Any IGP better than 8600m GT today?

Hi all,

Back in 2008 or 2009 I bought an XPS m1530 with 8600m GT. The laptop luckily hasn't given me any problems, but I would like to upgrade to something better. I believe IGP's didn't exist or were not popular when I was looking for a laptop. I am now wondering if IGP's have caught up to the 8600m GT in comparable performance? Better yet, has any of them surpassed it?

Also, I think I read somewhere that AMD can harness the powers of both AMD IGP and AMD dedicated GPU for extra performance (rather than harnessing one or the other)? Does that even make sense?

I've been out of the laptop scene but I am going to make a purchase either the end of this year or next. Thanks in advance!

 

if you dont need the cpu power llano is the one to go for, since its packing a lot more punch than the intel hd 3000, which already is better than your 8600m gt

if you are considering to purchase next year I would advise you to, since the llano are performing similarly to what you have now, its a minor speed bump, bulldozer is supposed to be better on that regard, and intel would have launched the ivy bridge cpus, packing a more powerful gpu inside as well.

and integrated were as always quite popular when you bought yours, however they didnt deliver anything closely remembering performance, they were for office duty only

 

AMD's latest Llano offering apparently has an IGP which is comparable to the 5650M (a mid-range gpu which surpasses the 8600M GT by about 50% or more).

But given that AMD's mobile cpu's aren't really on the level of Intel, perhaps you might be better off with a dedicated mid-range gpu and an Intel cpu (I can tell you that a gpu's performance can easily be bottlenecked by a relatively weak cpu).

Alternatively, I think the Llano offering with that powerful IGP should be more than enough for the casual/enthusiast gamer (although, if a game requires a Quad core, I wouldn't expect too much given how Llano's mobile quads are effectively the same as Intel's more powerful mobile i5's (of SB generation).

Still, would surmise that one would be able to effectively get a decent and relatively modern mid-range gaming laptop if you get the best of Llano offering (for what should effectively be a lower price compared to Intel offerings).

 

More like over double the power; also the 5650 overclocks MUCH better than older-gen cards like the 8600M GT, so a maximally overclocked 5650 would be something like 250% the performance of an overclocked 8600M GT.

However when coupled with mobile AMD CPUs the 5650 performs horribly in most newer games (I had some experience with this), so I'm not sure about how well llano would actually do especially if it contains CPU power weaker than usual AMD CPUs.

 

yes its called hybrid crossfire where an AMD APU can tie in a dedicated card to work with the built in IGP. scuttlebut says once drivers are working right a hybridXfire APU system could have a GPU on the 6870 level.

 

Thanks everyone for the reply

 

If true, that would be very impressive. Would be another + for AMD. I'm intrigued now. Let's see how it goes.