Why would AMD limit themselves to selling their graphics card only on their processors? That makes no sense, especially when Intel is the market leader on processors, and there are alternatives to where saying "No" makes even less business sense.
I bought a Sony Vaio SR490 in the summer. I wanted a gaming-capable machine, but not bigger that 14" so there weren't many options. This machine was hideously expensive in Europe so I got mine in America - the favourable exchange rate, coupled with several mail-in-rebates that Sony Europe doesn't offer cut it down to around 900e. It has a P8700 CPU at 2.5ghz, and a dedicated ATI card (4570 I believe) with 512mb VRAM. Should be able to handle a lot of stuff... thus far though, I've only played GTA2 on it :lol:
Personal Preference actually. I like AMD more than Intel. Hey Guys I have a friend who wants to buy a new laptop and he wants to do some gaming on it. I didn't think laptops were really meant for gaming but nowadays I'm not sure if that's the case. Any tips or recommendations? Any tips on a video card and shared video memory as minimum standards for decent gaming? I heard that the AMD Dual Core was better than the Intel when it comes to graphics....has anyone else heard that? Should he step up to quad core? Thanks! There are a lot of gaming laptops nowadays. I think that he should be able to play most newer games with at least 9600m with 256 mb, 2 gb ram and a 2.2ghz core2duo. I have a 8400m g, 2 gb ram and a 1.7 ghz core2duo and I can play most games at 640x480 with mininum settings. Now, if he wants a desktop replacement, I've heard that Toshiba's Satellite gaming laptop series are a good choice http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?poid=463461 My Toshiba can effortlessly run Crysis and it has a friggin Centrino... Something doesn't "have" a Centrino, that's just a sticker they put on it when it has a certain combination of processor, chipset, and wireless. Anyway. A couple years ago, I got a Dell Vostro with an 8600m GT for $700. Bare cheap machine, except for the $100 GPU upgrade. Then I bought a little more RAM on the cheap (why should I pay dell out the ass for something I can get for chump change?). One kicker, is that the Vostro is the business line (the budget business line, under the... Latitude and Optiplex?) so I had to make up a business name which made it a little sketchy when my screen was pre-cracked on arrival. "Ok, I'll need your name, company name, and address." "Uhh, well. Hold on. Just a second. Let me look this up." I think my model is technically just an Inspiron 1520 or something that looks a bit different. It looks like the Vostros these days don't come with discrete graphics cards, just the internal stuff. Plus, this route would only be if money were the main deciding factor. If not, then there's many choices that are much better. Plays most games like TF2 and Crisis and all that crap very well, I can get a good framerate (for good, I mean about 60fps) and the games still look good. Ah that explains..alot really. But yeah, the benchmark for me getting any laptop was Can it play crysis since as far as I know 3 years after it's out it's still the graphical benchmark. The weird thing about my laptop is even though it has an intel processor (I think it's a core 2 duo) it has an ATI graphics card. You'd THINK it'd have an AMD processor to go with said ATI card right? I'd assume that would depend on when it was built/bought. It depends on what your friends budget is really. If the sky is the limit he could get one of the new core I7 920 laptops with 4+ gigs ram and a geforce GTX or ATI mobile 48XX chipsets. If budget however is important i'd say try to go for a P7XXX series or T6/7XXX Intel CPU as they ofer good performance for their price and combine it with either an ATI4570 or higher or a NVIDIA 9400 or higher. Such a combo should be do-able for <$700 these days. A helpfull site for determining laptop gaming performance is: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html
