The difference between a desktop and notebook videocard

I am quite interested in purchasing the ASUS V1J or W1J, which both come with a X1600 card, however I recently read that the X1600 desktop card is a budget card.

Can you compare notebook w/ desktop cards? I want to play a heavy game on my notebook, so the importancy is quite high.


Performance-wise, the Radeon X1600 XT is just powerful enough for current 3D games. Since it is aimed at gamers on a budget, it offers quite good value for money.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/15/graphics_card_buyers_guide_2006_part3/page56.html

 

Notebook graphics cards are usually downclocked compared to desktop cards, are more expensive, have less dedicated memory (usually), have less ports (for example a desktop Geforce 7 series card has two monitor ports or something similar), and have less variety (no GS, GT, XT, XTX, GTX, OC etc unless it's the high end cards) but they use less power and are much smaller (so that if actually fits in your laptop).
That article is correct, notebook mid range graphics cards like the Mobility X1600 is able to play the latest games on medium to max settings, but naturally playing heavy games on a notebook is not ideal compared to a desktop.

 

On desktop X1600 Pro you have about 6k in 3dm05 and X1600 Mobility has about 5k. So desktop version is about 15-20% faster. Besides much depends on resolution, it is much easier to get high framerates with cool efects on WXGA (1280x800) than on WUXGA (1920x1080). You may get similar results with X1600 on WXGA screen and for example GF7800GTX on WUXGA. Remember that.

 

i would imagine the clocks are slower..may not have as many pipes..may not support all the same features..and what you get...higher prices...go figure.

pb,out.

 

I'm sure the only diffrence is clocks. Pipes, features must be the same.

 

The clock gating is also more agressive on the mobile cards to save power.