Desktop cards compared to laptop cards

Just as a point of reference, to see how laptop cards compare, does anyone know what would roughly be the laptop equivalent of the Nvidia GTS250?

 

You can generally research the shader count and clock speeds of various chips online. That's the best way to compare a mobile GPU to a desktop GPU.

 

Alrighty, so when looking at the clock speeds, the GTS250 beats the GT555m in almost everything. Does that mean the GTS250 is a better graphics card than the GT555m?

 

Also pay attention to bus-width (ex. 128bit vs 512bit) cards can be a difference in performance.

 

vram type is important too. the GTS 250 only has GDDR3, but the GT 555m CAN have GDDR5, which is a slight improvement, although even then I think the GTS250 would be better.

 

Ok thanks for all the replies guys. I've always wondered what all the specs on a card meant.

 

Given the history of GPU product development cycles, do you think we will ever reach a point where inexpensive, mass market laptops will be able to handle modern games at 1080p, perhaps with integrated GPU?

Or will games continue to increase in complexity and performance demands in the future?

 

within a couple decades games will look beyond realistic so much so that people become addicted to them and leave the real world. this will be possible on a variety of systems including pocket held inch long CPUs that you can plug into a display monitor to game at 4000p at 1000 frames per second. and thats at 3d too.

edit: I forgot to mention intel already announced their upcoming 80-core @ 600mhz mobile cpu.

 

I think developers are realizing that the world is going mobile. It's not all about graphics (content is more important ex. angry birds), but if you're going to have graphics, you better damned make it playable on a laptop if you want users who are able to play it (since the avg. user is ditching their desktops).

As we see developers conscious of optimizing their code, we will see notebook hardware becoming more "able" in acing these games. Desktops will always have more power, better heat displacement, and better screen capabilities in general, but I think most will find gaming on a laptop @ 100fps perfectly fine, even though a desktop equivalent might get @ 250fps in 3D.

Just think of how far mobile tech has come since Crysis was released...yet there haven't really been any new show stoppers like Crysis was for it's time (impossible to run ultra on current available hardware). Most blame optimization, but that doesn't beat the fact that it was breathtaking for the time.

 

Umm...how about The Witcher 2? Its the new "Crysis".

Mr. Mysterious

 

The future will be surround sound headsets with Head mounted displays with panoramic resolutions high enough to emulate the natural resolution of your eyes, full immersion. Graphics will always be important, and pocket pcs will slowly catch up.

Once Quantum computing takes legs, graphics will be infinite, there will literally be no limits to graphics. We will need to rethink how we model characters in 3d because we will be able to layer on details. Think of how we model characters now, with a sheet of polygons, we will be able to make a layer for bones muscle and skin, and have light interact realistically to emulate perfectly how humans interect with light.

Also AI will be some complex and realistic they will rival the randomness of human intent, not being able to predict enemy ai in a game will make difficulty for us hardcore soo much better then what we deal with today.

Edit: Think of a 3d modelling tool that when you model something, you select the material, like skin or bone, and model with that, using gloves that allows you to hold and grasp the 3d object in your hand.

 

To actually answer your original question, the GTS 250 is a rebranded 9800 GTX+, so the closest analog would be the GTX 285M, which is a downclocked version of the GTX+.

Both at stock, that means the 555M is slower than the GTS 250.

 

Ok, thanks a lot for this answer!