Smallest laptop with certain graphics card

Hi all,

I am curious about something. What is the smallest laptop with a graphics card having 256 bit memory bus width? It can be old or new, doesn't matter.

 

15 inch -

Asus G50 (many versions)
Sager 8662 and 8690 (and other Clevo versions)
MSI GT625/628... However the new 640 only has 128bit with GDDR3... so they downgraded a bit

 

Smallest size laptop would be a 15.4" such as the MSI GT627/628, the Asus G50/G51 or the Sager NP8660/8662.

 

Soon the Alienware M11x will likely dominate all for some time in "small with awesome graphics". It's an 11.6 with the Geforce 330. It's certainly not 256 bit, but I'd imagine it will rock all the same in native resolution.

Memory bus isn't really important - what is important is the total memory bandwidth. I won't even argue that you are pretty much guaranteed great bandwidth with a wider bus, but if you are looking for small and powerful, there are still good choices with less than 256-bit bus. Laptops usually have lower resolutions than desktops, and if you don't plan on hooking it up to an external monitor, there are likely plenty of cards that can do native resolution for games.

Higher memory clocks and things like GDDR5 can narrow the gap with wide buses.

 

One thing that I'm somewhat concerned about for the m11x is the potential for it to be CPU limited, especially if it uses a CULV Core 2 Duo series. I know most games that people like (i.e. FPSes) are GPU limited, but the games I'm personally interested in (RTSes with AI (i.e. Supreme Commander), 4X games (i.e. X3), etc) are all quite CPU dependent. An i3/i5 or a non ULV Core 2 Duo (i.e. P8700) would be very useful, at least for my purposes. For the latter option, battery life will of course take a hit, though.

No doubt I'm looking for a successor/alternative to something like the X83VP (an excellent choice, btw).

PS Oblivion/Fallout 3. Yet more games that I play that need GPU horsepower but are also heavily CPU dependent. Sigh. http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=105525

 

M11x - 11 inch / c2d cpu / 335m

Sony Z - 13 inch / i cpu / 330m / 2x price of M11x / supposedly better battery life and interchangeable batteries (m11x got fixed battery)

If you got the money to spare, the upcoming Z seems a solid option, it just sacrifices a bit of graphics juice.


There may be other options i haven't researched yet:

i don't know if HP envy 13 will get an upgrade.

i haven't looked at asus 13- offerings.

 

The Sony Z supposedly runs pretty hot and I'm sure the Alienware will too.

 

256 bit bus is equivalent to a 128 bit bus with twice as fast memory clocks... which GDDR5 basically provides.

so now, high end mobile cards will either have GDDR5 memory or a 256 bit bus, but probably not both.

 

As for Asus, the only ones I'm considering:

UL30/50/80VT - extreme battery life, subpar CPU (that can be turboed), subpar graphics (210m)
UL30/50/80JT - extreme battery life, fair CPU, graphics not much of an improvement (310m)
X83/N81 - acceptable battery life, good CPU (P8700), good enough graphics

For other laptops:
MBP, Envy, Sony Z - out of price range, sorry.
Sony CW - acceptable battery life, good CPU (great for the i5's), subpar graphics (with current upgrade options)
m11x - good battery life, subpar CPU (according to current specs), great graphics.

Those are the only laptops I currently know of in the size/weight/power/price range I care about. Did I miss any?

 

Why do you need such a good GPU? If you're playing games, what games? Most games aren't limited by the CPU and hence even a relatively "weak" CPU would be fine and not be the bottleneck.

 

^ did you mean CPU in your first question? If so, yeah nowadays GPU is more of a major factor for games I've found out, although many RPGs and strategy games seem to rely on CPU a lot, so it depends. I personally play a range of games, but the games that look the best are also the games that do more GPU than CPU processing.

 

One pretty major exception to that is the Source engine, used in Half-Life 2 and its episodic expansions, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Left 4 Dead (and L4D2), and Portal. Good graphics do help, but most games based on this engine are very CPU-bound, and anything less than a 2.2GHz C2D is bound to have some performance issues, even when coupled with a solid graphics card.

 

There was a post in the alienware section comparing Dragon Age (yet another RPG) running on a variety of CPUs from (I think) T6600 to the current i7 monsters, with the same GPU. FPS ranged from barely playable (20s) to fast (70s). The SU7300 is significantly slower than the slowest tested CPU above, which is somewhat troubling.

 

but u can easily OC it to 2.1GHz as done in some ASUS notebooks...so shouldn't be much of a problem... anyways , i do think the M11x is going to come with core i5 ULV .... not SU7300...after alll the SU7300 was only in a test sample...

 

I am trying to find that review, because I occasionally play DA. It's interesting that we have once again hit a point where games become cpu bound. For so long, we were GPU bound.

EDIT: Found the chart that you were referring to.

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h204/killer-ra/VidGame Screens/DragonAge-CPUs-1680.png

 

Yes, I'm beginning to see this with more mainstream games (to repeat, Crysis is NOT a mainstream game). FLOP wise, a high end video card (i.e. 5970 at 5 TFLOP) is something like 100 TIMES the performance of a high end CPU (i7 at 50 GFLOPS).

In comparison, during the 2004 days, we had GPUs like the 6800 Ultra (54 GFLOP) and P4's (6 GFLOP) (historical data here: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=51677). That's 9X the performance. We've gone from 9X to 100X the performance in a matter of 5 years. No wonder few modern games are actually pushing modern GPUs (requiring people who want to "get the most" out of their high powered GPUs to go for multiple screens, insane AA/AF, insane detail settings, complex shaders, etc)

I know this is a horrible comparison, but still - it gives you an idea of the imbalance in performance. This kind of reminds me of the whole hard drive capacity vs. transfer rate argument. Today's 2 TB monsters are actually not much faster than the few GB drives at the turn of the millennium (and even less so latency wise).

Personally, I think the days of GPU bound (for mainstream discrete GPU computing) closed when Nvidia's 8 series launched (the 8800GTX is perhaps the longest-lived video card ever made). And in general, when the industry adopted programmable compute units (aka DirectX 10).