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    a noob question

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by propeller10, Jul 18, 2011.

  1. propeller10

    propeller10 Notebook Guru

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    Does having a dedicated graphics card improve performance significantly in non-gaming tasks?

    In my case intel HD 3000 vs AMD radeon HD 6630m 2GB
     
    propeller10, Jul 18, 2011
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  2. DEagleson

    DEagleson Gamer extraordinaire

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    Using a proper dedicated GPU does boost gaming, but the same gains is hard to see when it comes to using computers for browsing, office tasks ect.
    Programs are still heavily reliable on CPU rather than offloading tasks to the GPU with DirectCompute or OpenCL.
     
    DEagleson, Jul 18, 2011
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  3. propeller10

    propeller10 Notebook Guru

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    Thank you. I've heard the that the GPU acts like a CPU so performance improves. Correct me if I am wrong.
     
    propeller10, Jul 18, 2011
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  4. saturnotaku

    saturnotaku Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    That's on an application-by-application basis. Video-editing programs can be written to use the GPU in this way so encoding times are much faster. Photoshop can process large images much quicker in this way, too.
     
    saturnotaku, Jul 18, 2011
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  5. propeller10

    propeller10 Notebook Guru

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    Makes sense. I won't be running those intense apps. So I should be fine with integrated graphics.


    Thank you.
     
    propeller10, Jul 18, 2011
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  6. MrFong

    MrFong Notebook Evangelist

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    A GPU can help you out in -some- tasks. Video rendering, for example. Or decoding HD video so you can watch Blu-Ray discs without your computer lagging.

    For Average Joe surfing the web and watching low-quality pr0- educational videos on his laptop? Not so much.
     
    MrFong, Jul 18, 2011
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  7. Simplified

    Simplified The Most Awesome

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    You will not notice any difference in tasks like surfing, writing, watching DVD/Blurays etc.

    The only real difference is when gaming, rendering graphics.
     
    Simplified, Jul 18, 2011
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