Is the discrete graphics worth it on the T420?

I'm looking to get a new laptop and the T420 seemed to be a decent one. I want to do some light gaming on this machine, and I've heard the HD3000 is actually pretty decent. Is it worth paying the extra $200+ to get the discrete card, will it improve performance significantly?

 

It around 30%-45% more powerful than the integrated graphic, I am not sure if $200+ upgrade is worth it in your book.

 

if you want 4 LCD support with dock, or 3 LCD support without the dock, then it maybe worth it in the long run.

 

The intel 3000 is about as fast as the 16 fermi core nvidia in the T410. The new nvidia is 48 fermi cores. Theoretically 3x faster than the intel. Probably closer to 2x in real world apps.

Plus, nvidia drivers make intel's look stone age, and nvidia gives you CUDA and openCL support.

 

Benchmarks put the NVS 4200M slightly under a 9600M GT, so you should be able to do some decent gaming.

However Quadros are meant for CAD/rendering and will not get you the highest FPS unless you use the myriad of different Nvidia drivers. Sometimes a game will sense Quadro GPU and won't even start.

 

How stable are Intel (notebook) graphic drivers? Nvidias drivers aren't exactly exemplary in this regard.

 

false about the drivers. hardware is usually different in quadro gpus as well, and you wont be able to get geforce drivers to work properly. even if you could it likely would not affect performance much.



as for the overall performance, the dedicated gpu in the t420 is a joke. don't buy it for gaming. you will be playing all modern games at the lowest possible resolution with lowest possible settings. the only gpu lenovo offers in the thinkpad line that is not a joke is the quadro 2000m on the thinkpad w520 and it is hella expensive.

 

Define modern games?

 

i think it is weird that many people are so focused on game performance with the Thinkpads, when in reality these laptops are targeted towards the business market.

 

I think it's more that a few people (myself included) wish to play the occasional game on our ThinkPad, and don't want to find we ordered a unit that won't be up to the task. Some of us are folks who consider the business tasks and engineering to be the primary focus, but don't want to be locked out of some options by not having beefy enough hardware. I'd rather over-engineer my choice than be stuck with a 15% restocking fee that probably equates to the cost of having purchased Optimus graphics in the first place.

Someone asked about drivers --The Intel HD 3000 is light years beyond anything Intel has done previously, but as it isn't a GPU targeted for gaming, there have been some reports of occasional glitches in rendering. There have also been some comments about games and video appearing a bit dark. From what I've read, none of them prevent the software from working.

 

Intel HD 3000 is as fast as the geforce 310m. Meaning you can play world of warcraft at native res on Fair-Medium settings smoothly.

Games like Crysis 2 or Metro won't be able to run smoothly even at the lowest settings so forget about it

Counter-Strike Source, HL2, Left 4 Dead 2 will all run on high settings at native res. So use that as a measuring stick.


http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-3000.37948.0.html

 

While I agree that Thinkpads are geared toward business user, the fact that the younger generation grown up playing video game and we like to have a laptop handle games moderately well. I don't want to have a more than 1 computer, the issue of data fragmentation is pain in the behind. I also don't want to bring the wrong kind attention to myself on my workplace.

 

This is the best advice in this thread. There's very little gap in performance between the Intel HD 3000 and the NVIDIA NVS 4200M. But if you want hybrid Optimus for the multimon support the dollars are worth it.

 

"the fact that the younger generation grown up playing video game and we like to have a laptop handle games moderately well."

I've been around compters since I was 30 in the seventies. I've never played the first computer game (other than a text game named Adventure) in my life. There are many of us who are quite serious about computers and therefore are not interested in games in the least. I am very interested in computer performance and after I do what I can, gamers follow.

Renee

 

My age are not even close to your age in the 70s, guess there are a slight different view on playing video game on our computer.

 

For what it's worth, I don't think the NVS 4200M is worth the extra $200 and extra heat/noise/complexity (Optimus is nice but it's notorious for driver issues, although less so than the previous switchable solutions).

PC games are increasingly based on console games, and the Intel HD 3000 is about as powerful as the GPU in the PS3 or XBOX 360. So with the occasional exception (Crysis), nearly everything runs on the Intel graphics. Sometimes you need to cut the resolution or the settings, but rarely have I seen anything that is flat out unplayable.

So the question then comes down to experience. The NVS 4200M will deliver a better experience, but it's not huge. The 30-50% extra performance you get with the 4200M might mean you get to turn up the resolution or detail settings a couple of notches. But the 4200M is still very, very slow compared with a desktop GPU (my GeForce GTX 460 768M has 13.5x the memory bandwidth and 5.8x the compute power of the 4200M).

I want 3D on my laptop so that I can play games like World of WarCraft, Portal 2, and StarCraft 2 when I am on the go. If I want the best gaming experience, I turn to my desktop. The Intel HD Graphics 3000 is honestly good enough for the fraction of time when I can't use my desktop, which is more than I could say about previous Intel graphics. The NVS4200M would also be "acceptable", but it's not enough of an improvement in my opinion.

And, by the way, Portal 2 plays fine on the HD 3000.

 

I have a t520 with the nvidia addon... I've been playing Rift on medium settings at 1920x1080.

That's really all I expected, but I guarentee I wouldn't be doing that on the intel.

To run everything maxed on my desktop I needed 2 580gtxs. I'm extremely happy with the nvidia graphics, this isn't a gaming laptop, but I'm able to still play games when I'm mobile.