How importaint is supporting graphics?

I am going to be soon buying a laptop. Although I do not want a high power gaing machine, I would like it to be capable of playing a few games. Obviously this means that I dismiss any intergrated graphic chips. Basically the two laptops I am now looking at (both by Asus) have NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 TurboCache. One supports 256MB, and the other 128MB. How importaint is this? And is it at least an adequate graphics card (realising it won't cope with top-end games)?
Thanks!

 

It'll work alright. You want the 256 MB of VRAM. Should be able to play Far Cry at near-maximums with liveable framerate, if that gives you an idea of how powerful it is.

 

OK thanks! I'm assuming that the spec. stated below everyone's posts is the specification or there pc. So I guess you have an overclocked 7200 with 256MB? Also I have read that the turbocache basically means that it borrows RAM from the system. The laptop I am looking at has 1GB of RAM - would that throw up any problems? And does the 256MB and 128MB both have the same ammount of dedicated video RAM?

 

In either configuration, be it 128 or 256 MB total VRAM, I think it's 64 MB of dedicated VRAM + 64 or 192 MB of SRAM used as VRAM (shared).

My PC uses a 64 MB + 192 MB configuration. Because I have two gigabytes of RAM, I don't have to worry about shared VRAM really being a burden. I suggest you do a bit of research with that computer, and find out it's Turbocache configuration. If you go either route on that ASUS, I would make sure it has DDR2 667 MHz SRAM. 1 GB of RAM should suffice with the 128 MB VRAM turbocache configuration, however, with the 256 MB VRAM turbocache setup, I'd suggest having 1.5 GBs of RAM. That way your VRAM doesn't really cut memory away from applications that need it. Having 2 GB of RAM in my computer makes running alot of stuff very easy, I've had no problem executing and running multiple things at once such Counter Strike: Source at full settings, AIM, MSN Messenger, 3 Firefox windows, Windows Task Manager, and Windows Media Player all at once.........and I still had half of my RAM not being used. BF2 however uses upwards of 600 MB of RAM by itself, and even more when on full settings...........so it's good to have ALOT of RAM, especially if you plan on getting Vista, as the OS by itself needs 512 MB of RAM to run ok, which means you'll still need more RAM for the programs you actually run on top of the OS.

It's a good thing you brought up the dedicated VRAM question, it's a smart thing to ask with turbocache and hypermemory configurations. It's going to be the fastest pool of data for the GPU to have information on, so it's speed and memory size is imperitive. Like I said before, running older stuff on a 7300 shouldn't be any big problem. HL2 and Far Cry run pretty well on it.

Oh, and when it comes to overclocking a notebook GPU, I highly suggest you refrain from doing it, until you get a true grasp of what you're doing, and know how to do it safely. Honestly, I don't think you should do it ever in the first place, as I'm placing alot of risk on my $1400+ investment doing it. But then again, I'm not really concerned as you're not a nut like me it seems

 

OK thanks a lot! Will have to send off a few E-mails as most specifications online don't go into that kinda of detail. But that answers my question! Thanks!

 

Sure thing. Oh and if it's not that much more, I'd say there's nothing wrong with getting better graphics hardware. You may think the 7300 is enough, but once you push something to it's limit, it may leave you salivating for more That's the reason why I was hellbent on overclocking my GPU! LAWL!

 

Primarily, the laptop I'm getting is for University. So my parents are going to give it to me as a Christmas present. However my Dad has now said that he won't pay for a more expensive one, just because of the Graphics Card. I am afraid of the answer, but what is a Embedded Intel® 945GM capable of? I know the answer is next to nothing, but, for example, could it play C&C Generals? Thanks!