Budget gaming

I have a few questions about mobile gaming hardware and its capabilities. I currently have a GMA HD x3100 (Yeah, I know) and am considering buying a new machine. I do a reasonable amount of light-to-medium gaming, and probably will do more if I have a more capable machine. At the moment I can barely run Portal, and I am wondering how much power I need for games such as Portal 2, Antichamber, Borderlands, etc. I don't care about graphics settings, just about playability.

First of all: Intel HD Graphics 4000. What can it do? Will it be enough for light-to-mid gaming? What about a GT 630M? GT 650M? How much do I need? Is there a benchmark that accurately shows this sort of power? Does the CPU power play a significant part in 3d gaming capability, or is it almost entirely the GPU? If the former, would a dual-core i5 be sufficient?

Any help would be welcome.

(Also, should I move this to the "What should I buy?" section?)

 

Nah, no need to post in WNBSIB just yet, but you can post later when you figure things out.

Anyway, the HD 4000 can play lightweight games as well as older light-to-medium titles pretty well. The GT 630M will be a slight bump up (the HD 4000 is between the 610M and 620M) and can play those light-to-medium titles at higher settings. The GT 650M can play most medium modern games at higher settings without much issue. If you want to see numbers, you can check out the GPU's review page on Notebookcheck, where they'll give you the frames-per-second for a whole bunch of old and new games.

The CPU still plays only a minor part in gaming, except in some cases such as RTS games and CPU-hungry stuff like BF3, GTA, etc. Still, an i5 will be plenty powerful, with a quad-core CPU benefiting the mentioned games. But even then, the GPU is very important and should be the #1 consideration for hardware. Though also pay attention to the display (you'll want a high-res red to be able to see all that detail).

 

You can find a machine with a dedicated GPU for not much more than one with just an IGP for not much more, especially in the AMD market.

In particular this notebook can be found for $500-$550 and sports an AMD A10 CPU with actually a pretty powerful integrated GPU with the 7660G and also a dedicated 7670m GPU. If you want to game and have access to regular PC tasks, this is the notebook to get:

Acer Aspire V3-551G-X419 15.6" Notebook - Newegg.com

If you want nVidia and 640m or 650m that will cost you minimum $800.

 

If you're talking Portal 2 and Borderlands (1), you'll be fine with HD4000. The newer your games, or the longer you'll want to play new games, the higher up the GPU charts you'll want to climb. If you're like me and typically won't play anything newer than the laptop itself, that Aspire is probably a very good buy (re: gaming capability - no idea how it fulfills any other needs you may have). On the other side of the spectrum are people who spent upwards of $2 grand on a laptop with GTX 9800M six years ago and are still playing modern games on it at low settings.

A good general rule, though it might be temporarily reversed or negated between the releases of Intel's Haswell and AMD's Kaveri platforms, is that AMD's iGPUs are significantly faster than what Intel offers. You can check game performance with a modicum of accuracy on notebookcheck's mobile GPU page if you're working with specific goals or parts in mind.

 

Or check out my performance numbers here:

6750m which is roughly same performance as the 7670m: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...amd-radeon-hd-6750m-benchmarking-results.html

6620G which is about 20% slower than the 7660G: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...g-benchmarked-various-ram-configurations.html

And the 7660G: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...0g-igp-tested-various-ram-configurations.html

I have a comparison between HD 4000 and 7660G both stock and overclocked coming soon too.

 

Wait a few months for the Haswell GT3.

 

Or go with Trinity 7660G or soon to be available AMD Richland. Already as good as if not faster than GT3, and likely hundreds of dollars cheaper.