My last compilation of laptop graphics card benchmarks is too old, so here you have the new version. I’m only covering the last generation of graphics card, and only the most common ones: if the graphics card you are looking for is not here, go to Notebookcheck or use Google (look for the 3DMark Vantage Performance score of the card for a quick comparison). Some remarks:
- I know, the tables at Notebookcheck are much more informative, but can be confusing and some info is lacking. I think this presentation is more useful for many people.
- 3DMark Vantage is a synthetic benchmark. It gives you an approximate idea of the performance of a graphics card, but actual gaming performance of a card can be quite different. It’s better to compare ATI vs ATI or Nvidia vs Nvidia, because many games are better optimized for a brand or the other.
- Crysis benchmarks on High settings (1024×768) are included. Crysis is not a very current game, but it gives you a good idea of the ability of a card to play current games at high settings (remember that 30 fps is generally considered as smooth gameplay). But some newer games, such as Metro 2033, are more demanding (have a look at the comment about quality levels of Metro 2033 in the Yougamers review).
- I have only included single card configurations, mainly to keep things simple, but also because the contribution of the 2nd card is very variable depending on the benchmark/game, driver version and so.
- Bottom line: get at least a Nvidia GeForce GT 330M if you plan to play games, or a GTS 360M or faster if you are serious about gaming.
Feel free to post comments to add your experiences and other relevant information (preferably with links to the sources!).
Are you interested on laptops sold in Spain? Go to the Spanish version.
Related posts:
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M benchmarks (mobile Fermi): 10% faster than ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 benchmarks
- Laptop benchmarks: GeForce GTX 285M SLI vs Mobility Radeon HD 4870 CrossFireX (Clevo vs Alienware)
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670 gaming benchmarks vs Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M (mobile Fermi) available for preorder at Xotic PC
Tags: ATI, benchmarks, gaming laptops, graphics cards, Nvidia
[...] ¿Te interesan los modelos USA? Ve a la versión en inglés. [...]
[...] ¿T’interessen els models americans? Ves a la versió en anglès. [...]
[...] It is not yet clear if the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX is actually available for the M27x or not (until now most orders have been cancelled by Dell), but now the M15x is available with the HD 5730 and 5850 in addition to the older Nvidia options. Have a look to the graphics cards comparison. [...]
Hola. Interesante el contenido, te agregaré a mi lector de noticias RSS. Hasta luego!
No one plays games at the 1024 resolution.
Hi how are you doing? I’ like to know how good of a card is the GeForce GTX 260M
It was a gaming card that’s getting a bit old. It’s not comparable to current gaming cards such as the GTX 460M, it’s more close to some current mainstream cards, such as the GT 445M or GT 550M.
Thanks for your reply, how much longer do you think this card will be good as far as a class one card? will it sill be capable three years from now in rendering graphics?
It’s hard to tell. In 3 times this card is going to be 5 years old, that’s a lot, but I guess it would be good to play games at medium details. What laptop is that card in? In many cases they aren’t easily upgradeable, and it’s possible that cards in 3 years aren’t compatible with the laptop.
and will I have to upgrade anytime soon to a better card?
Hi do you know of any websites that provide modified nVidia drivers? i need to improve the performance of my card. thanks in advance
I’m not very sure, two good sources usually were http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ and http://www.omegadrivers.net/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=section&id=2&Itemid=55
And MSI Afterburner is a good tool for overclocking: http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
Hi, so the Intel GMA HD can NOT run any game like CoD4 at all? The performance of this integrated video card varies depending on the processor and the memory intalled right? if for example i have a i3-370M core and 4GB DDR3 installed, i’d be able to play anything? I’d appreciate your response
The GMA HD is not that bad, COD MW2 is almost playable (26 fps as average at 800×600 and low settings according to Notebookcheck: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-HD.23065.0.html ), COD MW will run better. By the way, the performance between different versions of the HD is not very big.
Thank you much for replying so fast
i was worried ’cause i just bought this laptop and didnt pay atention to the graphic card at all, i thought that i could not play anything (i do not play much btw, i dont really care if the graphic is not amazing, i just want to play something good as CoD without much lag). Thank you again 