No games: Intel HD Graphics Vs ATI Mobility Radeon?

Hi,

I do not have plans to play any big games. It is restricted to Solitaire . I want my laptop to be future proof for next 5 years. As OS requires a lot of memory and CPU these days to play graphic animations, is having an ATI R still better than Intel HD graphics card? Is the graphics card dedicated to games alone?

Thanks,
Hem

 

these day almost everythign is GPu accelerated from converting video to editing picture passing to the OS GUI it self and with openCL and DirectCompute the more time will go the more gpu accelerated things will be

ad intel's solutions are terribly anemic in powerfor now so unless you'r talking about waiting for SB IGP an ATI will always be miles away from any intel solution

 

A current generation intel IGP will do just fine for solitaire, flash, and 720p. Maybe even 1080p...

 

My i3 Dell notebook with intergrated graphics plays back all manner of 1080p video with the cpu sitting under 5%.

 

Of course a dedicated graphics card is always better than the IGP. However, the ones in the i3/i5s are fast enough to watch 1080p video and run office applications/ aero. If you were going for something 5650 and up there will be a huge difference, but the low end ATI cards like the 5430 and below are hardly any faster than the i3/5 graphics.

 

I used my intel 4500mHD in my t400 to power 2 24in WUXGA LCDs. Intel IGPs will work for what you want, and the only advantage an ati card will give you is no ram sharing. Plus when parallel computing becomes common a decent GPU may help (already kinda does with themes being offloaded to the GPU).

 

it does help alot at work we got two almost identical vosto workstation the main diference is one has an ati 3470 the other use an intel IGP and the diference in performance is incredible the boost is not from the ram used but fromt he ram bandwich needed to calculate the graphic of aero it self wich can cause the cpu to have to remain idle for several cycle since it can,t acces it's own memory as all the bandwich is used for the gpu

I core solution are liekly a little better but still i'd go with the ati

 

I was generalizing the negative for the sake of a quick post. Basically now the only real advantage of an IGP is battery life and hopefully soon ATI cards will be competitive with IGPs.

 

i'd get a dedicated GPU especially if your going to keep the computer for 5 years.. with HTML5 etc needing more and more hardware acceleration to done by GPU , having a dedicated one is a must have.. anyways , a 5470 or something is good enough.. it gives u more power than intel's solution with a very similar TDP to intel's one.

 

You can game with intel gma hd,just depends on what games you have in mind.I currently play,HL2 DM,HL2-1,2,fear combat,both stalker games,thats just a few,all run on med to high settings.Only bummer i have is some of these games dont support my 1600X900 resolution,other than that they all run good.

 

If you're looking for five years out of your laptop I'd consider a laptop with reasonable dedicated GPU with switchable graphics and powerful dual core i5 or i7. That should suffice for some time to come.

 

A dedicated GPU would extend the usable life of the laptop, but nothing is going to make any laptop 'future proof' for 5 years. Not like laptops last that long anyways

 

True, but if you're just doing basic web and MS Office type tasks it will suffice just fine. Heck, I have an old seven or eight year old Shuttle desktop with Sempron 2400+ (Athlon XP variety) with 1GB DDR2 that is used as a web station.

 

Aye. The IGP on the new Intel chips is about as powerful as the lowest-end dedicated cards, and it will be much better with battery. It still has enough performance to work fine with Aero and even some light gaming, and more than enough to run HD video.

Go with the IGP, spend your money on a better, higher-res screen. It will be much more useful to you over the life of the laptop given you don't play games.

 

Thanks for all those replies.

--Hem

 

I earlier said that I find my i3 and intergrated fine, well netflix has just to Canada and I don't know if its poorly coded site, IE9 or a lack of horsepower but I find there site slow to scroll on and when I'm watching HD video (such as the BBC series) I find my cpu in the high 30% range.

 

Since you don't play games, an IGP will be enough for your needs.
Although, I would likely recommend you wait until Sandy Bridge comes out since the cpu's will be more capable in contrast to the current i generation, and the IGP should see a boost by about twice the amount, bringing it to entry-level dedicated gpu's.

Not to mention the fact that you are looking to keep the laptop for the next 5 years ... so going with Sandy Bridge (since it's already close to being released) would likely be the way to go.

 

So can this intel hd card play games such as command and conquer or gta or even flight simulator? I know there are some games that are graphics intensive, but i feel like these ones are not as graphics intensive, so would the intel hd card suffice?

also i really like the mobility and the discrete graphics card of the msi x420, but that has a SU7300 processor, is that capable of playing video games, let alone last for 3-5 years?

 

If by GTA you mean GTA4, then not even close. It will play older games, but not anything within the last year or two. It will decode HD video and use aero just fine, but if you want to game you will need a dedicated card. It might run Flight Simulator on the lowest settings.

The 5430 that comes in the x420 isn't much of a dedicated GPU worth speaking of, and is barely faster than the i3/i5 integrated GPU. I don't even know why they bother to sell anything less than a 5470, not really worth it.

The SU7300 is an ultra-low voltage CPU, not meant for performance, and is VERY slow compared to regular voltage chips. It won't hardly play games now, and likely won't run anything much more demanding than a web browser or word processor 3-5 years from now.

 

So if the intel IGP and the ati 5430 cant really play new age video games, i would assume the integrated ati (which i think is the 4250) cant either. So for notebooks, what would be the minimum GPU necessary to play games and still have the computer function for the next 3 years or so? What about the GeForce 310m, or is that one just the NVIDIA version of the intel and ati IGP?

 

The 310m falls somewhere between the 5430 and 5450.

It really depends on what kind of games you want to play and at what settings. If you want something that will be good for the next 3 years (meaning play future games at med-high settings) then you really have to look at the top of the line 58xx or 460/70/80m GPUs. If you want something that's just good enough then try for a 5650 or 350m or 435m at the least. There's a huge gap in performance between those GPUs and the next step down. For example, the 5650 is about 5x faster than the 5430, and 3.7x faster than the 5470.