Business Graphics Cards - help

Up till now I have been purchasing computers for myself, but I have to get a new notebook for work and Im wondering Which graphics card to get. I can see the market is grouped into three areas. But which card / group is best for me?

1. Group 1 - Integrated Graphics
2. Group 2 - General Dedicated graphics
3. Group 3 - Enterprise Graphics (NVidia Quadra etc)


My usage:
* 90% of the time at my des
* 50% time doing email / translation / word processing
* 30% time doing large power point presentations
* 20% of time using adobe etc for touch up of documents for trade shows etc.

At present im using a Vaio SZ with Core Duo 2 1.8ghz, and NVIDIA 8400 GS (64mg graphics card). Anyway its not cutting the mustard at all and when dragging large graphic files its all choppy and redraw takes years.

So my question, what graphics card equipment do I need for this.
Will consumer level NVIDIA or ATI cards cut themustard for 2D appliations, or do I need to go to go to enterprice type equipment.

Any recommend pc models / graphic card models would be very appreciated also.

Ive looked for this information but cant find much on business applications.

Thank you

 

Professional level graphics are solely different from their consumer counterparts through their ability to render 3d, which is thanks to specialized drivers for the most part.

If you're into Adobe products, a decent mix between a fast CPU and a decent GPU should work for you. Any general dedicated graphics should provide more than adequate performance for those types of tasks. Even integrated GPUs would work depending on which software of the Adobe suite you're using.

 

Even when working with large PowerPoints, my T500 does not falter even on integrated graphics mode.

I think you would be fine going with a nice and powerful Core i5 processor and plain integrated graphics. If you do end up deciding to go with discrete graphics (which I feel are unnecessary for you - it will only eat battery life and generate heat), stick with a consumer graphics card. A workstation card (Quadro, FireGL/FirePro) will not give you any additional benefits.

It's hard to give recommendations without knowing more of your preferences (battery life, size of screen, portability needed, budget, etc), but the Thinkpad T410/T510 and HP Elitebook 8440p/8540p are both great options to consider.

 

Not to mention a fast HDD. Which particular adobe software are you using? For notebook recommendations please visit the "What notebook should I buy?" section of the forum.

 

Thank you very much.

Ok, so it seems that the CPU and Hard disk should be the biggest concerns and not the graphics card.

I am not really interested in battery life. As long as it lasts 2hrs thats enough. However I need to take it on the plane so it cant be too heavy. Thats the only thing.

Adobe software I use, is Illustrator and Indesign.

Am looking strongly at the T410 and Dell Latitude / Precision notebooks. HP Elitebooks are too expenive over here in Japan.

But if dedicated graphics isnt required then their are loads of options available