Which card for Gaming

[CHood]

I just ordered my T42 with a ATI FireGL thinking since it had the most memory it also had the faster GPU and would be better for gaming.

I just saw a review where the aurthor chose the ATI 9600 over the FireGL and he purchased it specifically for gaming.

SO if you were to purchase a T42 for gaming which card would you choose?

[dash7540]

I would probably take the MR9600 (which is what I have.)

Although the 9600 has half the RAM, it's better suited for games as it has a slightly faster memory speed (if I remember correctly.) The FireGL is optimal for stuff like CAD/CAM with it's larger memory capacity.

You'd think that the FireGL would be better since it has more RAM, but benchmarks show the RAM difference proves negligible.

If you're feeling courageous, you can use a program like ATITool to overclock the GPU for even more performance.

Also, I think ThinkPads with the MR9600/FireGL are great for gaming, despite what people say ThinkPads are only good for office-type applications. It's capable of running games like Half-Life 2 and for a 5 pound, 1 inch thick notebook I'd say that's pretty impressive.

[none]

Well the FireGL is actually the same chip as the 9600, but the drivers on the FireGL are optimized for stability rather than performence. However since the FireGL has double the memory of the 9600, I think in many cases it would give you better performence even without performence-optimized drivers. Personally I would choose the FireGL over the 9600 any day.

[IR0NMAN]

Yeah, I would also choose the FireGL, just don't install the IBM driver, they are slow, use them only if you need to do some CAD/3D. For gaming, go to the ati.com web site and download the latest catalyst (Driver / Graphic Cards / Radeon Family) and mod the extracted files with this:

http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/

After that, get RADLINKER (i'm not sure of the name, it starts with RAD...) to overclock your video ram and cpu to the same speed as the 9600 (or better) and you get an awesome combo. Note that you won't damage your video core, IBM just downclock the core to reduce heat/maximise battery performance. You can always turn it back to its default speed when you are done fraggin people

I'm running half life 2 at a pretty good speed!! I heard some compatibility with the above method with Doom3... I don't have it so I can't really tell you.

BTW, if you start seeing artifact, it means you overcloacked your memory to high... if you computer crash, then it's the video core tha t is too high!

don't worry, you got yourself a pretty good gard, you won't be disapointed! I just got mine and its performing better than I imagined. actually, it is faster than the X300 in the new ThinkPad T43...

Enjoy.