Weakest Mobile GPU for 1600x900 Gaming?

Is the Intel HD4000 integrated graphics fast enough to run recent games at 1600x900 with some settings reduced (for example, no AA)?

If not, what would be the weakest AMD or Nvidia discrete cards that can handle 900p (with some settings reduced), which are available in 2012 laptops?

By recent games, I'm referring to AAA titles from 2011-2012 like Skyrim, DXHR, ME3, RAGE, Sniper Elite V2, Arkham City, Risen 2, D3

 

hd 4000 is not that powerful at games. gt640m or 650m will be great for 900p or amd 7770m.

 

GT555M .10char

 

The 640m, 5830m, 6770m, 7690m, 5850m, 555m, can handle these recent games at 1080p, mostly maxed settings.

I would say my 5830m, is probably around the borderline of the weakest card I would use for running the latest games at 1920x1080. Older games from 2008-2010, usually I run all settings completely maxed out and often get around 50-60fps. With some of the most recent games I might need to reduce the AA a bit, or use FXAA instead of MSAA, but usually everything else is maxed for 1080p, and the frame rates are usually around 30 -45fps. For Skyrim it fluctuates a lot but I get around 40-60 fps, depending on the area. The only games I had to reduce below native res were Tribes Ascend and Witcher 2.

I'm wondering what is the next step below this, in other words the borderline weakest cards that can run the latest games at 1600x900 with AA reduced or no AA, for example, and still deliver at least around 30-40fps. Would that be like in the range of a 7570m, 7670m, 540m, etc.?

I don't know how much stock to place in a benchmark test conducted by AMD, but according to this review the integrated graphics in the A10-4600m (7660G), delivers almost playable frame rates for Diablo 3 (26fps) at 1920x1080 with AA enabled and mostly high settings. On a laptop with 1600x900 display and with AA disabled, it should at least perform a bit better, above 30fps, no?

 

I reckon you should stay at 1080p and try and get an amd 7850m for 1080p gaming.

 

It entirely depends on what you deem acceptable. If i was stuck with the 650m for 1080p it would drive me crazy.

But when you say modern games diablo3 is not demanding at all.

 

^ Again, useless. The OP is asking for the weakest mobile GPU for 900p. He is not asking for advice on what resolution he should game on.

moviemarketing, I had a 9800m GTS until a couple of weeks ago and that thing did Skyrim on max except for AA. I remember another setting on there, I remember it was NOT the resolution but I don't remember what it was lol.

I would go a couple GPUs up in that range on notebookcheck and, as _-____ whatever suggested, the 555m would work pretty well.

 

Wow nice rude reply there. Putting the blinkers on and ignoring the situation is the best recipe for bizare and incorrect advice.

 

If he wanted notebook purchasing advice, I believe there is a subforum here for that. I referred to him because he has a habit of responding with irrelevant stuff. Anyways, I ain't going to be arguing with you considering I will lose because "you have been around much longer than most mods".

 

I'm pretty sure the HD4000 should be able to play the titles you want at 900p and minimum / low settings just fine.

 

All of those cards are just about the speed of a desktop 9800 GT, a card which struggles with most modern games at 1080p, not even maxed out.

Of these, my still running GTX 260M was only beaten by the 640M and 5850M, and it could not game at 1080p well at all.

 

Most of those cards are faster than my 5830m, which delivers good framerates for Skyrim, DXHR, Arkham City, Hard Reset, ME3, RAGE, Sniper Elite V2, DA2, Just Cause 2, Fallout New Vegas, about every game I've ever tried at 1920x1080. Sometimes I need to reduce AA or use FXAA instead of MSAA, but I almost always have AF and most of the other settings maxed. For older games from 2009, 2010, like ME2, Bioshock 2, etc., I usually get constant 60 fps with everything completely maxed. Witcher 2 and Tribes Ascend were not playable (20-25 fps, sometimes dropping below 20); however, and I have to run these two games below native res.

When I look at notebookcheck's rankings, your 260m seems like it should be a bit faster than the 5830m. Which games were you not able to run at 1080p? Did you try disabling AA?

 

So these 2 responses are useless when first he has a 1080p laptop, second he wants some settings reduced like no aa and 650m and 7770m will play at 900p with no aa at very good frame rates.

'hd 4000 is not that powerful at games. gt640m or 650m will be great for 900p or amd 7770m.'

'I reckon you should stay at 1080p and try and get an amd 7850m for 1080p gaming.'

 

Sorry, to clarify, my current laptop already runs most games just fine at 1080p. I'm buying a laptop as a b-day gift for one of my nephews, and we are considering a few different thin and light models with 1080p and 900p display and various hardware options.

So, for the models with 1600x900 display, we were wondering which cards would be around a step or two below the AMD 5830m, which I think is probably the borderline of GPUs that can handle most games at 1080p.

I have a pretty good idea which cards can run games at 1080p (basically anything equivalent to the 5830m/4830m, or better), but I've never owned a laptop with 900p display and I'm not sure which cards are the weakest that can still run most games at 900p. For example, I seem to recall people gaming with the 5650m a few years ago when the Envy 14 was released with 900p display, but I'm not sure if that is perhaps too weak (at any rate, it's old and not included in newer laptops).

 

In that case a gt640m or amd 7730m will be adequate to game at 1600x900 at 30-60fps on high most games.

If you don't mind playing on low even a gt 620m or hd 4000 igpu could help with 1600x900 at low.

 

The 640M and 7730M are both significantly faster than the 5830M, but there's really not much below them to choose from, right now.

 

My Sony's 6630 gets in the 25 to 35 fps range on games like crysis2 at 1600x900. I have an HP dv6z with a 6750 and it can play crysis2 at 45 to 50fps on my 1080p monitor at minumum graphics settings. So yeah I'd tend to agree that on 900p you want something in the 7730 or above range. Note that if I drop res to 1366x768 my sony can get 45 fps or so just fine on a 6630.

Most thin and light machines will not have the cooling to run anything much more powerful than an AMD 6630 or NVidia GT640M etc.

If performance is more important than thin and light look at the intermediate machines like the HP Pavilion dv6t with 7730 and 1080p screen upgrade. Reasonably priced and a thicker 15.6" machine usually does a much better job on the cooling than a thin / light machine.

 

The GT 640M might be OP for 1600x900, when looking for a minimum.

The new Keplers are pretty impressive, and even the underclocked 640M LE performs fairly well in both Diablo 3 and Skyrim.

I'm thinking you'd be able to go at least down to 620M, when all the goodness is turned off. 610M even?

 

Thanks everyone, this is great feedback. We haven't made our decision yet, but it's very helpful to know what is the cutoff point in terms of the lower end of the range of graphics cards we should consider for 1600x900 display.

Isn't the 7730m significantly faster than the 6750m?

Yes, I agree, and I'm trying to steer him toward something around 1" - 1.2" thick, along the lines of a dv6t with 650m or Envy 15 with 7750m, but we are looking at a wide range of laptops. How does the asymmetrical crossfire work, for example there is a a dv6z model available with A10-4600m and 7730m. Does the asym-crossfire boost it up to the level of a 7750m or 7770m?

 

630m, 7690m are what I'd consider minimum 900p gaming. They can play pretty much all games at low/med no problem. Anything less than that can struggle with newer games. But 650m or 6950m/7770m would be ideal minimums for future use.

 

I would not get old gen graphics as the 630m and 7690m perform a lot worse then a 640m and 7770m and the 630m and 7690m consume more power.

Anyway like I said before 640m 7730m ish will handle 900p gaming very well.

 

edit: wrong place

 

I know that the 640m and the 7730m will handle 1080p gaming quite nicely, as they are much faster than my 5830m.

What would be equivalent to a tier below the 5830m, among recent GPUs available in 2012 laptops? Would that be something like the 7670m, 6650m, 630m, 540m?

 

new gen graphics wise gt 620m is the only option I can think of. Theres no new gpu really based on 28nm other then maybe a 640m le kepler version.

 

I noticed there is a $450 discount coupon code for the Envy 15 - this configuration looks pretty good for $799.99 (unless the coupon voids the instant rebate).

 

I have a 650M GT and a 900p screen and all games run fine at native res for the moment. But heavy games like BF3, Alan wake, metro 2033 can easily put it in its knees if u push above medium settings.

It's a very capable gpu for 900p and a beast at 768p but as said 640M GT or even LE should be sufficient for the games ur aiming at. But 640M GT LE will be soon obliterated by upcoming games. It's not a really good investment for the future. It's better to keep a performance margin when u buy a new laptop if u ask me.

I wanted to go for 640M GT initially but fact is the Clevo i got was far cheaper than laptops with 640M GT on board in France...

 

All of the chips we're discussing will be obliterated, when the next consoles come out.

Exclusively discussing 2012 tech (no rebrands), there is literally nothing below the GT 640M and 7730M, at this time, because both AMD and Nvidia had to start from the top.

They are now working their ways down, but we won't see genuine low and mid tier 28nm mobile chips until 700M and 8000M, because they've used up all of the available monikers with rebrands..

 

there is a 620m and 640m le kepler version. Anyway next gen consoles maybe less powerful then even a gt 640m.

 

Yes it is about 20% faster I believe. My point was that on a game that's over a year old, the 6750M is ok, but starting to show it's age, making the AMD 7730 the minimum GPU I'd get from them right about now.

Asymmetrical crossfire is pretty useless if you ask me. It has major issues. The first is that if the dedicated GPU is much faster than the integrated GPU, you get microstuttering. The fps numbers look good, but what you get is really one frame that renders REALLY fast followed by one that's rendered REALLY slow in comparison, and to your eye, it just looks choppy and slow. The numbers look good, the video doesn't.

The other problem it has is that it adds to the thermal load on the CPU, and the AMD CPUs are already struggling hard enough to keep up with the intel core i series in terms of performance. Adding more load to the CPU/iGPU doesn't help here.

If you've got a 6650M or above the disparity between iGPU and dGPU is too great and you get get stuttering, meanwhile you'll be making your CPU run slower. Just stick to the dedicated GPU and you'll be fine.

 

The 620M isn't Kepler so I disregard it.

And the PS4 is currently rumored to have an AMD 7900 derived GPU. The idea of it or the next Xbox being weaker than the 640M is laughable.

 

GeForce GT 620M - GeForce

You are right 620m is not kepler but fermi either 40nm or 28nm. wow nvidia basically rebranded quite a lot of the 600m series as fermi. I thought when I saw that nvidia 620m link that it must have been kepler. My bad.

hmm the ps4 if it has the 7000 series I wouldn't be suprised if they use something like a 7850. As the first fat ps3 had high power consumption before it went down with new process. I said the 640m shouldbe powerful but I didn't realise the ps4 had gpu rumours already.

If this is true then gt 640m/650m will be similar performance to the new consoles.
PS4 and Xbox 720 Graphics Specs Toe-to-Toe, Says Insider

So I wouldn't say gt 640m being weaker is that laughable as the 640m is newer technology then what they are gonna put in the consoles and perform similar to a 640m/650m.

 

I've read a few articles suggesting the PS4 will be using the AMD Radeon HD 7670 in asymmetrical crossfire with an AMD processor

PlayStation 4 'Orbis' chipset based on current-gen AMD A8 CPU and Radeon HD 7670 graphics? | The Verge

Sources Detail the PlayStation 4's Processing Specs - IGN

 

Right now my gaming Laptop is an Asus G72 Best Buy model. It has the 17" 1600x900 screen and a 260m. For this resolution, the card holds up quite well. I have played Arkham City and some GW2 beta on it. Not maxed settings by any means, but it looked and played great. I will have to play some Secret World on it. If it plays well, i may wait a bit on my planned laptop purchase...lol


edit*** No, The Secret World at lowest settings at 1600x900 was not exactly playable. But I do not know how much of that is on the servers, as I lag on my desktop..

 

arkham city runs at high on mine at 1280x800 at 35-45fps.

 

I know this is off-topic, but when exactly did IGPs get so powerful? I know I haven't remained an avid PC follower( though I thought the "i" series was still on 1st gen xD), so I guess I have missed a lot of hardware advances...

Seriously though I saw on Notebookcheck that an intel 4K can haul ~45FPS(!) in C2, however when I tried playing Crysis 2(w/ sig), I could barely push beyond 20FPS @800P. Now keep in mind that 20FPS was propagated via OC, and I still couldn't phase the IGP. This sort of news is tragic for my soul to bare. However that is not even the worst part, next I noticed that Arkham City ran at 40FPS+ as well but when I tried the Arkham demo there was so much stutter and lag(~25FPS). I will assume the IGP's level + i5/7 allow these games to perform well beyond my expectations. Although I probably should expect this considering my card is 5-6yrs of age so I suppose it's natural, but to see an IGP murder a dedicated card by so much gives me hope, indeed. Then again I mainly play AVA(steam),san andreas, and Microsoft flight(steam), so it's not a real biggie for me. Though I would like a notebook that can handle Square's new engine and Unreal 4.​

 

my 9600m gt gddr3 is just a bit faster then the hd 4000 at games. My gpu is probably between 10-50% faster then the hd 4000 at games.

The hd 4000 is based on 22nm vs the 8600m gt 80nm and my 9600m gt 65nm.

Smaller nm means that you can get more performance by getting more transistors in same tdp hence why hd 4000 holds its own.

 

Now that makes more sense, I figured a smaller nm was only to decrease power usage or reduce heat thru a smaller die. And if the 4K can do this I could only imagine how quick the 5K would be.

 

also forgot to add smaller nm, means you can get high clocks and more unified shaders for same power consumption and then there is architecture changes as well. Another thing is discrete 64bit 128bit 192bit 256bit 384bit etc cards make a difference in terms of bandwidth.

 

I think you can count with the 6770m in (older) notebooks. TF2, Split Second play well on 1200p on my big screen. BF3 is playable at 720p with high-ultra settings.

Even the 6750m can feed 900p.

 

"Mostly maxed"? On something like Skyrim? You're kidding me?

 

A 640m which is like a 20-25w card is a bit faster then your 460m on quite a lot of things. 640m should play skyrim on high at over 30fps on high at 720p res. Whats the fps on your 460m?

 

~45fps on High at 1080p.
You're comparing a 128bit DDR3 card to an 192bit GDDR5 card with around the same shader power. There's no way it's faster.

 

yours should win at 1080p but at 720p 640m should compare better. Quite impressive considering the 640m consumes similar amount of power to a gt 525m. I know 460m wins but you have to understand 460m consumes similar amount to a 680m while 640m consumes similar to a 420m.

second thoughts: gt 640m gddr5 should compete well with your 460m that is found in the l521x.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-640M.71579.0.html

 

Nope, not kidding. 1080p resolution, Official Hi-Res Texture Pack, Real Glaciers V2, Skyrim Flora Overhaul, Enhanced Distant Terrain Mod, Xenius Character Enhancement, every graphics menu setting completely maxed except MSAA disabled and using FXAA instead. (5830m, specs below in sig) MSAA and Shadow Quality are the only Skyrim graphics menu settings that seem to have any significant effect on frame rate. Any card faster than the 5830m should be able to handle Skyrim at 1080p with FXAA (provided the CPU is fast enough, I suppose).

Average on MSI Afterburner onscreen display is 40-60 fps including outdoors and indoors, sometimes dips below 30 standing in certain angles in Markarth exterior. Most interiors are closer to 60fps and rarely drop below 45-50. Also first person view sometimes has a microstutter effect that does not reduce frame rate but occasionally looks choppy compared to third person which is smoother.