Help selecting Graphic Card

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/338615.page

thats the official specs.

 

oh cool! phew

i had almost given up interest in Laptops.

hey, can u answer this?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=465264

 

ok umm 5470 is not the best choice for gaming. It will do ok on modern games. Old games, (source games etc) should run max settings. its comparable to 9400m gt correct me if im wrowng plz

 

the 5470 has direct x 11 and 5.0 shader support.
So strictly speaking a game won't "cross" those requirement until higher versions of the above.

however as its an "entry-level" card its a good debate as to if its better to future-proof with an "upper-level" direct x 10 card.

 

but Dell studio 15, the best bang for the buck (for me.. customised the specs) doesn't give any other choice for GPU! what should i do?

 

The 5470 gets outperformed by pretty much any decent DX10 or DX 10.1 card, let alone a good DX11 one.

 

Any game asking for more demanding graphics will have trouble on your rig. Your CPU is in the high end while your GPU is on the lower side, which is what I told you to beware about in your other thread >.>

 

How much buck are we talking, because there's no bang to be found here.

If you're looking to spend ~$800, there's much better choices to be found. This here Acer Aspire, for instance, beats the pants off of the Dell Studio 15.

 

There exist no game which cannot RUN on a laptop. However, there exist many games which cannot be maxed on laptops. Game developers aren't dumb, if they make a game with too high minimum system reqs, they cut off more than half of their market.

 

Well i'm no expert !
But keep in mind there is more to a laptop than the graphics card.
Have a look at notebookcheck.com to get an idea of what games the card will play.

 

Well, when it comes to gaming....

GPU > CPU > RAM > HDD

Then we get into aesthetics.

 

The thing is you can never upgrade your graphics card(most of the time), so making sure you get the best available to you at the time is key.

The other components like RAM, CPU and Hard Drives can easily be upgraded so more bearing should be given to the GPU, especially if your gaming.

 

His Guys, thanks for the help.
I'm not buying the laptop now!
anyways, the 190 Pounds discount i was counting on isn't available outside UK, nor the shipping.
and i know for gaming, GPU is very important, so im dropping Dell Studio 15.

Thanks for all the help

Btw, i will be posting here again with the specs of another laptop later.

 

What GPU should i consider to pair with i7 720QM, so that no potential of my CPU is wasted cuz of a weak GPU (Nvidia and ATI)?

 

what are theThings and features to consider while buying a GPU?

ok, how close are we from that happening to TODAYS high end specs for laptops?

 

It's highly unlikely your i7 is ever going to bottleneck a moblie GPU in your price range, except in certain circumstances (GTA4, Supreme commander?). Just get the best graphics card you can.

 

I think all the "optimum" system requirements is just another sales pitch to go Nvidia and Intel.

 

no i meant the other way, a GPU that will bottleneck my Quad Core i7

 

Most GPUs will bottleneck an i7 simply because an i7 is overkill for maybe 80%(ir not more) of games out there. The 720QM is in the top 10 CPUs available for laptops so in order to have a balanced system, you'd need a very high grade GPU like the GTA260M or the HD4850 or better.

Games will not "not run" because of a weaker CPU, they'll experience slowdowns.

Games however will not run because of a GPU that cannot render the game's graphics.

 

there you go.

 

What Technology it uses, Memory Type and Size, Bus Width, Clock speeds.

Now, I'm confused on whats going on. Do you already own a laptop and want to upgrade it's GPU? Or are you buying a Laptop?

 

if ur from UK , try kobaltcomputers.co.uk G860... about 1300 pounds but will pretty much max all games...

 

the answer is "a while ago" (as far as when a specification will be 'crossed')

it's the graphics card (the 5470)

games like battlefield bad company 2, crysis, grand theft auto 4, and others, will not run in any playable way on the 5470.

other modern games like call of duty, fallout 3, left 4 dead 2, etc. will run at least okay with minimum settings and low resolution.

 

A good 2-3 years away if my 8600m GT is any indication.

 

tjrecess, don't start multiple threads about the same subject; thank you. Several of your threads have been merged.

 

Im buying a new laptop with core i7

 

Sure.
but how can i open a new sub-topic within this topic, like u merged 3 of mine now?

 

What's a good Bus Speed and Clockspeed for a GPU that won't bottleneck i7 720QM?

 

Why don't you just start a thread in the "what laptop should i buy" section ?
Would be easier to find what you're looking for.

 

thanks for the suggestions but i'd rather know what i will be getting and when i want.
i would rather have a choice of my own, to compare with others.

 

for what it is worth, cpu's and gpu's actually work the same way in this respect.

underpowered-ness will cause the application or game to run, but run slowly.

underfeatured-ness will cause the application to not run.

so you could have a modern, but weak processor, like an intel atom.

you could have an older, (but more powerful) processor, like a pentium 4 @ 3.4 ghz (northwood)

the pentium 4 is about twice as fast as the atom, but only supports sse2 instructions. if a game requires sse3 instruction support, the atom would be able to at least launch it, and it may run slowly. The pentium 4 would not be able to run it at all. (i don't know how applicable this is, but the idea is right on)

the same thing with the graphics card. you could have something like an ati 5450 that supports dx11 and the other but more powerful 4890, which supports dx10.something. If a game required dx11, then it would at least launch, probably slowly, on the 5450, but would not run at all on the 4890.

You could also mix and match the processors and graphics cards, and if either component does not meet a necessary standard, it won't run.

 

Yeah thats true
Whats a good bus speed and clockspeed for a GPU with directX 11 that wont bottleneck i7 720QM?

 

There's only one problem, in the laptop division, you dont have much freedom on what graphics card you get in what laptop. Go to the "What laptop should I buy" section and you will get a lot of suggestions there.

 

If you take a look at the thread about Direct X 11 , you might get an idea around when it will become common enough to be an issue.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=465299

If you really want the top direct x 11 card thats available today , most people suggest the ATI 5870.
But you will pay for this premium and i think will only be in 17' machines.

For best value i'd suggest getting a card a little below the top ones , that can play most of the games you want.
notebookcheck.net has a goodish list of cards. Eg
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-260M.14559.0.html
Its not to be taken as 100% accurate as different cards cannot be always ranked against each other , but its a good start.

 

What IS direct X, actually?

 

You must be really new to the world of mobile computing if you're asking this question.

Without DirectX on your PC, you cannot play games at all on Windows. Fortunately it always comes preinstalled on all windows operating systems and most games will install the latest version of the programming API on your PC as part of the package.

 

As a matter of fact I am, but soon i won't.
this site helped a lot!

and thanks

 

Quoted from Noteboockcheck.net

"ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 is a high-end DirectX 11 capable graphics card for laptops / notebooks by AMD. At the time of announcement (Jan 2010) the 5870 paired with GDDR5 memory should be the fastest laptop GPU (except SLI / CF) available. Technically, the chip is based on the desktop Radeon HD 5770 (RV840) with a slower clock rate.

The memory interface of the Mobility 5870 is composed out of two 64 bit wide controllers leading to a 128 bit memory bus that can access up to 1024 MB of DDR3 or GDDR5 memory (512 MB GDDR3). If (G)DDR3 is used by the laptop vendor the performance clearly suffers noticable.

The HD5870 offers 800 MADD cores (called Stream Processors) which are grouped in 160 5-dimensional groups. The cores support DirectX 11 functions in hardware (Tessellation, OIT, Post-Processing, Shadows, HDR Texture Compression). Furthermore, 16 ROPs, 40TMUs, and 40 TAUs can be found on the chip. All in all 1040 Mio transistors offer a theroretic computation power of up to 1.12 TFLOPS.

According to AMD, the HD 5000 series was also improved regarding general computing (as the HD4000 series was not optimized for this). Therefore, the performance of ATI stream, OpenCL, and DirectCompute 11 applications should be noticable better.

Compared to the previous generation (in this case the Mobility Radeon HD 4870), the HD5870 should be about 20% faster according to AMD. This is only valid for a GDDR5 version of the HD5870 (otherwise the memory bus would be the bottle neck). The gaming performance of the GPU should be sufficient for all current games (2009-2010) in high resolution and high detail settings. With 4x Antialiasing the following games should run fluently in 1920x1200: Left4Dead, UT3, Devil May Cry 4, Far Cry 2, ET:Quake Wars, and Wolfenstein MP (over 30 fps according to AMD slides - see beyond). Compared to the previous leader in the mobile segment, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M, the new HD5870 should be faster. The performance evaluation slides by AMD can be found at the end of this page.

The Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series includes an improved video processor (UVD2) to decode HD videos with the graphic card. The new version is able to decode two HD streams simultaneously (e.g., for Blu-Ray picture in picture) if the graphic card offers enough memory bandwidth (only GDDR5 versions?). Since the Flash 10.1 Beta, the 5000 series is also able to help accelerate Flash HD videos (like YouTube).

A special feature of the HD 5000 series is its ability to transmit HD audio formats (like Dolby True HD or DTS HD Master Audio) with up to 8 channels and 192 KHz / 24 Bit over HDMI 1.3a.

As the desktop HD 5000 series, the Mobility HD 5870 also supports Eyefinity to connect up to 6 monitors to the graphics chip. Of course, this depends on how many monitor outputs the laptop vendor adds to the laptop (and how they are wired). Most laptops will support three screens simultaneously (internal and two external).

Due to the high power consumption of the Mobility Radeon HD 5870, it is only suited for large laptops with good (and possibly loud) cooling solutions. According to AMD, the performance per watt ratio (same power consumption, better performance) and the Idle power consumption were improved (thanks to Memory Clock Scaling and Clock Gating). Furthermore, the chip does support PowerXpress (with AMD chipset) and Switchable Graphics (Intel) to switch between the dedicated and chipset / CPU graphics card (with improved switching times).

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 should perform somewhere between a Radeon HD 5750 and 5770 according to the specs (shader count of 5770, clock rate of 5750).



Manufacturer ATI
Series Mobility Radeon HD 5800
Codename Broadway-XT
Pipelines 800 - unified
Core Speed * 700 MHz
Shader Speed * 700 MHz
Memory Speed * 1000 MHz
Memory Bus Width 128 Bit
Memory Type DDR3, GDDR3, GDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory 1024 MB
Shared Memory no

DirectX DirectX 11, Shader 5.0
Current Consumption 60 Watt
technology 40 nm
Features Eyefinity (up to 6 displays), HD Audio (Dolby True HD, DTS HD), HDMI 1.3a, Avivo HD (UVD2.2)
Notebook Size large
Date of Announcement 07.01.2010
Information 1.12 TFLOPS
Link to Manufacturer Page

* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.
benchmarks
3DMark 06:
0% 100%
min: 12543, avg: 12708, max: 12872 Points ... More Details

Model CPU Memory Core / Memory GPU Memory Value
Asus G73JH (Standard 1280x1024) 720QM 8192 MB 12543
(Standard 1280x1024) 720QM 8096 MB 1024MB GDDR5 12872


Cinebench R10: - Shading
0% 100%
min: 6232, avg: 6232, max: 6232 Points ... More Details

Model CPU Memory Core / Memory GPU Memory Value
720QM 8096 MB 1024MB GDDR5 6232


3DMark Vantage: - P Result no PhysX 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 7260, avg: 7630, max: 8000 Points ... More Details

Model CPU Memory Core / Memory GPU Memory Value
720QM 8096 MB 1024MB GDDR5 7260
Asus G73JH 720QM 8192 MB 8000


- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
Based on 5 benchmarks


3DMark Vantage in comparison
ATI Radeon HD 3200 (min)----------- 98
...
ATI FirePro M7740 ------------------6626
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 --------6631
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 -----6895
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870--------- 7630
NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX SLI------ 8440
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M SLI -------8959
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 X2------ 8991
...
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M SLI (max) ---9435 "

 

Briefly looking over this, there are only 3 laptops available to you. You don't need a massive thread with all these questions considering there are only 3 options that meet your requirement for gaming needs.

Asus G73 with HD5870 (Upgrading is up in the air, up to Asus if they change their proprietary socket for GPU). Standard is top upgrades from most custom resellers @ $1,550
- If you need e-SATA or DVI port, look at the Clevo below. G73 failed when it comes to ports that should be standard.

Clevo W870CU with HD5870 (This can be upgraded) - With Windows 7 and other needs looking at $2,500

MSI whatever. $1,400 stock, but with same specifications as G73, looking at $2,200

When you buy a laptop you don't get a choice. So I don't see the point in this.

You find the laptop models that you can afford or within your budget and you break them down and compare. It's when you compare that you look at what one has and the other doesn't etc. If you are going to try and buy a laptop like you do like a desktop looking for each specific part, you won't get it.

Just tell people the following and they can give you what's available:

1). What your needs are, what you will do, what applications you use, and your gaming habits.

2). Your Budget

3). What size. 15.6" 17" 18" etc.

4). Warranty you require.

 

i know, you're right!
but i think u skipped Sager, cuz i just customised a sager laptop with HD 5870 it was around 1550$

anyways thanks!

 

Hi, can some1 plz tell me the 5 GPUs right below ATI HD 5870 in terms of performance, not the cards released before 5870 with DX11.

this particular GPU isn't mentioned in Charles P Jeffery's list

 

Mobile or Desktop?

Mobile:
HD 5870
GTX 285M
HD 4870
GTX 280M
HD 5850? 4850?

 

*back on this discussion after months

did a reality check, where i live, only 2 i7 laptops are in the market
Dell Studio and hp DV6

i'm more interested in DV6,
but it's GPU is Nvidia GeForce GT 230M

do u predict bottlenecking? and is the GPU weak for gaming?

I'm not interested in DELL one is because i know it has a very weak GPU

 

It's not a weak GPU but you're certainly not maxing every modern game that comes out(in fact you probably can only max a select few non demanding ones).

But yes, the GPU is underpowered compared to the CPU so the games will be bottlenecked by the GPU.

 

One thing about these ATI cards that has me wondering is do they support Digital Vibrance like Nvidia cards do?

 

Is that another Nvidia Gimmick?

 

Gimmick or not, I really love that feature. It just makes the colors on the desktop more, um, vibrant. Without it turned on, everything looks plain and dull.

 

I've been playing All-Points-Bulletin for the past few days and running on a GTX 260M is disappointing. I'm definitely upgrading to a ATI Mobility 5870 as soon as I get to where I'm going. I can run it at 1920x1200 but I have to run it at the absolute bare minimum settings to get a slightly decent framerate. And running it at those setting does take a lot away from the game.

 

u can always import from a US online reseller and it will be quite cheap.. u can also avoid tax.. cough cough..

 

i would love to do that, but i'm afriad my dad thinks its too risky,
i blame the gen gap