Graphics Cards for Laptops : Test | Hashrate | Specs | CPU | Config

A modern laptop is almost in no way inferior to a classic desktop PC. Is that the issue of performance has not yet been fully resolved because the possibilities of compact laptop cooling systems are not limitless and they cannot cope with cooling processors and video cards for desktop systems if they are installed in laptops. Therefore, for mobile computers, engineers have developed a special line of mobile processors and video cards, which, both in size and in performance, are several times lower than desktop solutions.

The performance of a video card directly depends on the derivative of its two main components – the graphics processor (GPU) and video memory (the video card’s own memory), as well as other important characteristics, such as the bus width. Without going into details, we note that the graphics processor renders (draws) a three-dimensional scene, receiving from the system both data about the vertices of the triangles and textures (the contents of the triangles), and the program code – the so-called shaders. Modern 3D games are loaded with complex shaders, so overall GPU performance depends not only on texture processing capabilities, but also on the capabilities of stream (shader) processors – built-in compute nodes. The more stream processors a GPU contains, the better its performance will be. You can roughly compare video cards by stream processors, but there is one problem: GPUs of different series differ significantly in microarchitecture. You can directly compare the GPUs of two video cards only if they belong to the same generation. Thus, a rough estimate of GPU performance can be achieved by multiplying the number of stream processors by the clock frequency. Now about the video memory, that is, about its speed, this parameter is also characterized by two indicators – the clock frequency and the width of the bus connection to the GPU. In accordance with performance, all existing video cards can be conditionally divided into classes. There are two main classes: discrete and integrated video cards, and discrete video cards are divided into three more types. The first class is occupied by video cards with the highest performance, the lot of which is gaming laptops, then there is the middle class of video cards, they are usually installed in multimedia laptops, the third class is video cards for office and budget notebook models. The marking of video cards for laptops is almost always the same as for video cards for personal computers, but the performance of video cards for laptops is much lower than that of desktop ones. Every year the main manufacturers of mobile video chips Nvidia and AMD Radeon change the lineup, the “new” video card, at best, gets a new production technology, and often gets nothing. In modern laptops, you can find video cards of three or even four generations at once, and new models will not necessarily be more productive (and will not necessarily be really new). Also, chip manufacturers for purely marketing purposes assign to laptop video cards indices of more productive models of desktop video cards, which reflect not so much their power as their position in the “table of ranks” in the current line of video chips. Upgrading or upgrading a laptop’s graphics system is almost impossible. Therefore, the video card presented in it very accurately characterizes the purpose of the laptop. As already noted, the video system of a laptop can be represented by either discrete or integrated graphics – a clear indication of the gaming or multimedia orientation of the laptop.

Integrated graphics is already integrated into the motherboard, its capabilities, as a rule, are rather small, but it significantly reduces the cost of the laptop. An integrated graphics card uses not only its own resources to process graphics, but also some of the resources of the central processor, as well as system memory; the performance of the integrated graphics core strongly depends on the characteristics of the system “as a whole” – processor, memory, and a particular motherboard. Speaking about the 3D performance of the integrated graphics core, we can say that it is more than enough for visual comfort in undemanding computer games. But the performance in modern 3D games, the integrated graphics core is clearly not enough, but the number of reproduced frames per second should be quite acceptable when the quality settings are reduced to a minimum.

Discrete graphics nothing more than a full-fledged graphics solution similar to desktop video cards, they provide much higher performance thanks to the presence of their own powerful GPU and their own video memory. It is the own GPU that performs the main processing of graphic data, freeing the laptop’s central processor from these tasks. Discrete graphics cards are especially important for creating 3D graphics, working in various graphics applications, and running computer games. For a laptop with such a video card, you will have to pay much more than for a laptop with an integrated graphics core. The performance of discrete video cards is quite enough for any modern 3D games.

Hybrid graphics The essence of this technology lies in the combination of integrated and discrete graphics performance. Switching graphics to the desired graphics accelerator – integrated or discrete – depending on the tasks performed by the system occurs automatically, resulting in reduced heat generation and increased battery life of the laptop. One of the most promising areas for manufacturers is now complex mobile platforms based on a strictly defined combination of a processor, chipset and graphics core. Such platforms are able to use an integrated graphics chip, a discrete mobile video card, or both.

The two largest GPU developers, AMD / ATI and NVIDIA, traditionally specialize in the production of graphics cards for notebooks. The list can also be supplemented by the Taiwanese company Intel, but they only specialize in the production of integrated graphics solutions for laptops.

INVIDIA Video Cards

Let’s start with history, until 2004 inclusive NVIDIA was extremely weakly represented in the market of mobile video adapters. Of course, there were the GeForce Go 5200, Go 5700 and earlier NVIDIA laptop solutions. But all the same, the closest competitor ATI was in the lead by a wide margin, mainly due to long-standing cooperation with most of the leading vendors and a brand that was more popularized in this market. What remained in this case for NVIDIA, not to give a significant piece of the pie to competitors, and therefore in 2005 the green company finally presented a more than interesting line of mobile solutions, covering the entire range of laptops that require discrete graphics without exception. Moreover, NVIDIA was able to establish partnerships with the largest laptop manufacturers. And if earlier laptops based on NVIDIA video cards could be counted on one hand, then with the release of the new GeForce Go 6000 series, which used the PCI Express bus and fully supported DirectX 9.0c, including pixel and vertex shaders version 3.0. the account went to dozens of models. One of the most important innovations of the GeForce Go 6 Series family was the emergence of a single standard for mobile video cards called MXM (Mobile PCI eXpress Module). NVIDIA currently has one line of GeForce xxxM mobile graphics accelerators. The discrete graphics cards of the first NVIDIA architecture based on an array of general-purpose processors support the DirectX 11 API, including shaders 5 and hardware tessellation, as well as Direct Compute 11 and OpenCL 1.0 interfaces, which enable the use of a video chip for general computing. NVIDIA cards have a function that is not supported by the competitor AMD Radeon – we are talking about the ability to calculate PhysX physics effects using the GPU. For fans of some modern games, PhysX support is very important, as without it the picture would be less realistic. It is also worth noting the NVIDIA® Optimus ™ technology, the essence of this technology is as follows, depending on the application, the laptop works with either an integrated or a discrete graphics system, and the switching occurs imperceptibly for the user and does not require a reboot. Using hardware and software enhancements, this suite delivers excellent results in notebook performance and battery life. Also, the latest Nvidia graphics cards support NVIDIA® 3D Vision ™ 3D display technology. M

AMD Mobility Radeon Graphics

AMD’s plentiful graphics cards, branded as ATI Mobility Radeon, are much more popular than NVIDIA graphics cards. (However, this is a general trend in the discrete graphics market). For the sake of fairness, we note that the Radeon lineup is much more slender and understandable for buyers, there are many models of various classes and there are no such obvious gaps as in the GeForce lineup. True, recently AMD has also begun to sin with renaming and confusion, and it does so with alarming speed. The latest series of AMD Radeon mobile graphics cards support AMD HD3D technology, which allows you to play the latest stereoscopic games and watch 3D movies with support for the HDMI 1.4a standard. Integrated AMD Radeon family graphics are available in all notebooks based on the new AMD platform. Quite often they come as a second video card in addition to the discrete, Radeon HD series.

INTEL Integrated Graphics Cards

Intel Corporation once tried to sell video cards of its own design, but quickly became disillusioned with this business and focused on the embedded models that are part of the platform. The vast majority of laptops without discrete graphics come with integrated Intel graphics. The latest generation of these cards offers switchable graphics. Traditionally, the main disadvantage of integrated Intel graphics cards was considered to be low performance in 3D. This was due to the fact that this company does not specialize in video cards and does not seek to compete with the leading manufacturers in this segment. However, with the expanding audience of laptop buyers, the requirements for integrated graphics have also increased. Today, integrated graphics from Intel are not yet able to compete with graphics from AMD and NVIDIA does not yet reach their level.

Conclusion

Conclusion At the moment, the following situation has developed on the market of mobile video cards: there is not much choice in the integrated graphics sector, since the video card is determined by the chosen platform (Intel or AMD); in the sector of discrete graphics, and in all segments, alternately AMD and Nvidia are in the lead. If your laptop is about portability and battery life, look at models with integrated graphics. Typically, notebooks with integrated graphics as their primary video system are lightweight and energy efficient. Hybrid graphics cards can mainly be found in laptops with an average level of performance, such laptops are good at playing video, they are suitable for running graphics programs and audio editors, games that are not too demanding on hardware resources. A powerful discrete graphics card will help you immerse yourself in the realities of the virtual worlds of modern computer games.