How much does the typical mGPU weigh?

I am planning on purchasing a notebook in the coming weeks and will not need a dedicated gpu for my uses. I have seen a few notebooks recently offered with almost all specs I would like, but without the option to leave the gpu out. If it comes down to it I have no problem having one, but thought I would try to go on the lighter side if possible.

 

A couple ounces, if that. But they have to often design in extra cooling for the dedicated, so it can add a non-trivial amount of weight as compared to an integrated GPU.

What notebooks are you seeing that meet your specs except having a dedicated GPU? How much power are you looking for? I've generally found the problem is the other way, a laptop that meets all the specs except for a good GPU.

 

i agree with Pitabred can yopu give us some more info. The weight for most people is nothing. If weight is a large concern a net ultrabook is coming out with a dedicated graphics card.

 

the dedicated GPU itself doesn't add much weight at all. As noted, the other factors tend to drive the weight up.

With the dedicated GPU often comes additional cooling, possibly a larger battery. Those things add weight. There are lots of options though, so you should easily be able to find something that is both lightweight and offers a dedicated GPU. There are also lots of options without a dedicated GPU that still have top-rate performance for everything except for 3d graphics or gpu accelerated applications.

 

Thanks for the replies and input. I wasn't meaning for this to be a "what laptop should I buy?" post, so I will leave that for another forum. But my main uses are going to be web work, video transcoding, and live webcasting. I am looking at a top end processor being my main expense, probably the 3720 or 3820. I am not a gamer and the only thing I do besides work is browse the internet and watch movies / listen to music. I will also be carrying it around a bit.

So from my understanding a gpu wouldn't be of much use for the things I do on a daily basis, and cutting down on cost and weight are always a good thing. But as you guys have indicated, the gpu does not add that much weight. My budget is going to be around $1800, so it's not a big deal to get a gpu, just though it was unnecessary when I could use the money for other upgrades (more ram, maybe 2 ssd's, nice screen).

 

yea for you i would go for a good cpu at least a 1080p screen and SSDs. Buy ram from newegg and upgrade yourself..it is ~30 bucks for 8 gigs of ram 2x4 or ~85 bucks for 2x8

 

you don't need 2 physical SSDs. Just get one, possibly get one that's twice as large as you would have had you gotten two.

Just get an ivy bridge CPU. It'll have an integrated GPU, and it will be more than enough to handle 1080p video, webcasting, etc. Video transcoding just uses the CPU (for good, robust, high quality transcoders) - there are fast GPU transcoders available, but they don't hold a candle to the CPU options right now. And, in fact, the one thing that intel graphics cards have over Nvidia and AMD chips is their video transcoding capability. So- even if you wanted to mess around with real time or fast transcoding, intel integrated is still a good choice.

Just get a fast core i5 ivy bridge, 2x4 GB of memory is plenty, invest all the rest into a good build quality machine, good battery life, high quality screen...

 

Yea GPU's themselves were never the big reasons they couldn't be thrown in ultra slim books, it was the cooling solutions they entailed.

Since you plan to get a beefy cpu, the gpu won't be able to provide much other then 3d gaming performance (as far as video encoding goes, gpu is only faster if your system is using a cpu so slow, it is bottlenecking the gpu).

That said, if you opt for a laptop with integrated graphics, there is no option of upgrades in the future. This can 1) effect resale value in the future and 2) we live in an entertainment world and sometime down the line you may be installing a game or 2 on it. Don't be that person that says "i spent $1800 on a laptop and I can't even play call of duty".

 

Buy the new MSI and just remove the dedicated graphics and heatsink.... lol. Never thought of that ^-^ Tape over the left fan vent too....

 

Since you are here in Gaming section, I dont think there is a laptop from Sager, Clevo, Asus ROG, MSI and Alienware that only offer iGPU. You can wait and see when the ultrabooks with IB comes out. I'm just not sure if they will offer CPUs such as 3720 or 3820, maybe more on 36##.