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About Notebooks Graphics Cards

There are two type of graphics chipsets for notebook :

- the Integrated Graphics Processing Units : it's the cheaper one

- the Dedicated GPU whish is powerful but expensive.

Basically, it is well know that integrated cards stand no chance against real graphics chips, but for example Mobility Radeon x1100 (the new x200M) IGP is one of the only integrated chip that can deliver acceptable frame rates with full DirectX 9 support.

Integrated Graphics Processing Units :

   Integrated Graphics Processing Units are suffering from the necessity to share memory with the main system, and this result in slower performance all around, second problem is that most integrated GPU lack true support for actual 3D extensions such as Pixel Shader 2, Vertex Shader, and Hardware Transform and Lighting.The positive is that integrated GPU are producing no heat of their own and they are almost using very little power, and this allows to more comfortable use and longer battery life.

What game will run on my integrated GPU ?

   There is a lot of questions about what can be played on integrated GPU, particularly the Intel GMA900/950 and the ATI x1100 (the new x200M) honestly, rather than list all of the games that will run, here are the ones that won't :

-Doom 3

-Quake 4

-Prey

-Anything else on the Doom 3 Engine

-Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

-Neverwinter Nights 2

-F.E.A.R.

-Condemned: Criminal Origins

   Finally if we look at an S3 Unichrome (or any other AGP integrated part) the list becomes much, much larger - so much so that you should just suppose it won't run, no matter what it is. But many people can attest that a lot of games that are high-requirement (such as ; NFS: Most Wanted, Half-Life 2, and Painkiller) run just fine on an X200M. The Doom 3 engine falters just because ATi's OpenGL support is nonexistent. Otherwise you can not explain why HL2 is running fine at 1280x768 high detail while Doom 3 can not stay above 30 fps no matter what. Doom 3 might well be playable on nVidia's IGP, the Go6150, given nVidia's traditionally great support on OpenGL drivers.

Dedicated GPU :

   Only two companies are currently manufacturing dedicated graphics chips : ATi and nVidia.

These card feature more hardware support for advanced DirectX 9 and OpenGL 1.5 functions. Most importantly, they get that name of dedicated graphics cards from the fact that they use exclusively dedicated Video Ram, ensuring smooth and snappy performance. The problem is that dedicated video cards use much more power than integrated chips, resulting in more heat and shorter battery life.

Didier Pradel is the webmaster of laptop support and The linux laptop support where you can find many useful informations, and help for your lovely laptop.

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