What kind of graphic card do I need? (full description of needs inside)

Graphic cards confuse me. I get different information everywhere, I hear different opinion from friends, read different ones on the internet, etc.

What will I be doing with my laptop? Besides the general stuff like surfing, MSN, using MS Office and so on, I will also be working with Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop (website creation tools). For gaming, I currently only play World of Warcraft. I would like to be able to play World of Warcraft at high settings. I doubt I will play really heavy games in the future, but I would like to have DX10 card.

There are so many kind of cards: integrated, discrete, dedicated. It's been said on and on that integrated is a no-no. Than you have dedicated memory. I have no clue about this. How much should it be? Some people tell me 128MB is enough while others sayd I must have 512MB for sure.

What kind of graphic card do you recommend to me?

 

Wait for the Geforce Go 8400. DX10 compatiblity and doesn't suck the life out of your battery that much and it can probably be fitted in 12" laptops. Suggesting based on the needs you posted, 128 Mb dedicated RAM is more than enough. WoW has extremely low requirements so the GF Go 8400 can surely run it at mostly max settings.

Just my thought: I don't see the point of getting a DX10 compliant card if the card you're going to get is low-powered/low-end.

BTW, discreet and dedicated are the same.

 

For you I'd recommend staying away from dedicated cards. If you want DX10 then there are only very limited number of options right now, nVidia Go8400 and 8600 series (8400 being cheaper), but getting your hands on one of them is another story.

As far as the VGA memory goes I'd recommend at least 256MB. Dedicated cards come with dedicated memory, but some of them also share system RAM to extend total video memory (nVidia TurboCache and ATI HyperMemory technology). Therefore I’d say look for something with combined or dedicated memory of at least 256MB.

 

The 8400M is a good choice. Have you read the GPU guide?

 

It sounds like you want a nice and simple answer.

I've read your specs and I do more than less the same as you.

I recomend that you get the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX. You can buy this from most computer shops. If you want to go cheap I recomend EBay but I think Maplin are best if you have enough funds.

You'd be able to run WoWW on max res and also do all your web and graphics work.

Hope this helped! Do PM me if you want to know anything else.

 

Oh also I think this is PCI so you wouldn't ahve any big fitting problems.

 

He cetainly doesn't need the Go 7900 GTX to play WoW and his web and graphics work don't require a video card at all.

And where exactly do you want to put this card?

Inspired911, if you are planing on buying a notebook, you can fill out the FAQ in the "What to Buy" section.

 

With the discrete I was referring to the Nvidia Quadro's like in the Latitudes and Thinkpad t61. Those websites call those cards discrete, so I figured it must be different than dedicated. Apparently I was wrong.

I'm planning to post in the "What to buy" section soon. But I would like to do some research first, to know what I can expect.

 

Have you, like, ever seen a laptop up close?

Apart from the fact you can't exactly but laptop graphics cards at Maplins or anywhere else suggesting a 7900GTX for playing WOW is just... wow.

 

I've bought a laptop graphics card at Maplins.

 

lol why would he need that monster of a card for gaming? And the I thought the "why are people obsessed with gaming thread" was strange..