Laptop graphics hardware

[chaospearl]

Hi everyone. I may be upgrading my computer over the summer, and since I have the opportunity, I'd like to research the purchase thoroughly with regards to the best possible hardware for running Oblivion. The best I can afford, at least. Problem is, most of the recommendations and guides I can find that discuss graphics hardware for gaming are all about desktop machines and individual graphics cards (usually purchased and installed separately). I need information for laptop hardware. This is not negotiable; I do realize a desktop setup is far superior for gaming, but please don't reply and tell me I should consider getting a desktop. I've been playing Oblivion on my current laptop using a 50" flatscreen television as my monitor. It works very well for me; I just want my next laptop to have a little more capability. But I know absolutely nothing about graphics hardware.

 

My laptop right now is a ThinkPad R62 with an Intel Core2Duo 2.1GHz processor and 4GB of RAM. I don't know what's important to mention about the video card, so I'll just parrot what the system information says:

 

Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M

ForceWare version 175.97

Total available graphics ... 1407mb

Dedicated video memory: 128mb

System video memory: 0mb

Shared system memory: 1279mb

 

How is that in terms of playing Oblivion? I mean, it can handle the game and my 300+ mods, obviously, but I don't know if it's just barely managing, if it's middle of the road, if it's fairly decent, etc. Mainly I would just like to know what to look for when upgrading to a new laptop. I'd like to go with something better than what I have now. I'm not looking to be able to run QTP3 or anything insane like that; just for better FPS and being able to turn shadows on, maybe. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[Dark0ne]

You want to be going with the two main brands to start with; that's ATi or nVidia. You don't want an onboard graphics chip as your main GFX processor (these can be named a number of things, but generally they're intel-based) but some laptops have an ATi/nVidia card and an onboard card. It will use the more powerful GFX card when plugged in and then use the onboard chip when you're on-the-go that increases battery life.

 

Generally speaking the laptop cards follow the same naming conventions as their desktop equivalents. The ATi laptop cards will contain the "Mobility" moniker (Desktop: ATi HD 5850, Laptop: ATi Mobility HD 5850) and nVidia cards will contain the "M" moniker (Desktop: nVidia GTX 280, Laptop: nVidia GTX 280M). While named the same as the desktop cards the laptop cards are less powerful, albeit not in a totally crippling way. Just don't expect a GTX 280M to be as fast as a GTX 280.

 

When it comes to laptops, generally speaking, the power of the GFX card greatly affects the laptop price tag. The more powerful the GFX card the more expensive the laptop is. This might seem obvious but the laptop pricetag is affected way more by the GFX card than it is by the processor or memory. This is due to a number of reasons: laptop GFX cards are expensive components; more expensive than their desktop counterparts. They also require customised chasis as they are the number one cause of heat problems in laptops and require far more R&D to create workable heat solutions that drive up the prices.

 

The power of the GFX card and ultimately the performance of your laptop in games will ergo be affected largely by your budget, as well as your screen size preferences. Generally speaking the more powerful GFX cards need to be housed in larger chasis that mean larger screen sizes with the smallest screen size for proper gaming laptops being 15.6''.

 

As Oblivion is a dated game now (4 years, wow) you can get away with an average video card in your laptop and still get great performance and save yourself some pennies in the process. Based on your current system specs the memory amount is fine; you won't need more than 4GB. The processor is OK, but most of the new systems coming out will be using the new i5 or i7 CPU architecture. The difference between the i5 and i7 is relatively unimportant in Oblivion as the i7 unlocks slightly faster speeds and the intel Hyper-Threading technology that creates additional pseudo processors (a dual core has 4 processing threads with HT enabled, a quad core has 8 threads, and so on) but generally doesn't warrant the additional expense. Oblivion doesn't make good use of mutliple cores anyway so this is unimportant.

 

If you're looking to play the latest and greatest games, or make your laptop TESV-proof then you might want to splash out a bit more an insure you get a laptop with a better GFX card. Your old laptop uses the Quadro NVS 140M GFX card which is the business variant of the 8400M or 8400 GS. Those cards are two to three generations old now. You can obviously do a lot better than that now without breaking the bank. The current nVidia laptop range is the 2xx range (I've seen from 240M to 285M), any of which would be better than your current card by a long shot. The current ATi laptop range is the 4xxx - 5xxx range. Once again these will be way better than your current card and the card I can recommend will greatly depend on your budget.

 

Hope this helps.

[chaospearl]

That helps more than you know, Robin. Thank you SO much.

 

As for what I can afford... ah well, that's a complicated issue because it's going to depend on decisions made by someone other than me, and I won't know for awhile what the decision is. I don't want to waste your time by explaining the situation. Let me see if I can make a long story short.

 

The laptop I refer to as "mine" is the one given to students enrolled at my little sister's college campus. When she started freshman year she didn't want "the school laptop" because (and I'm not condoning this attitude, mind you) apparently lugging it around campus shows everyone that you can't afford your own laptop. Most students have a private machine of their own. My parents flat refused to buy my sister her own laptop when the college offered a perfectly good one for free. She couldn't afford one on her own. At this same time, my current laptop was dying, I'd had it for three years, and I couldn't afford a new one either. We struck a deal. I took the laptop from the school which I would never have been able to afford myself. I paid her $500 for it. She put in another $500 of her own, and used the combo to buy herself a white Sony Vaio that she's very happy with.

 

Things have been fine for two years now. Problem is, after two years the school takes back the original laptop and gives you a new one; an upgrade. The second one is the machine you keep after graduation. You get a choice of a ThinkPad or a Mac laptop (forget what they're called) and my sister informed me that she's thinking she wants to go with the Mac. She'd give me her Vaio and buy herself a cheap netbook so she'll still have a Windows machine on the side. But the Vaio would be a serious downgrade from the ThinkPad I have now and it isn't capable of playing Oblivion.

 

She hasn't decided if she really wants the Mac laptop yet... she has to figure it out by September when she starts junior year so I have the summer to panic about possibly losing my ThinkPad. If that's what happens, I'll need to either a) upgrade the Vaio, which I'm not sure is even possible, b) sell the Vaio and buy a new laptop, or c) tell my sister this whole thing stinks like week old fish and make her give me my $500 back if she's taking my laptop. So I'll be left with either $500 or however much I can sell the Vaio for (probably less... I'll choose between B and C depending on what she thinks and whether causing a big family fight is worth getting my entire $500 back instead of however much I can sell the Vaio for).

 

I can probably scrape together about $1000 to add to whatever I end up with when the dust settles. Maybe a few hundred more. If it comes to that, I will probably approach my parents about loaning me some cash for six months because I know damn well I won't get a decent gaming laptop for under $2000, even a refurb. I still have to look into the possibility of upgrading the Vaio, but I'd rather not pour money into an expensive new GFX card for it because its processor isn't up to snuff and I'd rather just get a better machine.

 

What I'm thinking about now, however... is that if I can't upgrade the Vaio and I can't sell it for more than a few hundred bucks, I may simply keep it for myself and use my $1000+ to buy a desktop. I've been focusing exclusively on laptops because I can't physically use a desktop setup for most things (I'm disabled), but it occurs to me that if I have the Vaio already, I can use that as my everyday laptop and buy a desktop purely for gaming. $1000 will get me a lot more desktop than it will laptop, that's for sure. And I certainly don't need Oblivion to be mobile... it isn't right now anyway, it wouldn't be worth playing on the teensy laptop screen. That idea sounds better and better to me.

 

Well, we'll see what happens come summer and maybe my sister will suddenly decide the whole MacBook idea was nuts. I apologize for such a long and boring post! You've answered exactly what I needed to know, and I appreciate your time. Thank you.