Why the Intel 4500?

I've been looking at thin, light laptops in the 12-14" range lately. One thing stands out, most of them have the 4500. Its inadequate for even the mildest gaming. Why are there so few laptops in this range with ATI's 3200, 4200 or nVidia's equivalent when these far outperform the 4500?

Even sager, who claims to make gaming notebooks, has a 4500 in their smaller laptop. Yet, its clearly possible to make such a laptop,

T135D

[url="http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&a1=Display+%28diagonal%29&v1=12.0%26quot%3B+-+14.9%26quot%3B&series_name=ENVY13_series&jumpid=in_R329_prodexp/hhoslp/psg/notebooks/12.0%22_-_14.9%22/ENVY13_series]HP envy 13[/URL]

Are there others like these, I haven't found any. I'm mostly looking for ones under 4 pounds, and preferably less than an inch thick, so that rules out the alienware ones, which tend to be bulky for their screen dimensions.

 

i think the MSI X600 (and its different versions, like X610) have HD4330, which is a rather capable card (IMO, cause i've always used budget systems). the MSI X600 is a thin and light. not too sure if its a 14 incher though.

the HD4330 will run most older games real nice. some games i know of (which is sadly few) its about 2x stronger than my desktop ATI Radeon X1550

CNC Generals (max res 1024x768, all enabled, texture and particle max)
CNC Tiberium Wars (max res for my desktop 1280x1024, settings medium high)
NFS Most Wanted (max res 1024x768, settings all high)
Call of Duty 4 (max res 1280x1024 my desktop, settings high and enabled, AA 2x)
Call of Duty 6 (640x480, all settings low, Depth of Field ON, no AA)
Age of Empires 3 (max res, settings almost all high)

 

Well to answer your previous question to why they don't have an integrated HD3200 or HD4200 is because AMD only makes those IGPs compatible with AMD CPUs and Intel owns most of the mobile market(not to mention the GMA4500 is probably cheaper).

Aside from that, "ultraportable gaming" isn't simple. It's possible, but sometimes requires sacrifice.

Notable 13" "gaming capable" laptops include(not a comprehensive list so there are more, just these are the first ones that come to my mind):
- Asus f6ve (HD4570 DDR2)
- Sony SR series (HD4570 GDDR3)
- Toshiba U series (HD4570 GDDR3)
- Dell Studio XPS 13 (9500M G)

 

I agree with "Forever Melody" on this one, sure physically it can be done, but the point of netbooks and ultraportables is not really to game, it's to get simple things you do on your computer everyday, done on the road without having to carry a beast of a thing. If it has an expresscard slot you can hook up a real powerful desktop GPU like a 4650 or even a 5000 series, although it may be gimped in power with the lower bandwidth interface. Still if you actually want to pay the low netbook price and still game on it, external graphics are really your only solution, but now nVidia has been rumouring around to saying that they will have an official dock with a adequate GPU in it.

 

+1. To combine thin-and-light and gaming, consider a Lenovo X200/X201i + US$200/$250/$370 HD5670/HD5750/HD5830 DIY ViDock. My analysis of the X20x series suggests it can do a x2 1.0 link, in which case you could be looking at > 11k 3dmark06 with a HD5750 and > 15k 3dmark06 with a HD5830. That would be more gpu performance than a mobility HD5870 equipped Asus G73JH. Just be prepared to put a little bit of time/thought into it to get a most rewarding experience.