Laptop CPU and GPU trade-off

[Photoplane]

Hi,
I notice that quite a lot of the lower-priced laptops with Intel Core 2 Duo processors also have on-board graphics such as Intel GMA 4500.

I wish to buy a low-cost laptop (about £400) for university work, but I'd like to play games like Dawn of War and Oblivion with a decent frame-rate.

I may be wrong, but I perceive onboard graphics as a major bottleneck for a Core 2 Duo. Should I compromise on the CPU (e.g. Turion X2 or Pentium Dual-Core or even Celeron) in order to get a machine with a discrete graphics card?

My present desktop has an AMD 64 3200, Windows XP 32-bit, 2Gb ram and a Geforce 6200. I would be happy with, say, a doubling of frame rate from what this can handle (e.g. Oblivion currently gets about 20fps on lowest resolution!).

Thanks...

 

[r_manic]

Unfortunately, if you really want to play a relatively demanding game like Oblivion, you'll need to spend more than 400 pounds. You might be able to get away with playing Dawn of War with that kind of laptop, but I'm not really sure. In any case, you can't "skimp" on the CPU and divert everything to paying for the GPU, simply because better laptop graphics usually come in a unit with a decent to good processor.

The good new is that, by adding around 200 pounds to your budget, your options become much better. Try to look for a laptop with an Nvidia 9xxx GPU integrated, or its ATI Radeon equivalent.