Please help me choose a card for a new laptop

[dorokhin]

Hello,

I am going to buy a laptop in the next week or so but i need advice on what kind of 3d card i should get. It's going to be a PIII 1 GHZ, 384 (or maybe 512)RAM notebook. The vendor i am currently looking at (netlux.com) has an SIS 630S 4X Ultra AGP graphics accelerator with TV-Out and 64MB max user defineable memory. This card looks to be pretty good but the sysopt review of a desktop motherboard with this card was less than ecstatic. I realize that i am going to lose out on some graphics capabilities with a notebook computer but I want to know:

A) How bad is this 1100 ish 3D benchmark going to translate into a game such as Unreal Tournament.

B) Is there a better choice for a 3d card in a notebook computer.

Thanks!

~tony

[Bob The Great]

While I haven't seen the two cards benchmarked against each other I'm pretty sure NVidias GeForceGO (a laptop version of the GeForce) is quite a bit better! I've seen it get around 30-40 FPS in Q3 @ 1024x768! Also I know ATI has something coming up based of its Radeon called the Mobile Radeon (Snazzy name huh :) ). I think it's out two, but I'm not sure about that. I'd go with the GeForceGo. It's supposed to be a very good card!

[michaelwest]

Anther great card is the AGP ATI Rage Pro Enhanced. This card is really fast in all the games i've tried and is also very reliable for me on my laptop.

[Salamander]

as bob said
geforce go is the best out there for laptop rite now
but i think the point is that by going for a laptop you are looking at its size, weight more importantly than it's 3d gaming performance. becuz with the same money for your laptop you can already buy a very fast t-bird or p4 desktop.
i have a laptop with some built in graphic card and it is all i need cuz i can play some rpg as well as watching some dvd flawlessly.
as for games like quake 3, max payne, i leave my desktop to handle that, becuz no matter how fast your laptop is, you will never be satisfy with 1024 X 768 at 30 fps, as oppose to what your desktop can do at 1600 X 1200 :)

[Slipknot]

Geforce is the best for 3D applications and games on a laptop. You can run the game at the laptop's *optimal* resolution. If you have ever used a TFT screen and used it as say 640X480, you will know what I mean. It can get very grainy or distorted if you don't use the screen at it's native resolution

[Comage]

Just make sure that the video RAM for the card is a separate thing from the system memory. Some laptops use the system's physical RAM as its video RAM. Bad for 3D rendering performance.

I would suggest the GeForce Go too, as it's currently the better of the lot for laptop video cards with 3D capabilities. :)