T500 - Integrated vs. Dedicated Graphics

Well I guess this could be labeled as a general question, but I thought I'd post here anyways. For someone who is not planning to do ANY gaming, would it be suggested to just stick with the laptop with "integrated graphics"? I noticed for the T500, the price difference is about $200+ for this feature, so I'm not sure if it is worth it. Other than for gaming purposes, is there any other benefit of having dedicated graphics (i.e. will it help the performance of Vista?). I'm planning to get 3GB of memory, so I assume that should be sufficient for Vista.

Thanks in advance.

 

If you aren't gaming or doing any CAD / 3D intensive work, the Intel 4500 will be more than adequate for your usage. It will pump significantly less heat and consume *far* less power.

 

The heat and power is not really an issue if we are talking about hybrid (switchable) graphics. When it is not needed it will simply be turned off.

As for the original question, on one hand you cannot predict all they ways you will be using your laptop and do not want to regret not having a video card since it is not upgradable.
On the other hand Integrated GPUs are supposedly better now than they used to be and should be sufficient for most non-gaming needs.

 

All truth being told, the comparably speced T500 have about $500 difference between dedicated and discrete. It's off course better to have dedicated, but for me, it's not worth it, but I'm not a gamer.

 

Hah yeah now that I redid it, the difference was about $400.....AND I was able to add a 2 yr warranty to the integrated graphics machine. Yikes.

 

The discreet card will run games and CAD/CAM/3D modeling applications substantially better. But for your purposes the integrated video will be perfectly fine.