem to have a significantly better battery lifetime I guess I should go for Intel/8400M GS/9300M G, right? I'm willing to pay more if it's better overall.

Edit: I just now saw that the 9300M G is 256MB. Is this true? Doesn't this mean that it's significantly more powerful than the 8400M GS (which is 128MB).

 

FYI they got the graph wrong. I'm 100% sure that the 8400m gs in the xps m1330 does not score 2900 points in 3dmark 06. In reality it should score about 1500 points. Maybe they used the 3dmark 05 benchmark for the 8400m gs. The other scores seem correct though.

 

Go for ATI for now... 8400M GS ain't a buy unless the price is EQUIVALENT to the HD3200 machine...

 

The HD3200 seems to be a little faster, but you can OC the 8400 quite a bit. If you don't plan on OCing then stick with the former.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-780g-chipset,1785-8.html

If oc'ing is on the cards then look at the link above.

All things concidered the 8400m GS\9300m G should run games alot better and should be able to play new games for longer.

 

http://www.notebookjournal.de/praxis/81/2

8400M GS is slightly faster than HD3450 which is slightly faster than HD3200, but the performance is surely not "a lot" faster than HD3200 from delicated low end gfx card