Video card recommendations

[cliff320]

I am helping my brother purchase his first laptop. All we know is that we are going to buy a T-series thinkpad. He uses a lot of graphical applications like photoshop casually, so I just wanted to find out what video card you think is the best.

32MB ATI Mobility RADEON 7500 (t42)
-just put it here to be safe

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (t43)
-name just sounds bad to me

64MB ATI Mobility RADEON x300 (t43)


128MB ATI Mobility FireGL V3200 (t43)
-this one is pretty much out of his price range, but is here for completeness


I remember some t42's used to have 64MB Mobility RADEON 9600's which people really seemed to like. Anyway, please let me know what you think, thank you!

[K. Eng]

Having a faster graphics chip helps in 3D applications like 3DSMax. For mostly 2D programs like Photoshop, a faster graphics chip will make little or no difference.

The 7500 is a very old but proven solution. The performance isn't great, but it's ok for light 3D stuff and most older (2001 and prior) games.

The GMA900 is integrated into the 915GM chipset. Its advantage is low power consumption due to its small amount of hardware and lack of discrete RAM. Its disadvantage is that it must use system memory (decreasing the amount the user has to work with) and that it is slow, though probably faster than the 7500.

The X300 GPU is the rough PCIe equivalent to the Radeon 9600. Same with the FireGL. Both are ok GPUs for most modern stuff.

[awolfe63]

The GMA 900 will noticably impact photoshop performance since it sucks up main memory bandwidth. Any of the others will be fine - no noticable difference.

[sugo]

The GMA 900 will noticably impact photoshop performance since it sucks up main memory bandwidth.

Have you seen it yourself? How does GMA900 suck up memory bandwidth? Unlike 3D video rendering, there isn't a massive, constant flow of data for the GPU to process when you are editing a 2D static picture.

[awolfe63]

I have measured it on the desktop version.

The bandwidth is sucked up by screen refresh. The picture on the screen is in main memory and needs to be updated 60x per second.

At 1400x1050 - 32 bit - 60Hz this is over 350MB/s. It also causes additional page fetches in the DRAM chips and arbitration delays in the memory controller.

DDR2 helps - but is is probably still a 20% difference. More at higher resolution or refresh rates.

[cliff320]

thanks for the help! we're gonna make sure that a GMA900 is not selected.

[Redmumba]

Sorry to bring back this thread, but its important to note that the X300 is actually the equivalent of a 9200, NOT a 9600.

[sugo]

Sorry to bring back this thread, but its important to note that the X300 is actually the equivalent of a 9200, NOT a 9600.

I don't think that's the case 3D performance wise. It's a sucessor at best. All of them are not "equivalent".

[Redmumba]

I'm sorry... I meant to say that from what I've read, the performance is roughly equivalent to that of the 9200.

[gcchatel]

As mentioned above, if he is just using 2D programs, tell him to get more ram versus a more powerful GPU. However, I do agree with the fact that getting a video card with its own memory versus the intel card would be beneficial since applications like photoshop use a lot of ram.

Good luck.

[emorphien]

For 99% of what you will do, GMA will be more than enough. I've never thought about the impact of its memory usage on photoshop work, but just because RAM is more important than processor speed in many cases when using photoshop, a dedicated graphics card is a better way to go. The 7500 will be plenty effective for photoshop, however I would say go with a better video card if you can depending on how long you'll have the laptop. The X300 would be a little more future proof if you get a T43, but the 64mb 9600 on a T42 would also be great.

I do however suspect Photoshop will benefit from the Sonoma chip over the Dothan.

[K. Eng]

DX8 software there's probably not much difference since both are 4x1 pipe designs. DX9 the X300 should destroy the 9200.

I'm sorry... I meant to say that from what I've read, the performance is roughly equivalent to that of the 9200.

[Blackbox]

I'm sorry... I meant to say that from what I've read, the performance is roughly equivalent to that of the 9200.

I'm sorry, but can you back this up? I keep hearing people badmouth the X300 and there was that one thread where the X300 lost to the 9600 in some outdated benchmarks so everyone proclaimed it superior. Looking at

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?lo ... =98&var2=0

I see that the X300 has more memory bandwidth, higher or equal memory clock, bus width, fill rate, and processor clock. Yet I've never been able to find honest-to-god benchmarks from a reputable site. Can you fill me in?