New Laptop

[hallsofvallhalla]

Bought me a new laptop today for development. Loving it so far...

Intel Core i3
4 gig ram
500 gig hard drive
premium sound

I could not find one with a Nvidia card sadly enough and I refuse to buy anything with ATI(personal preference) so I got a Intel HD video. Not sure how well it will perform but good so far. 2 gig video shared. Will try Torque later.

[Jackolantern]

Honestly, I would not worry about a video card on a laptop. To get one that can even perform equal to a desktop GeForce 7600 costs an obscene amount of money. There just isn't enough space for cooling and proper circuitry.

But it sounds like a nice system. Actually sounds quite a bit like mine for the most part

[hallsofvallhalla]

yeah you are right.


I am actually surprised how well it handles T3D! I can play the demos without much issue. May have to install Oblivion

[Jackolantern]

Yeah the Intel iN processors are quite powerful and perform about 2x better GHz-for-GHz compared to traditional Intel Core processors. They can really make up for on-board or low-powered GPUs. My wife can play Titan Quest on medium settings at a decent frame rate on our i5 laptops, and that is with Intel on-board graphics. While not a cutting-edge game, the older Intel Core computers basically meant no gaming at all if you had on-board graphics.

[hallsofvallhalla]

I noticed even the laptops that came with ATI's were pretty low performance on the graphics side. Kinda sad they can build a x4 2.5ghz CPU that will fit and stay cool in a small laptop but not a video card.

[hallsofvallhalla]

i must say this is actually the first time I have used windows 64 bit and wow the crispness of it with a true HD monitor is insane! Windows runs hella fast as well.

[Jackolantern]

I noticed even the laptops that came with ATI's were pretty low performance on the graphics side. Kinda sad they can build a x4 2.5ghz CPU that will fit and stay cool in a small laptop but not a video card.

I have never quite understood that myself. I guess GPUs run hotter when playing games than CPUs do for all other tasks. Because you know if they could make a semi-affordable high-performance laptop video card they would.