Are these shared or dedicated?? (NVIDA 7400/7600 and Intel X3100 cards)

Trying to find a laptop for my b/f, who wants something for gaming, but under $1200.

We are considering
-Toshiba Satellite P200-ST2071 w/ "nVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7600 with 256MB dedicated graphics memory"
-HP Pavilion dv6000t w/ "256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7400"
-HP Pavilion dv6500t w/ "Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator X3100"
-HP Pavilion dv9000z w/ "256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7600"


I am having trouble figuring out whether or not these graphics cards are dedicated or shared..??? Or are they combos? The 7600 one that the Toshiba and dv9000z have sound like fully dedicated. The 7400 is half and half, I think. I have no idea on the X3100.
I have read that dedicated is a must have for gaming. What about one that is half and half?


~Seij

 

I'm pretty sure both 7600's are all dedicated.
The 7400 is either 128MB/128MB or 64MB/192MB dedicated/shared
The X3100 is all shared...and is a crap card for gaming.

Check out the GPU Guide.

 

The Go 7600 is the best out of those three options, however for gaming depending on what kind of gaming he will be doing, there are other factors to consider as well. Make sure there is enough memory 2GB for sure if the machine will be running Vista and you plan to play games on it.

 

Thanks for the replies. Just talked to b/f and he would be willing to go a bit over 1200 in order to get the best graphics. He didn't seemed thrilled with the graphics card on the dv6000, although personally, I would be fine with it. I have no idea what he would be playing, really. After this, he won't have money to buy games anyway!

customized Toshiba or dv9000??? We can't decide! I have heard that Toshiba's are not good gaming notebooks, and the dv9000 does have more options it seems like, but the Toshiba is a little cheaper and overall people seem to have more good things to say about Toshiba than HP.

I figure we can save money by upgrading the 1GB RAM to 2 GB by ourselves, but don't know how possible this is with either the Toshiba or the dv9000?

 

the dv9000.

 

If your boyfriend only considers buying a 17inch, the dv9000 is the best choice in my opinion.

 

I could probably convince him to go under 17" 15" minimum. What were you thinking of? I was having trouble finding a comp under 17" that still had very good graphics card and was still not ungodly expensive--I'm guessing because in the world of entertainment/graphics laptops, it is assumed that you will want a big screen.

 

Just posted our specific comp requirements here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1988596#post1988596

 

If you are deciding between a Toshiba or a HP..ALWAYS go for Toshiba. I sell these laptops for a living and HP's are EXTREMELY unreliable!!!! Both the dv9000 and Toshiba P100 I own have the same configeration 7600.. From what I know, the 7600 in the P100 is more overclock friendly as the fans and interior design of the P100 is superior, so cooling is more effective in the event of overclocking.
The two makes of laptops that we dont get in with problems are Toshiba's and Sony Vaio's. We constantly have a pile of HP's in the back of the shop that need fixing or have to be sent back..