Couple of Questions

I am looking at a new laptop and I ended up on the Sony EB series.

The only thing holding me back is the graphics card or well lack there of. Does anyone have the specs on the GMA HD gpu in it? And also if you custom build one from sony they offer the option of a Radeon Gpu for it. If down the road if I wanted to upgrade would i be able to just grab the Radeon model for it and pop it in? I know upgrading laptops isn't as easy as a desktop but i figured since they offer it from stock it can be swapped in.

Thanks

 

i would just get another laptop. which radeon gpu does it offer? and its highly unlikely that you will be able to just swap the cards. I had a dell studio, i ended up buying it with a intel gpu in it. But i remembered that when i bought it there was an option for an ati radeon gpu. But i had to replace the entire motherboard to upgrade to the radeon gpu.

 

thats what i figured, sucks they make laptops non customizable unlike desktops.

oh well i guess ill spend the extra money and get the one with the radeon gpu.

its nothing too special but its a 1ghz gpu unlike the gma hd one which shares with the cpu

 

you mean 1 gb? gpu memory usually doesn't matter. Can you give me the model name of the radeon gpu so i can tell you if its decent or not

 

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650

I'm not expecting it to be a super awesome gpu but be better then the GMA HD and be able to run starcraft 2 better and prob diablo 3 down the road

 

Thats actually a very nice GPU, It scores around 7000 in 3dmark06.

GMA HD scores around 1600-1800.

 

yea thats a pretty good gpu for gaming should play most modern games on high settings.

 

My wife actually has an EB with a 5650 in it. It's a pretty darn nice card. I'd guess SC2 at medium and 1920x1080. Definitely medium or high at 1366x768. But you almost certainly won't be able to upgrade down the road... GPUs are one of those things that are almost never upgradeable. Get what you want now, even if you have to save a bit more. You can usually choose the processor a step down from what you want... there's very little that's CPU limited nowadays on laptops. It's all GPU and hard drive limitation.