GeForce 310M

So I recently got a new job and will be traveling to Japan bi-monthly
For anyone whose made that trek 13+ hours in a plane you need something to do
I'm thinking about getting the asus U36 (small, light, powerful-ish, battery life) but a graphic question has arisen
Upon advice of an old friend who uses the site a lot I should ask the experts
The NVIDIA GeForce 310M 1Gb sounds like a decent card but I can't find benchmarks or posts related to what I would use it for
Is it capable of running the new tomb raiders?, Civ 5 and DoA (pipe dream ;-) ), some indie steam games (Recettear, meat boy, blade kitten, etc), and of course Civ 4
I'm not an uber gamer (well at least mainstream games), and notebookchecker benched a ton of games I'd never play
What do you all think? Thanks and happy holidays

 

Define "decent". That's pretty much the worst dedicated card you'll find in any current laptop, and in fact integrated graphics in next year's laptops from both Intel and AMD will match or beat it. Games from the last two years will need minimum graphics, and even then most games will stutter.

 

Decent? playing the games listed above smoothly
I have no dreams of a super portable gaming juggernaut
Though I didn't know it was the worst card out there, that's interesting
I'm not huge into graphics most of the "graphic" games I play (Me2, crysis) are done on my PC
I just need an ultra portable laptop that can handle some "casual" games

 

Civ V will give you issues. You'd need to lower the resolution in that game, which isn't good for a game like that. The indie games are obviously fine, but most 3D-intensive games will give issues.

How much are you paying for this laptop?

 

So 3d games, like tomb raider Legend Anniversary and underworld would probably not work right?

 

They will work, but might have low frame rates. However, Tomb Raider Legend is old enough that you can probably get it running smoothly. Civ 5 will be choppy, but playable on low settings, though again I don't know if native res would work out well.

How much are you paying for it?

 

A little over a grand
ASUS U36JC-A1

 

Best bet I've seen so far is Alienware M11x but there are quite a few disgruntled owners, would make me pause for buying, but then I'm a G73jh owner (also problematic). But I believe there is a Lenovo with good performance and portable.

Ideapad Y460 is 14" which is portable enough. It has a HD5650 and @ 1366 res should be able to play most games fine and some overclockability if you want to mess with that. The HD5650M does support switchable graphics with intel's HM55 chipset and i3 processor for 5 hour battery life. Looks like your kind of notebook @ under $1,000.

 

before you buy that one why dont you post here to see if you could get a better deal on another lappy with a better graphics card. http://forum.notebookreview.com/wha...ould-i-buy-form-must-read-before-posting.html

the average optimus cards used in the uk are 330M -425M

 

I'll look into that other PC
I also took you advice and posted on the "What Laptop" board

http://forum.notebookreview.com/what-notebook-should-i-buy/543127-international-pc.html#post6997515

 

I've been on 15 1/2 hour flights.

Anyways, you should look for something that is at least a 330m/425m/5650. Those can game at decent framerates. Switchable graphics are a must for battery life.

 

I would recommend you an ATI Radeon 4650 with ddr3 at least.
Geforce 310M isn't good for some new games (can play most on low but not all of them I think)
so if you keep this notebook for like 1,2 years, probably it won't run most games at that time ( at playable fps 30+)
I have an ati 4650 ddr3 and only 512mb. I can run almost every game (all the games I tested ran smoothly, Assassin's Creed 2 at almost all on 4/4, PES 2011 at High) and I found it 25% cheaper than a notebook with Geforce... Hope this helps!

 

Perhaps try out the Acer TimelineX series (with a selection between 13.3'', 14'' and 15.6''). They have ATi 5650 graphics (stronger than Nvidia GT425M, able to run anything you throw at it smoothly - even Crysis at high settings), and have switchable graphics to integrated intel HD. They have exceptional battery life - up to 7 hours realistically. Also the build quality is great, and cooling is especially godlike with the 13.3'' 3820TG TimelineX with 2 vents, also you'll save some money.

 

How is the 310 vs...
the 9400M (a macbook I use to own and was happy with)
And the 320M (the new macbook card)
Battery Life and footprint are what tops my list, I'm just trying to get a idea what the 310 is capable of
That said I appreciate all the suggestions there are some amazing laptops I would've never thought of, giving me a lot to think about

 

it should be better, i alsos have 310M on my laptop. it somewhat equal to my friend's laptop with nvid 9600

got smooth high setting on almost every games i throw at @1024x576 res.
mostly i play call of duty 4/6, street fighter 4, BFBS2
sometimes i use 1152x640 and lower the setting a bit.
note : my native screen res is 1366x768

 

LOL sure setya , it's not even close to a 9600M GT.
9600M GT has double shaders, double memory bandwidth, etc.

9400M is comparable to a 310M.
Consider 40FPS as min to play a game smoothly. An average FPS of 30 is not smooth, a min FPS of 30 is smooth
NVIDIA GeForce 310M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

Sony Z series sounds ideal, but maybe out of the price range you're looking to pay.

The problem with the M11x (apart from that it looks cheap and nasty if you're intending to use it for business) is that its cpu is rubbish. This is fine for most games, but if you're looking to play stuff like DAO or Civ5, then your processor is going to get hammered by the game.

Minimum spec for playing games would be a 330M / 425M or the equivalent ATI card. Below that and you're really not going to get much difference in hardware performance vs. integrated graphics (however, you will have much better drivers in the standalone cards, which may allow you to run stuff painfully slowly).

One thing to bear in mind though - there are pretty much no laptops that can do gaming without a powered connection (i.e. battery power is inadequate to play games needing the gpu)