Graphic cards for laptops

[Space Voyager]

Currently I have Ati Mobility Radeon HD3430 in my HP 6830s.

 

It is an overall decent machine and I won't complain, I was just wondering if there is a good alternative to my current graphic card. I am not really sure what I'm prepared to give for it but it DEFINITELY won't go over 300 euro.

 

If anyone has any experience with this, please help. I am pretty lost at cards for laptops.

[Thorondor]

I'll give you a hint, SV: look into the ATI Mobility Radeon HD4650 with 1Gb of RAM.

 

Note that some of these cards come with DDR2 memory, which you should avoid due to poorer performance (go for DDR3 or, better, GDDR3).

 

It's a nice middle-of-the-road solution that can push a 17" display without much fuss so it should fit your price range quite well, but don't expect it to run without painful frame-rate drops on heftier titles like Crysis when using any above-average quality settings.

 

HP is currently selling these cards as an option with their HP Pavilion customizable notebooks. Toshiba, Sony, Asus and, I believe, Acer also have notebooks shipping this card with factory models of theirs.

 

If you want to go a mite above check out the higher clocked HD4670.

 

There are, of course, also the mobile CrossFire solutions to consider, SV, but that would likely be prohibitive in terms of expense and introduce several other issues you might dispense with entirely (heating, micro-stuttering, etc).

 

::

 

Here's a useful link with technical specs, benchmarking and closest competitors. Good hunting!

[Space Voyager]

THANK you Thorondor. This helps a lot.